The National Student Exchange (NSE) will announce at its Annual Placement Conference in March that Wichita State University physics major Matthew Onstott on exchange to Stony Brook University in New York was one of two students awarded the Bette Worley NSE Student Achievement Award.

The award recognizes students who demonstrate the best use of their participation in the NSE. Onstott was selected from among the nearly 3,000 students who participated in NSE for the 2009-2010 exchange year.

NSE provides exchange and study opportunities at reasonable cost among member colleges and universities across the United States and Canada.

Onstott’s work involved developing laboratory experiments for students using a 9-million volt tandem Van de Graaf accelerator.

The quality of his work has been recognized in multiple forums. It became the basis for a one-week workshop for high school teachers and their students and his experiments have been accepted as part of the standard curriculum for physics undergraduate majors at SBU, as well as physics graduate students.