Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2018
Volume 63, Number 1
Monday–Friday, March 5–9, 2018; Los Angeles, California
Session R32: Effective Practices for Student Career Preparedness and Departmental Programmatic AssessmentCareers Invited
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Sponsoring Units: FED Chair: Crystal Bailey, American Physical Society APS Room: LACC 408A |
Thursday, March 8, 2018 8:00AM - 8:36AM |
R32.00001: Preparing Physics Students for 21st Century Careers: Recommendations from the PHYS21 Report Invited Speaker: Paula Heron
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Thursday, March 8, 2018 8:36AM - 9:12AM |
R32.00002: Creating a Cultural Shift in Undergraduate Physics Education for 21st Century Outcomes Invited Speaker: Douglas Arion A number of recent activities in the physics community are linked to the goals of better preparing undergraduate physics graduates for 21st century careers, increasing enrollments, and improving the diversity of the student body, including JTUPP, BPUPP, IPFs, and PIPELINE. These are worthy outcomes, and the panels which have researched approaches to accomplish them have comprised a range of physicists from research, industry, and academic communities, and engaged individuals and organizations ranging from education experts to economic development think tanks. It is not enough, of course, merely to research the problem and propose solutions – it is even more important to engage the physics academic community to actually make changes in the education process, and this demands a cultural shift. Other disciplines have succeeded in adjusting their curricular and pedagogical methods. How will physics respond? |
Thursday, March 8, 2018 9:12AM - 9:48AM |
R32.00003: Building an Integrative Undergraduate Education: from Exploration and Discovery to Innovation and Entrepreneurship Invited Speaker: Donald Birx The end of WWII brought incredible advances in technology and knowledge but it also sowed the seeds of a disconnected academic education in which fields became increasingly specialized (even at the undergraduate level) and a chasm developed between basic and applied research. For years as a research officer in industry and the academy and through developing research clusters, I have sought to reintegrate basic and applied research as well as create an interdisciplinary perspective, believing that necessity and hands-on experience does often drive invention and that the intersection of disciplines creates amazing opportunities for discovery while enhancing the leaps of insight that come from a broader a understanding of and an interaction with the world around us. This approach was so successful in research environments (and so inspiring to students) that I became increasingly interested in and motivated by its application to reinventing the way we teach. This presentation traces education from the first “academy” to the present day university and highlights where we may have gotten off track, what we can do about it, and the impact such a change could have on our future. At my university as a physicist and president, we are reintegrating the liberal arts around a model of project based learning and open laboratories so that students can thrive in an economy based on connectedness, multitasking, integrative discovery, and an understanding of complex systems. |
Thursday, March 8, 2018 9:48AM - 10:24AM |
R32.00004: APS Guide to Effective Practices in Undergraduate Physics Programs: What It Is and Why You Should Care Invited Speaker: David Craig Physics departments and programs in the United States face numerous challenges. Even as the number of students majoring in physics has stabilized nationwide, many individual programs struggle to recruit and retain sufficient numbers of students to keep their programs healthy. Few physics programs include significant career-skills development suitable for the wide variety of professions actually pursued by physics graduates. Verifiable assessment of student learning continues to grow in importance in the higher education landscape, particularly to regional institutional accreditation bodies, and yet there are few resources to assist departments in developing effective assessment programs. Research-based pedagogical methods that have demonstrated clear improvement in both learning gains and student retention — particularly of underrepresented groups — have not been widely adopted. And physics remains among the least diverse of all STEM disciplines, in spite of continuing efforts. In light of these challenges, the Council of the American Physical Society voted in 2015 to form a national blue-ribbon task force charged with creating a living guide to effective evidence-based practices for undergraduate physics programs. Working in partnership with AAPT, the guide will assist departments nationwide in all of these areas, and more. The work of the task force is underway. In this talk we review the vision of the task force for the guide and progress in its development so far. |
Thursday, March 8, 2018 10:24AM - 11:00AM |
R32.00005: APS Guide to Effective Practices in Undergraduate Physics Programs: How will this help my Department? Invited Speaker: Courtney Lannert
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