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Quantum Information Science and Engineering (QISE) is rapidly gaining interest across a wide range of disciplines. As QISE continues to evolve, engineering will play an increasingly critical role in advancing quantum technologies. While efforts to characterize introductory QISE courses are underway, a comprehensive understanding of QISE education across the United States remains lacking. Developing a broad understanding of the QISE education landscape is crucial for addressing the needs of the growing quantum industry and ensuring equitable access for a diverse range of participants. This paper presents part of an ongoing effort to characterize the current landscape of QISE courses and degree programs in higher education in the US. To achieve this, we used publicly available information from university and college websites to capture information on over 8000 courses that address quantum in some way and nearly 90 QISE specific programs (e.g., degrees, minors, certificates). The majority of these programs are interdisciplinary and include engineering; 14 of them are housed exclusively in engineering departments. We find most programs are offered at research intensive institutions. Our results showcase an opportunity for program developers at non-research intensive institutions to justify the creation of QISE programs, which would also address calls from different stakeholders in QISE education for a more diverse QISE workforce. We suggest strategies based on the findings of this study such as integrating QISE into existing courses, investing in the development of QISE courses and programs at non-PhD-granting institutions, and making courses with QISE content accessible to students from a variety of majors. 

Many of the activities and cognitive processes that physicists use while solving problems are "invisible" to students, which can hinder their acquisition of important expert-like skills. Whereas the detailed calculations performed by researchers are often published in journals and textbooks, other activities such as those undertaken while planning how to approach a problem are rarely discussed in published research. Hence, these activities are especially hidden from students. To better understand how physicists solve problems in their professional research, we leveraged the framework of cognitive task analysis to conduct semi-structured interviews with theoretical physicists (N=11). Here we elucidate the role of planning and preliminary analysis in theorists' work. Theorists described using a variety of activities in order to decide if their project was doable while also generating possible solution paths. These actions included doing cursory calculations, reflecting on previous knowledge, gaining intuition and understanding by studying prior work, and reproducing previous results. We found that theorists typically did not pursue projects unless they had a clear idea of what the outcome of their project would be, or at least knew that they would be able to make progress on the problem. Thus, this preliminary design and analysis phase was highly important for theorists despite being largely hidden from students. We conclude by suggesting potential ways to incorporate our findings into the classroom to give students more numerous opportunities to engage in these expert-like practices. 

Using analysis of variance on a sample consisting of 1,499 US students across 21 US PhD programs, we show that there is no significant difference in the time it takes US male and female physics PhD students to complete their degree programs. This result comes in spite of a statistically significant 18 percentile point gap in median GRE-P scores between genders. Additional analyses reveal that there is no statistical difference between US students reported as White, Black/Hispanic/Multiracial/Native American, and Asian. Expanding our sample to also include 1,143 Non-US students, we find a small but significant effect of citizenship status on time to PhD completion where the average time for Non-US students to complete a physics PhD is about two months less than their US student counterparts. These results show that in spite of known gaps in standardized admissions exams between genders, these differences are not reflected in subsequent graduate school performance. Our findings reinforce the need for graduate admissions committees to go beyond quantitative metrics and conduct a holistic assessment of an applicant's potential to perform research effectively and to earn a PhD. 

In this project, we sought to uncover the cognitive processes and skills that are involved in completing a theoretical physics project. Theoretical physics is often portrayed as a field requiring individual genius and can seem inaccessible to undergraduate students, as well as the public. We drew upon the foundations of Cognitive Task Analysis and completed semi-structured interviews with eleven theoretical physics faculty members from several different research institutions who specialized in subfields including quantum optics, biophysics, computational astrophysics, and string theory. We analyzed the processes and skills of these physicists, focusing on an analysis of idea origin, which is typically the first cognitive process within a project, and how it was connected to collaboration and motivation. We used concept maps to organize these codes and portray the factors that influence the creation of project ideas. We found that motivation and collaboration are fundamental determinants of project ideas and their origins, which contradicts the "lone genius" stereotype. These findings on cognitive processes and skills can help us understand how to better prepare students to do theoretical physics research. Finally, the information gathered during this project may be useful for improving the public understanding of theoretical physics, dispelling the belief that the field requires "genius," and making it accessible to more students.