From the Chair

Gerald Feldman, George Washington University

Greetings from the Forum on Education (FEd) as we begin another year, and a new decade! First of all, let me thank the members of the Executive Committee who just finished their terms at the end of 2019. Larry Cain has completed his service as Past Chair of FEd, and with that, his 4-year tenure as an officer comes to an end. We will miss his wisdom and wit. Charles Henderson has been the Secretary/Treasurer for FEd over the past 6 years (yes, he served two consecutive terms!), and we are grateful for his dedicated work in keeping the finances of our unit in good order. Richard Steinberg has been our Newsletter Editor over the past 3 years, and we appreciate how well he has kept our community and the FEd membership informed. Other departing members of the Executive Committee include Chuhee Kwon and Beth Lindsey as Members-at-Large, and we offer our heartfelt thanks for their participation and their contributions.

In the chair line, I am happy to welcome Eric Brewe (Drexel University) as our new Vice Chair, and that means that all of us advance by one step. I have the privilege of succeeding Laurie McNeil (now Past Chair) as the Chair of FEd, and Catherine Crouch moves up to Chair-Elect. Eric will be leading our Nominating Committee for this year, and Catherine will be heading the Program Committee. We also welcome two new Members-at-Large to the Executive Committee – Brad Conrad (AIP) and Idaykis Rodriguez (Florida International University). In the important role of Secretary/Treasurer, we are glad to have Laura Rios (Cal Poly San Luis Obispo) to take over for Charles. And finally, we look forward to working with Jennifer Docktor (University of Wisconsin – La Crosse) who inherited the communication duties from Richard as our Newsletter Editor last summer.

At the upcoming March and April APS meetings, we will have the distinction of presenting our Forum on Education honors to this year’s award winners. In March (this year in Denver), we are pleased to recognize Enrique Galvez (Colgate University) for the 2020 Jonathan F. Reichert and Barbara Wolff-Reichert Award for Excellence in Advanced Laboratory Instruction. The award will be presented in a special invited session, and Enrique will be joined by four other invited speakers (Patricia Allen, Nathan Powers, Nicole Ackerman and Randall Tagg) in the session. In April (this year in DC), the 2020 Excellence in Physics Education Award will be presented to the Open Source Physics (OSP) Team, a well-known group that has made significant contributions to advancing computational physics in the curriculum. The 18-person team will be represented in a special invited session by Wolfgang Christian, Harvey Gould and Bruce Mason. In addition, we have organized a dedicated session of contributed talks to be given by other members of OSP on the day after the invited session. To view the citations for these two FEd awards, please take a look at the following links on the APS website:

Reichert Award – https://www.aps.org/programs/honors/prizes/lab.cfm

Excellence in Physics Education – https://www.aps.org/programs/honors/prizes/education.cfm

As is our tradition, FEd is also the co-sponsor (and co-host) of a special Education and Diversity Reception at both the March and April APS meetings. It is during this reception that we have the chance to honor the new APS Fellows who have been nominated by the Forum on Education. This year we are very happy to recognize Wendy Adams (Colorado School of Mines) and Idalia Ramos (University of Puerto Rico at Humacao). If you are at the APS meeting, please try to stop by at the reception – it is a very nice occasion to meet people, eat and drink, congratulate our awardees, and generally share our mutual interests.

For those of you considering attending the March or April meetings, as if the events outlined above were not enough, we have also arranged a broad array of invited talk sessions covering physics teacher preparation, biology and physics, data science, nuclear science education, computational physics, equity and inclusion, and physics education research. Overall, there will be 5 invited sessions (and one contributed session) at the March meeting in Denver, and there will be 7 invited sessions (and 4 contributed sessions) at the April meeting in DC. So we hope you can join us!

Since 2019, we have been redoubling our efforts to increase the membership of the Forum on Education. This past year, through the efforts of Laurie McNeil and members of the Executive Committee, we have designed a new recruiting flyer that will be widely distributed. We would remind all of you that membership in FEd is free (as it is for all APS forums), and we encourage you to mention this to your colleagues. The level of funding and the allocation of invited talk sessions at APS meetings is tied to the membership of APS units, and so FEd does actually benefit in several tangible ways by increasing our forum membership.

In closing, let me invite all of you to contact me, or any other members of the FEd Executive Committee, with your thoughts or ideas about how we are doing with regard to promoting physics education or suggestions/recommendations for other initiatives that you think we should be pursuing. Your input is valuable, and it can help guide our efforts in the coming year. We also welcome your nominations for the two FEd awards mentioned above, as well as names of folks who would be deserving of consideration for APS Fellowship. Our community has many amazing people, and if someone in particular stands out in your mind, please take the opportunity to support their candidacy as an award winner or as an APS Fellow. And of course, we also hope that you will be on the lookout for promising nominees for FEd Executive Committee positions – you can even think about nominating yourself!

For now, let’s get on with this year’s exciting activities – best of luck to us all!

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.