Teacher Preparation Section

John Stewart, University of Arkansas

This edition of the Teacher Preparation Section features articles from three PhysTEC sites. Cody Sandifer and Ronald Hermann will describe the PhysTEC program at Towson University. This is the second PhysTEC program at Towson; the first focused on elementary education while this project focuses on secondary education. The article describes some of the challenges encountered by the program. Towson is also an UTeach replication site and some of the issues of merging PhysTEC and UTeach are touched upon.

John Simonetti will describe the PhysTEC program at Virginia Tech. This program features a novel use of physics outreach formalized within the course sequence of the program and the extension of graduate teaching assistantships to PhysTEC graduates to allow the completion of a one-year post-baccalaureate licensure program.

Edward Price describes the PhysTEC program at California State University San Marcos and its role in supporting a recently instituted physics degree program. This article contains a detailed description of the implementation and modification of a Learning Assistant (LA) program and the positive impacts of the LA program both on the department and on the learning assistants.

PhysTEC will hold its yearly conference in Baltimore immediately preceding the March meeting. This conference gathers together individuals committed to improving the number of highly qualified physics teachers. This year’s meeting will be held in collaboration with the American Chemical Society and will also discuss ways to improve the number of highly qualified chemistry teachers. This is my favorite conference of the year.

This year’s conference theme is “Preparing the Next Generation of Physics Teachers”. Further information can be found on the conference page.

Disclaimer–The articles and opinion pieces found in this issue of the APS Forum on Education Newsletter are not peer refereed and represent solely the views of the authors and not necessarily the views of the APS.