News From Student Sections

Winners of the 2005 OSA Student Chapter Excellence Award

OSA President Susan Houde-Walter presented two chapters with the 2005 OSA Student Chapter Excellence Award while at the FiO Student Chapter Leadership Meeting.

The Excellence Awards program was established to recognize outstanding achievement of student chapters.  In recognizing the efforts of student chapters OSA hopes to encourage positive contributions on the part of members and strengthen relationships with student chapters.  The Excellence Award recognizes outstanding achievement in advocacy and community efforts, outreach and special programs.  The chapters were evaluated based on their community involvement, programs and planning and winners received $1,000 along with a certificate.

The 2005 Excellence Award for student chapters of 16 or more members went to the Stanford University Student Chapter, which made significant contributions in chapter programming.  This year, the chapter held a seminar series featuring ten presentations within 12 months.  The Chapter's goal with the talks is to give students in optics more exposure to current work in optics in industry and around the university. Four of the talks also had associated tours of a company or facility. The chapter also participated in Stanford Photonics Research Center Annual Symposium, manning an OSA table; and in Stanford's Community Day event, running a booth with several hands-on optics demonstrations including gelatin optics, optical illusions, and a water "light pipe." An estimated 1,000 visitors came by the booth during the six-hour event.

The 2005 Excellence Award for student chapters of 5-15 members went to the University of California , Irvine student chapter.  This year, the Chapter has held several events to raise awareness of optics and the chapter including an event in which nonlinear spectroscopy, such as 4-wave mixing was explored, discussed, and experimentally demonstrated using tunable ultrafast lasers. The Chapter has also collaborated with the Optics Institute of Southern California to increase the benefits available to their members and to expand outreach efforts.

Figure 1: OSA President presents Stanford University Student Chapter Representative Meredith Lee with the Chapter Excellence Award

Figure 2: OSA President presents University of California - Irvine Student Chapter Representative Hrant Seferyan with the Chapter Excellence Award