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In response to numerous programs seeking to advance quantum education and workforce development in the United States, experts from academia, industry, government, and professional societies convened for a National Science Foundation-sponsored workshop in February 2024 to explore the benefits and challenges of establishing a national center for quantum education. Broadly, such a center would foster collaboration and build the infrastructure required to develop a diverse and quantum-ready workforce. The workshop discussions centered around how a center could uniquely address gaps in public, K-12, and undergraduate quantum information science and engineering (QISE) education. Specifically, the community identified activities that, through a center, could lead to an increase in student awareness of quantum careers, boost the number of educators trained in quantum-related subjects, strengthen pathways into quantum careers, enhance the understanding of the U.S. quantum workforce, and elevate public engagement with QISE. Core proposed activities for the center include professional development for educators, coordinated curriculum development and curation, expanded access to educational laboratory equipment, robust evaluation and assessment practices, network building, and enhanced public engagement with quantum science.

This study aims to understand how undergraduate physics majors develop an interest in specific subfields. We examine interest formation through the lens of Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) by exploring four key SCCT constructs: learning experiences, self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and proximal environmental influences. We conducted 27 interviews with physics majors across various years of study between 2020 and 2022. Our first research question analyzes SCCT constructs to provide detailed insights into the interest formation of various subfields of physics. Examining these constructs, we better understand the factors influencing students' preferences toward specific subfields. Our findings indicate that positive class experiences and experimental opportunities significantly impacted students' interest in different subfields of physics. This understanding helped us explore significant variations in interest formation between astrophysics and biomedical physics in Research Question 2. By understanding how students decide about their interests, we can provide valuable insights for physics departments and career guidance professionals., Comment: 13 pages,5 figures

Studying the factors that influence the quality of physics PhD students' doctoral experiences, especially those that motivate them to stay or leave their programs, is critical for providing them with more holistic and equitable support. Prior literature on doctoral attrition has found that students with clear research interests who establish an advisor-advisee relationship early in their graduate careers are most likely to persist. However, these trends have not been investigated in the context of physics, and the underlying reasons for why these characteristics are associated with leaving remain unstudied. Using semi-structured interviews with 40 first and second year physics PhD students, we construct a model describing the characteristic pathways that physics PhD students take while evaluating interest congruence of prospective research groups. We show how access to undergraduate research and other formative experiences helped some students narrow their interests and look for research groups before arriving to graduate school. In turn, these students reported fewer difficulties finding a group than students whose search for an advisor took place during the first year of their PhD. Lastly, we identify two characteristic types of students at a higher risk of leaving their programs: students who enter graduate school with broad interests and struggle to find a group, and students who join a research group early based on research interest alone and subsequently encounter issues with a negative mentoring relationship. This work serves as a major step toward creating a comprehensive model of how PhD students find a research group, and opens the door for future work to investigate how factors such as group culture and working environment impact the search process., Comment: 28 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables