HR: 17:45h
AN: ED34A-08 INVITED    [Abstracts]
TI: Revitalizing Physics Departments: The Spin-UP Reports
AU: * Hehn, J G
EM: jhehn@aip.org
AF: American Institute of Physics, One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740, United States
AU: Czujko, R
EM: rczujko@aip.org
AF: American Institute of Physics, One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740, United States
AU: Hilborn, R
EM: rhilborn3@unl.edu
AF: University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Brace Laboratory 116, 510 Stadium, Lincoln, NE 68588, United States
AB: The American Institute of Physics (AIP) has carefully measured education trends in the physics and related sciences community for nearly five decades. During the 1990s, the community realized that the number of undergraduate physics majors was declining significantly. A number of efforts were launched in the physics community intending to reverse that decline and the number of bachelor's degrees has been rebounding for the last 7 years. The National Task Force on Undergraduate Physics (NTFUP) was one such effort that identified thriving physics departments and analyzed strategies shared among those departments. In 2003 NTFUP issued a report entitled: Strategic Programs for Innovations in Undergraduate Physics, referred to as Spin-UP. A subsequent study of physics programs in two-year colleges, Spin-UP TYC, produced many similar findings published in 2005. Lessons learned as stated in the Spin-UP reports and several conferences will be reviewed.

Some lessons learned include: A thriving department demonstrated (1) a widespread attitude among the faculty that the department has the primary responsibility for maintaining or improving the undergraduate program; (2) a challenging, but supportive and encouraging undergraduate program that includes a well-developed curriculum, advising and mentoring, an undergraduate research participation program, and many opportunities for informal student-faculty interactions, enhanced by a strong sense of community among the students and faculty; (3) strong and sustained leadership within the department and a clear sense of the mission of its undergraduate program; and (4) a strong disposition toward continuous evaluation of and experimentation with the undergraduate program. In short, thriving departments paid attention to undergraduates and made majors feel like members of their physics department and members of a physics community.
UR: http://www.aapt.org/Projects/upload/SPIN-UP-Final-Report.pdf
DE: 0810 Post-secondary education
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting