The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded a $1.1 million grant to a collaborative program between three universities.
Black Hills State and two other out-of-state schools will each use the funds to recruit students in science and technology fields from diverse backgrounds, including rural, Native American students, women, and students from underserved urban backgrounds.
Brianna Mount is an Associate Professor of Physics at Black Hills State. She says the focus on underserved students is important.
“Well, I think everyone comes from their own perspectives and we need to get as many as these perspectives as possible. Because physics has some big problems that we need to solve, and so these different perspectives offer different solutions,” Mount said.
Mount said the money won’t only go toward recruitment.
“So one of the offshoots of this program, there’s a University of Michigan graduate student working at SURF on the LZ Dark Matter detector, and one of the students working with us this semester is working directly with him getting really stuck in on that analysis for that world-leading detector. That wouldn’t have quite been possible without this award,” Mount said.
Black Hills State’s share of the award is $520,000 over three years.