University of Cincinnati QuarkNet Annual Report 2023

2023 marked a change in leadership for the University of Cincinnati (UC) QuarkNet team:
Conor Henderson  took over from Mike Sokoloff as university lead mentor,
and Emily Rosen (St Ursula Academy) and Martin Wells (Summit Country Day School) took over as lead teachers after the retirement of Jeff Rodriguez.

We hosted a 3-day QuarkNet workshop at UC on 20-22 June 2023.
Nine teachers attended from the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky region, the majority of whom had not attended a QuarkNet workshop before.
The UC Physics Department and the College of Arts & Sciences provided complimentary lunches for participants on the first two days.
We appreciated Ken Cecire joining us in person for the first 2 days, and virtually on the 3rd day.

After warming up with the "Shuffling the Particle Deck" activity, Henderson gave an introduction to the Standard Model, and then Emily Rosen led the group through Coding Workshop activities.
The second day focused on Higgs activities:  
UC Prof. Phil Ilten gave a lecture on the physics of the Higgs boson, then we explored the Z mass and CMS 4-lepton activities.
UC Prof. Kathy Koenig, a specialist in physics education research, also gave a presentation on interactive video tutorials for use in introductory physics teaching, which was very well-received by the teachers.
The third day was devoted to STEP-UP/Careers in Physics information and discussion sessions.
Participating teachers developed and discussed implementation plans for bringing the QuarkNet material back to their own students.
Henderson will endeavour to support teachers as they try to integrate these activities into their own classrooms.

The workshop was featured in a short article in the University of Cincinnati News:
 https://www.uc.edu/news/articles/2023/06/uc-program-helps-inspire-next-generation-of-physicists.html

We plan to host another QuarkNet workshop at UC in summer 2024. Our hope is to increase the number of participating teachers, and broaden the schools involved.
We will also engage with participating QuarkNet teachers in future Masterclass activities.