2021 Lycoming College Summer Magazine

NOTEWOR The Lycoming College chapter of the Society of Physics Students (SPS) has won an Outstanding Chapter Award, which recognizes high levels of outreach as well as unique approaches to fulfilling the mission of SPS to “help students transform themselves into contributing members of the professional community.” This is the fifteenth time the Sigma Pi Sigma chapter has been recognized by the SPS National Office for its excellence as a top-tier student-led physical sciences organization since its establishment in 1968, a designation given to fewer than 10 percent of all SPS chapters at colleges and universities in the United States and internationally. The College’s SPS chapter is advised by Lauren Balliet, physics lab manager and Students were welcomed back to the Lycoming College campus in late January with a series of required COVID-19 antigen tests and a week-long quarantine period to help safely begin the Spring 2021 semester. The number of antigen tests administered totaled 3,069, with less than one percent of those showing positive for COVID-19. Jeffrey Newman, Ph.D., professor of biology, was part of the team that developed the College’s antigen testing strategy and helped to manage test processing on campus. To make this process feasible, the College enlisted the help of highly capable pre-med planetarium director, and is led by student officers. The 2020-2021 officers included Kirk Kleinsasser ’23, president; Matthew Velardi ’22, vice president; Holland McVey ’23, treasurer; Jordan Jason ’22, secretary; Amber Elinsky ’23, public relations; and Priktish Suntoo ’23, webmaster. The chapter was recognized as outstanding for activities such as touring Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Nashville, Tenn., as well as Fermilab in Batavia, Ill. LYCOMING PHYSICS STUDENTS WIN NATIONAL RECOGNITION STUDENTS PROCESS ANTIGEN TESTS IN LYCOMING MICRO-LAB and pre-graduate school Lycoming students, all of whom possess a high level of laboratory proficiency. These skilled scientists, coupled with the College’s microbiology lab facilities — outfitted with biosafety cabinets — presented the ideal setting in which to process tests in a matter of minutes. “We could not have completed such a large number of tests without the work of the students and several faculty supervisors,” said Newman. 6 LYCOMING COLLEGE 2021 SUMMER MAGAZINE