Bulletin of the American Physical Society
Joint Fall 2011 Meeting of the Texas Sections of the APS, AAPT, and Zone 13 of the SPS
Volume 56, Number 7
Thursday–Saturday, October 6–8, 2011; Commerce, Texas
Session N6: AAPT |
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Chair: Tom O'Kuma, Lee College Room: Science Building 122 |
Saturday, October 8, 2011 12:05PM - 12:17PM |
N6.00001: Making Laboratories Count -- Better Integration of Laboratories in Physics Courses Jim Sizemore The quality of K-12 education leaves something to be desired and presents higher education faculty with the challenge of instructing under-prepared students. However, by their own admission, students from many institutions inform us that laboratory sections in science classes, including physics, consist mostly of showing up, going through the motions, and getting grades that boost their overall grade. This work presents laboratories that challenge students to take their laboratory work more seriously including specific rubrics enforcing SOLVE and Bloom's Taxonomy, pre-lab preparation work, and quizzes on pre-lab preparation. Early results are encouraging revealing greater student progress with better integration of laboratory with the rest of a complete physics course. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 8, 2011 12:17PM - 12:29PM |
N6.00002: Innovative Noyce Program for Preparing High School Physics Teachers. Eric Hagedorn, Olga Kosheleva, Amy Wagler, Ron Wagler The ``Robert Noyce Scholarships for Teaching Miners'' program at the University of Texas at El Paso currently consists of 14 mathematics majors minoring in secondary education, most of whom are preparing for the Mathematics-Physics Certification. From the time of their selection (junior year), till after they begin teaching, participants in this program will have financial support consisting of a {\$}10,000 per year scholarship during the last two years in college. Programmatic support during these two years consists of four, half-day workshops emphasizing: 1) inquiry-based teaching, 2) mathematics {\&} science integration, and 3) actual inquiry in the form of a senior research project. The workshops are facilitated by a team of university faculty and school district partners (EPISD and YISD). These district partners help with the workshops, but also mentor the scholars when placed at their classroom observation and student teacher sites. Once the scholars graduate and receive certification, they will experience unique induction year support: being hired in pairs or small groups and placed together in the same school. This placement with classmates combined with the mentoring of the same district personnel with whom they are familiar is hypothesized to be uniquely effective. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 8, 2011 12:29PM - 12:41PM |
N6.00003: Does Teaching Experience Improve Student Grades? Lionel D. Hewett The author has been teaching physics for almost fifty years and has tried just about everything suggested to improve one's teaching ability and to increase student learning. Some of these teaching methods were clearly are more productive than others, but has the use of such methods significantly improved the grades of the students taking his classes during this extended period of time? This paper attempts to answer this question by providing data that illustrates how his calculus-based physics grades have changed over the years and discusses some possible reasons for such changes. In all probability, any conclusions derived from this calculus-based physics course would be applicable to most other physics courses taught by most other professors during their teaching careers. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 8, 2011 12:41PM - 12:53PM |
N6.00004: Report on the 4th International IUPAP Women in Physics Conference Cynthia Correa Stellenbosch, South Africa was the site of the 4$^{\rm th}$ International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) International Conference on Women in Physics, which took place on April 5$^{\rm th}$-8$^{\rm th}$. This conference brought together the diverse contributions of 250 female physicist attendees from nearly 60 countries worldwide to dissect the challenges faced by female physicists worldwide and to propose strategies to attract and retain more girls and women to the field. Having served as a member of the U.S. Delegation, I will discuss the resolutions reached and highlight the most important results of Global Survey of Physicists, where nearly 15,000 physicists shine light on how gender affects their lives and careers. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 8, 2011 12:53PM - 1:05PM |
N6.00005: Discovering the Barriers to Rural Women in STEM Jennifer Kreft Pearce, Sara McCaslin, Leann Morgan This study investigates the attitudes women and girls from the East Texas region have towards engineering and physics. We use an online survey and interviews to determine what influences women to choose their career paths. Surprisingly, we find that women have more positive attitudes about physics and engineering than their male counterparts. For the group of students interviewed, self assessment of ability, lack of role models, and confusion about work/life balance issues were some of the determining factors in their choice not to pursue a career in a STEM field. [Preview Abstract] |
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