Building Undergraduate Physics Programs for the 21st Century: SPIN-UP Regional Workshops

American Association Of Physics Teachers, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

The American Association of Physics Teachers, in cooperation with the American Physical Society and the American Institute of Physics, is organizing a series of regional workshops for teams of faculty members from physics departments that wish to reinvigorate their undergraduate programs. The workshops build on the analysis of thriving undergraduate physics programs developed in the project Strategic Programs for Innovations in Undergraduate Physics (SPIN-UP) [Robert C. Hilborn, Ruth H. Howes and Kenneth S. Krane, (2003)]. The ultimate goal of the project is to have at least 50% of the physics departments in the U.S. working on revitalizing their undergraduate programs within three years. The current project is for four initial workshops involving about 80 physics departments. The project is producing a written report analyzing the effectiveness of the workshop program and, in particular, its impact on the activities of the participating departments. The Intellectual Merit lies in the use of the analysis developed in the SPIN-UP report that identifies the important characteristics of thriving undergraduate physics programs. In addition, the workshop model is one that has proved successful in a trial version given under the auspices of Project Kaleidoscope. This project extends that model and includes a detailed evaluation of the effectiveness of such a model in promoting educational change. The Broader Impacts include providing guidance to a large number of physics departments (approximately 80 for the initial series of workshops) in a wide variety of institutions to enhance the teaching and learning of physics for thousands of students every year. The underlying objective is to build the departmental infrastructure that will produce long-term improvements in undergraduate physics programs across the country and to enhance both the number of students studying physics and the quality of student learning.