Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2006 APS April Meeting
Saturday–Tuesday, April 22–25, 2006; Dallas, TX
Session H4: New Models for Graduate Education |
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Sponsoring Units: FEd Chair: Gay Stewart, University of Arkansas Room: Hyatt Regency Dallas Marsalis A |
Sunday, April 23, 2006 8:30AM - 9:06AM |
H4.00001: Implementing an Industrial Approach into Physics Graduate Education Invited Speaker: Physics graduate education has attracted a student population with a both high independence and interest in individual professional work. These personality tendencies have been validated in the students' eyes by both the observed professional behaviors of the majority of their faculty, and by the public acceptance of the persona of ``eccentric but brilliant'' physics students. This has resulted in a self-perpetuating cycle of professionals entering the academic workplace whose interest in whole-organization optimization, as well as the skills needed to optimize organizations, are low to non-existent. But at the same time the needs of the country's technical work force, as defined by national gatherings of prominent leaders from academic, industrial, and governmental communities, continue to list human interaction ``soft skills'' as one of the most important professional traits needed by professionals in their careers. This gap between the physics graduate education and requirements needed by next generation physicists provided an opportunity for experimental approaches to graduate physics education. The University of Arkansas' Physics Department lead the formation of a new experimental approach to interdisciplinary education in the broad field of microelectronics and photonics (microEP) in 1998, resulting in the formation of a stand-alone MS/PhD microEP program. This program implemented an industrial work group approach to graduate education, and won several educational grants including a NSF IGERT and a Department of Education FIPSE. The FIPSE grant in 2001 supported the modification of the industrial work group approach for implementation by the UA physics graduate program to address the gap between national need and current education. This talk will address the key goals of this implementation, the tactics that were put in place to address the goals, and the results of this educational approach since its implementation with the Fall 2001 entering class. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, April 23, 2006 9:06AM - 9:42AM |
H4.00002: New Models fro Graduate Education. Invited Speaker: Overall, graduate education in the United States is widely considered to be of the highest quality, and students from around the world flock to our programs. Nonetheless, there is always room for improvement. In particular, the National Science Foundation has encouraged the development of innovative efforts in graduate education, such as the GK-12 fellowship program and the requirement that large projects like Science and Technology Centers incorporate innovations into the education of graduate students. In this talk I will highlight some current innovations in graduate education, with special focus on programs conducted by the Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling, a Science and Technology Center funded by the NSF.. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, April 23, 2006 9:42AM - 10:18AM |
H4.00003: TBD Invited Speaker: |
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