Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Graduate Education in Physics: Which Way Forward?

A special meeting on the future of graduate education in physics was held at the American Center for Physics in Greenbelt, MD, from January 31 - Febraruy 2. I gave a poster session, Information Fluency and Physics Graduate Students.

http://www.aps.org/programs/education/upload/Vieleposter.ppt

There were panel sessions, plenary speakers and breakout sessions on a variety of interesting topics such as TA training, length of time to PhD, and the climate for women and minorities in physics. All of the materials from the conference are available on the APS site:

http://www.aps.org/programs/education/posters.cfm

There will be a follow-up report from this meeting and I will let you know as soon as it becomes available.

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AAPT winter meeting '08

I traveled to Baltimore to attend the winter meeting '08 of the American Association of Physics Teachers from January 19 - 23. I arranged a panel discussion:

Topic Information Fluency and Physics Curriculum

Dr. Jean-Francois Van Huele, Brigham Young University "Information Literacy and Information Literaure in Physics" Writing in Physics http://gardner.byu.edu/416w/

Adriana Popescu, Direct of the Engineering Library, Princeton " Seizing Opportunities for Library Instruction Beyond the Physics Classroom." In conjunction with the Center for Innovation in Engineering Education (CIEE), Adriana teaches several courses.

Dr. Bonnie Osif, Director of the Engineering Library at Penn State "Integrating Active Learning and Information Literacy in the College Classroom". This is one example of Bonnie's activities. http://www.libraries.psu.edu/eng/edg100spring02.htm

Pat Viele, Physics and Astronomy Librarian at Cornell University "Information Fluency for Graduate Students" my handout is available here http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/9442

As always, the meeting was both enjoyable and educational.

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