Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is perched above an arid valley that separates it from Santa Fe, NM. It's in one of the more remote geographic locations in the U.S., by the choice of its first director, University of California-Berkeley physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.
The LANL campus covers forty-three square miles of mountainous northern New Mexico. It's home to 13,000 scientists, technicians, nuclear engineers and staff workers, many far from their original homes.
LANL is teeming with students year round - high school interns, college interns or co-ops, graduate, doctoral or postdoc. Some are also full-time LANL employees who attend the University of New Mexico (UNM) without leaving the lab.
Overcoming isolation
Almost as soon as the laboratory opened more than fifty years ago it became obvious that its isolation could cause problems. The laboratory boasted some of the best scientific minds, but if those employees wanted to further their education they had a dilemma. The closest four-year university with science and math programs was UNM in Albuquerque, nearly 100 miles and two hours of driving away.
That left LANL employees with the choice of giving up their educational ambitions or leaving the laboratory to attend school full time in Albuquerque. Another option was finding a job somewhere else, where universities were within a more reasonable commuting distance. It became obvious that providing an alternative on campus was imperative.
In 1954, LANL launched a cooperative agreement with UNM that links the university with one of the premier research laboratories in the country. The arrangement produced a graduate center known as the Extended Learning Program, which started offering classes in 1955 and is still in operation.
It started with masters programs in several disciplines, with a faculty made up of UNM professors and adjunct professors, paid by LANL. Then, as now, some courses are taught by LANL employees who are part of the UNM faculty.
In the 1980s, the program expanded to include a distance learning component, bringing classes to students via a two-way microwave system. Employees at LANL can now earn a BS in computer science or an MS in chemical, nuclear or mechanical engineering from UNM without leaving the LANL campus, while working full time.
Since it started, the program has graduated 697 students with bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees. More than 400 have earned masters degrees, according to Jud Morhart, project director for distance education and training technologies.
The program is designed to overcome the disadvantages of isolation. "This ensures that high-quality employees at LANL do not have to leave their jobs to pursue graduate degrees or accept corporate positions, where they would be near a major university with math and science graduate degree programs," Morhart explains.
The Extended Learning Program is now beginning its fiftieth year and continues to meet its founders' mission: to provide opportunities for advanced degrees while keeping employees at LANL.
Education survives disruptions
LANL has undergone considerable turbulence in the past few years: it was forced to close for several weeks during a forest fire in 2000, and security problems have made headlines, most recently in the summer of 2004. But the laboratory continues to employ some of the top scientists in the country and the world.
After a suspension of work operations to address security concerns and retraining, the laboratory is open and functioning as usual. For student employees, extended learning classes began on schedule in September.
Course instruction is still provided by UNM and funded by LANL. The graduate center is now part of the Tri-county Higher Education Association, with Northern New Mexico Community College, UNM-Los Alamos and Santa Fe Community College. Partnership with the two-year community colleges allows LANL to offer courses in specialties like system administration, computer desktop applications, advanced machining and Microsoft-certified systems engineering. LANL also encourages employees to access a variety of American universities that offer tech degrees on line.
Leslie Knowlton, senior staff specialist in the training and development group, says the lab is working to hire early-career professionals with five or fewer years of experience. She notes that the lab's managers are focusing their attention on building a high-quality workforce that reflects the country's diversity. "We're providing opportunities for professional development so our employees can stay close to home, get the education they need and still come to work everyday. This allows us to acknowledge the diverse needs of New Mexico's population and to build the workforce we need to meet our mission and goals."
Gina Fisk: LANL researcher, UNM instructor
Network security researcher Gina Fisk has been on both sides of the Extended Learning Program at LANL, as an instructor and a student. Fisk came to the lab in 1994 right out of high school as part of a program to educate science students to teach. Fisk enrolled in UNM-Los Alamos and accepted an internship at LANL, then earned her BS in computer science through the Extended Learning Program. LANL hired her full time in network security research in 1998.
Two years later, she moved with her husband to Los Angeles, where they enrolled in graduate coursework. Fisk got an MSCS at the University of Southern California (USC) in 2001 and then returned with her husband to Los Alamos. After a year, she started work on her PhD, which she is earning from USC through a remote link with LANL.
She and other students who are employed at LANL use the training and development room to watch their classes via an Internet connection. If watching live, Fisk can submit questions to the class and interact with the professor. She e-mails her work to her professors, and occasionally flies to Los Angeles to meet with her advisor. LANL provides a proctor to administer exams.
As a LANL researcher, Fisk oversees fifteen interns working in the Cyberdefenders security program. And she's been a UNM instructor, teaching computer science courses to LANL employees, for nearly as long as she has been a full-time employee; her average class has ten to fifteen students.
Neal Tapia: an MS from UNM-Los Alamos
Neal Tapia, tech staff member at LANL, earned a masters in the Extended Learning Program. Tapia, whose family is Hispanic, became a U.S. Marine after high school. After his discharge in 1994 he enrolled at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (Socorro, NM). In the spring of his sophomore year, he saw a poster for summer internships at LANL, and contacted the lab's student programs office. He interned there that summer, and was invited to join a program that allowed him to take classes at New Mexico Tech full time and help LANL staffers with their research during summers and long holidays from school.
He earned his BSEE in 1998 and became part of the "post-undergraduate" program at LANL, still in research. Almost immediately he began studying for his masters through UNM. He worked part time at LANL as he carpooled to classes in Albuquerque several days a week, and also took satellite courses at Los Alamos. The core courses, he says, were available at Los Alamos, but many electives were offered only in Albuquerque.
After receiving his MSEE in 2003, he spent one year in LANL's post-masters program to determine what area he wanted to work in. He found a position in the Dynamic Experimentation division, and has been there ever since. He's thinking about a PhD - and has plenty of support from LANL to do it.
D/C
|
