Get Involved!
TYC21 -- Breaking Down Barriers
Mary Beth Monroe
In March 1995, the National Science Foundation announced funding
support for an American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) project
entitled "The Two-Year College in the Twenty- First Century: Breaking
Down Barriers" (TYC21). During the next four years, TYC21 will develop
and foster a national network of two-year college (TYC) physics faculty.
The goal is to enhance learning opportunities for students in physics
and technical science courses and to empower TYC faculty as a newly
recognized, but experienced, voice within the science-mathematics-engineering-
technology community.
Two-year colleges are an important part of physics and technical
education in the United States. TYCs currently enroll 43% of the students
in introductory physics and approximately 50% of the women and minorities
in undergraduate courses. Physics departments at TYCs are very small
(often a single physicist) and focus on education instead of active
technical research efforts. In addition to offering technical programs
on TYC campuses, some TYCs provide on-site instructional training for
industrial employees.
During the 1989 topical conference (supported by AAPT and NSF) entitled "Critical
Issues in Two-Year College Physics and Astronomy - 1990 and Beyond",
the participants realized that TYC programs are often invisible to
the science community, to the general education community and to the
industrial and business communities. Motivated by the issue of professional
isolation, TYC21 will establish a personal network of TYC physics faculty
by creating opportunities to share ideas on a professional and personal
basis throughout the physics community. Members of organizations like
the American Physical Society (and the Forum on Education) represent
the target audience of the larger physics community in which TYC21
wishes to increase the recognition of the roles that TYCs play in preparing
students of all ages as future scientists or citizens who are scientifically
literate. APS members will be actively sought out by TYC21 and encouraged
to examine and discuss the physics taking place in TYCs and to help
TYC faculty members make productive contributions to the larger physics
enterprise.
The TYC21 network will develop through a series of local and national
meetings. At the local level, TYC21 will foster professional involvement
through a series of fifteen regional meetings led by regional coordinators.
The coordinators and regional leadership teams will organize local
meetings and involve participants as they develop regional activities
related to critical issues identified from the proceedings of the 1989
conference and the 1992 NSF Workshop on the Role of Professional Societies
in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education in Two-Year
Colleges. To engage the local networks and provide a national forum,
the regional coordinators and three elected delegates from each region
will attend an annual national meeting, convened as an AAPT Topical
Conference, where resource speakers and consultants will involve participants
in a more global discussion of the critical issues and timely pedagogical
issues. The activities of TYC21 will provide opportunities for the
community to foster leadership, communication and scholarship and,
thereby under the auspices of AAPT, the network will be self- sustaining
past the funded term of the project. In addition, the activities of
TYC21 will promote outreach and partnerships with members and professional
societies of higher education, precollege education, industry and business.
See the sidebar discussion on how you can help.
Mary Beth Monroe is Professor of Physics at Southwest Texas Junior
College in Uvalde Texas, and is a PI for TYC21 with Carol A. Lucey,
(Vice-President for Academic Affairs, Alfred State College of Technology
in Alfred, New York.)
|