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Jewish

for college students by college students

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September 18, 2014 / 23 Elul 5774

VOLUME 5, NO. 4

Inspirational Summer

JARC internship shows what people

can do by interacting together.

Lexie Sittsamer

A

jewish@edu writer

s advertisements for mechanical pencils, three-ring binders

and washable markers appear, we are given no choice but to
prepare for the upcoming school year. School supply shopping
usually includes running into friends you haven't seen in a while and
being asked the million-dollar question: "What have you done this sum-
mer?"
In addition to the typical college student's summer of sleeping in,
traveling and hanging with friends, I spent more than 12 weeks this
summer interning at JARC.
A Farmington Hills-based nonprofit, JARC serves nearly 200 adults
with developmental disabilities in group homes and various indepen-
dent living arrangements throughout the community. JARC's mission is
"to enrich the lives of people with disabilities through gentle and loving
support, valued relationships and engagement with the community, in
accordance with Jewish values."
Throughout the 12 weeks, I experienced JARC's annual Spring Elation
with hundreds of supporters, planted flowers alongside volunteers and
folks JARC serves, and enjoyed a wonderful Shabbat dinner with six
bubbly JARC ladies and their staff.
I witnessed community volunteers arrive at JARC homes early in the
summer, eager to take part in the annual Flower-A-Thon. Volunteers and
JARC clients celebrated the sun, warm weather and Mother Nature's
beauty by planting flowers at JARC homes.
For the third year, Ivan Katz with Great Lakes Landscape Design in
Oak Park donated more than 50 flats of flowers to help beautify the
homes. Ivan was introduced to JARC through Rose AZA of BBYO. He
speaks of JARC as a "great, well-run organization that I highly believe

• 0.

Alex Kavner at the Fermilab near Chicago, where he worked for two weeks
this summer along with physicists at Fermi Lab. Alex is a member of the
University of Michigan DAMIC Team. A new Fermilab experiment called
DAMIC (Dark Matter In CCDs) is searching for light dark matter candi-
dates with masses less than that of a proton or two.

The Great Search

U-M students helps find
dark matter at Fermilab.

Alex Kavner

Inspirational on page 107

Marissa Siegel, Lexie Sittsamer and Julie
Klein work at the SpringElation volunteer
check-in table.

T

his summer, I spent two weeks work-

ing at Fermilab, America's premier
particle physics and accelerator labo-
ratory outside of Chicago. Built in
1967, Fermilab is a U.S. Department of Energy
national laboratory where scientists use the world's
most advanced particle accelerators to probe down
to the smallest building blocks of matter.
Their vision is to solve the mysteries of matter,
energy, space and time for the benefit of all. I was
part of a national team whose goal is to discover
new subatomic particles that explain dark matter.
Dark matter is all around us. Over 70 years of
observations have led scientists to the conclusion
that an invisible (dark) matter permeates the uni-
verse, dominating the matter content so much so
that it is responsible for its large-scale structure.
The nature of dark matter is unknown, but physi-
cists have suggested that it, like visible matter, is
made up of particles. And while they've seen evi-
dence that dark matter does exist, no one knows
what it looks like.

jewish@edu writer

Various funding agencies have, therefore, put
together a particle-hunting team. I was part of that
team, called DAMIC or Dark Matter in CCDs (a
device that detects particle interactions).
The DAMIC team believes there are many vari-
eties of particles in the universe; far more than
the electrons, neutrinos and quarks we currently
observe. My job at Fermilab was to precisely cali-
brate the Particle Detector so that it can assist in
identifying the differences between various parti-
cles, in hopes of isolating the dark matter particles.
I am taking this information back to U-M and
will continue working with Professors Dante
Amidei and Tom Schwartz in their ongoing search
for dark matter.
I began my research career in my second semes-
ter at U-M. As an honors student of theoretical
physics, I am eager to begin working in a laborato-
ry and petitioned Professors Amidei and Schwartz
for a job. They first offered me part-time work, but
that soon evolved into full-time during the sum-
mer months.

Great Search on page 107

JN

September 18 • 2014

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