From the Chair

Laurie McNeil, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

As the 2019 Chair of the Forum on Education (FEd), I would like to bring you up to date on the current activities of the Forum. Our revised bylaws shifted the terms of office for Executive Committee members such that their terms now begin and end with the calendar year rather than with the annual meeting of the committee (which usually takes place in April). As noted in the Spring 2019 newsletter, on January 1, 2019 we welcomed three new members of the Executive Committee (including our first-ever graduate student member). These new members participated in the committee’s annual meeting on April 15. Also on January 1 the members of the Chair line shifted to their new positions and began their new tasks for the Forum.

As the new Vice-Chair, Catherine Crouch has formed the Nominating Committee to solicit nominations for new Executive Committee members who will take office next January; please see her call for nominations below. Jerry Feldman, the new Chair-Elect, is charged with serving as the Forum’s Program Chair for the 2020 March and April meetings as well as with organizing a plenary session the 2020 Summer Meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) and assisting with the planning of an education-related session at the 2020 meeting of the APS Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics (DAMOP). If you have ideas for invited session themes or speakers for any of those meetings, please get in touch with Jerry. His Program Committee is already at work on next year’s offerings. The sessions organized by the Forum reach the many APS members who attend the March and April meetings, but this is only a subset of the membership (albeit a large subset, over 20%, at the March meeting!). Many other members are more likely to attend meetings of an APS Division, Topical Group, or regional Section. If you are involved in the planning for any of these meetings, I urge you to consider organizing an education-related session. Education is a concern for APS members across all research fields and geographic areas, and it deserves representation in all our scientific meetings. If you want to consult with the leadership of the Forum for suggestions about organizing such a session, please feel free to contact us.

The March and April meetings this year were well attended and very successful. The Forum presented five invited sessions at the March meeting (some jointly sponsored by other units including the Forum on Industrial and Applied Physics, the Forum on Graduate Student Affairs, and the Division of Condensed Matter Physics). The invited speakers addressed a variety of topics including teacher education, teaching biology to physicists (and vice versa), advanced laboratory instruction, and careers in physics. There was also a contributed session with presentations on a range of physics education topics. At the April meeting the Forum organized five invited sessions and one contributed session. Two of the invited sessions were co-sponsored by the Topical Group on Physics Education Research (GPER) and one by the Division of Computational Physics (DCOMP). Topics addressed by the speakers included lab courses, quantitative methods in physics education research, teaching energy, introducing computation into physics courses, and stereotype threat. FEd Program Chair Jerry Feldman welcomes your suggestions for sessions for the 2020 March meeting in Denver and the 2020 April meeting in Washington DC. Please see his call for suggested sessions below.

At both the March and April meetings the Forum co-hosts the Education and Diversity Reception jointly with the APS Office of Education and Diversity, the Committee on Minorities (COM), and the Committee on the Status of Women in Physics (CSWP). As usual, attendance was excellent at both meetings as APS members interested in improvements in education and diversity gathered to celebrate the year’s successes.

Although it is now past the deadline for submitting nominations for APS Awards and Fellowships for the current year, I want to encourage you to think about nominating persons (or groups) for these honors for next year. Specifically, please consider the Excellence in Physics Education Award — to recognize and honor a team or group of individuals (such as a collaboration) or, exceptionally, a single individual, who have exhibited a sustained commitment to excellence in physics education; the Jonathan F. Reichert and Barbara Wolff-Reichert Award for Excellence in Advanced Laboratory Instruction — to recognize and honor outstanding achievement in teaching, sustaining (for at least four years), and enhancing an advanced undergraduate laboratory course or courses at US institutions; and the Award for Improving Undergraduate Physics Education — to recognize physics departments and/or undergraduate-serving programs in physics that support best practices in education at the undergraduate level. I also ask that you think about individuals who are deserving of an APS Forum on Education Fellowship — to recognize exceptional contributions to the physics enterprise; e.g., outstanding physics research, important applications of physics, leadership in or service to physics, or significant contributions to physics education. Fellowship is a distinct honor signifying recognition by one's professional peers. We all know of deserving colleagues for these awards and for fellowship, but we must nominate them for them to be considered. Please consider putting in the effort to do so.

FEd also works closely with the APS Committee on Education (COE). The past chair, chair and chair-elect of FEd are also members of the COE. In this way, the Forum maintains an active voice in physics education in the American Physical Society. Topics considered by COE this year include a proposed APS Statement on the role of the Physics Graduate Record Exam (PGRE) in admission to graduate programs in physics and the Effective Practices for Physics Programs (EP3) project.

We can be successful only by having an engaged membership in the Forum. Please contact me or any member of the Executive Committee with suggestions or contributions toward our educational mission. We look forward to hearing from you, and to seeing you at Forum events.

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.