Mentors wanted for Diversity Office's FermiLINK program

Navigating the professional landscape can be a challenge. To help employees and users reach their full professional potential, Fermilab's Diversity Office has launched FermiLINK, a mentoring program.

The Diversity Council committee members who created FermiLINK focued on workforce recruitment, retention and development. Those members see the network as a way to address a laboratory-wide call for a mentoring program.

"I think employees will find FermiLINK to be an easy-to-use and valuable online resource," said Sandra Charles, equal opportunity specialist. "It is a great way to navigate the Fermilab work landscape for all classes of employees whether they are new to the laboratory or not."

The need for a formal mentoring program at all levels of the laboratory was also identified in the focus group feedback report from the American Physical Society site visit.

FermiLINK will provide mentees opportunities to seek confidential guidance from volunteer mentors regarding organizational, workplace and career issues.

FermiLINK provides Web-based access to a selection of mentors for issue-specific, work-related challenges and opportunities. Mentees and mentors can interact via e-mail, phone or in person. They can meet once or for extended periods of time.

To become a mentor, fill out the form on the FermiLINK Web page.

FermiLINK will begin accepting mentees after Oct. 27.

Learn more about the FermiLINK program at one of two Q&A sessions:

• Wednesday, Oct. 7, from 11 a.m.-noon in One North
• Tuesday, Oct. 13, from 3-4 p.m. in One West

-- Rhianna Wisniewski

Last shift

Gavin Hesketh, a blogger for Quantum Diaries.

I'm currently a post-doc with Northeastern University working on DZero, one of the Tevatron experiments. Like many people, I'm trying to find the best time to move to CERN, and for me it's happening later this year. It's a little hard for me to believe that this also marks 10 years since I started my PhD at the University of Manchester. I was not even sure I would be accepted to that program, having just taken 3 years away from study to play in a band (we didn't get very far!). But they obviously they saw something, and I'm still working in physics and enjoying it immensely.

My main interest in physics came at around age 16, with probably a combination of a good teacher and some interests I've had all my life. I've always wanted to understand how things work, a lot of which probably comes from my engineer father, and I loved the power of physics to explain things with just a few ideas and equations. Continuing to study at University was really the only thing I wanted to do, and while there I took a few courses in particle physics. Again, I think a really good lecturer was one of the main things that got me interested in this area. Then after taking some time away to follow my musical interests, I felt the pull of science again, and here I am.

See Hesketh's blog

Is the Large Hadron Collider worth its massive price tag?

From Guardian, Sept. 22, 2009

Scientists at Cern near Geneva are close to turning on their particle accelerator a year after it blew up. In their latest video, physicists hunting the Higgs boson ask what price society is willing to pay to understand the universe

A month or so ago I was sat at a table outside the canteen at Cern, the European nuclear research organisation in Switzerland, nursing an espresso and watching an impromptu volleyball match play out across a giant blue magnet daubed with white paint. The graffiti read: "LH ... C'est pas sorcier". It's not rocket science.

Maybe it's not, but what the scientists are trying to do at Cern is no easier. The underground accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, is vast and vastly complex. It's almost no surprise it didn't spring to life and start churning out data as soon as they flicked the 'on' switch this time last year.

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