From the Chair

Gerald Feldman, George Washington University

Well…unless you have been on a very long space voyage and been out of communication with Earth, or else if you have been living deep underground in a cave with no internet access, most of you reading this update will be aware that we have been in the midst of a major upheaval of our normal behavior patterns since mid-March of this year. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all of our personal lives, and it extends profoundly into our professional activities as well. Of course, the Forum on Education (FEd) has also felt the repercussions of the recent health crisis.

For me, the first realization that something was amiss occurred while I was in Denver awaiting the start of the March APS meeting, at which FEd was sponsoring or co-sponsoring five invited sessions, including the prize session for the Reichert Award for Excellence in Advanced Laboratory Instruction. The award winner this year was Enrique Galvez, from Colgate University. The sudden announcement on Saturday February 29 that the March meeting was being cancelled came as a shock to many people, and it was a very bold move by APS – but in retrospect and in light of what has happened since then, it was very clearly the right move to make. Many meeting attendees (including myself) had to scramble to make new plans and figure out exit strategies, but everyone eventually got home, and for the most part, we have all been remaining at home ever since.

Following the cancellation of the March meeting, APS worked furiously on organizing a virtual platform for the April APS meeting, and the good news is that this meeting did take place as planned towards the end of April. At this meeting, FEd sponsored or co-sponsored seven invited sessions, and happily we were able to celebrate (albeit virtually) the winner of the Excellence in Physics Education Award, which was the Open Source Physics team. All of our scheduled invited sessions went off without a hitch, and the online attendance at these sessions was truly impressive. In the end, of course, we must gratefully acknowledge the heroic efforts of the APS staff for pulling the virtual April meeting together. Having served on the Program Committee for the March and April meetings this past year, I can say from direct experience that the tireless work of the APS staff made all the difference.

Other sessions planned by FEd have also been impacted, but have carried on (or will carry on) virtually. It has been our tradition to organize a special Physics Education session at the annual DAMOP meeting in June. In fact, this meeting did take place as an online event in early June, with a session entitled Quantum Quandries: How Can We Teach Quantum Mechanics Better, featuring invited speakers Carl Wieman, Chandralekha Singh, Enrique Galvez and Murray Holland. And finally, at the upcoming virtual AAPT Summer Meeting in July, we are sponsoring a special plenary session with Wolfgang Bauer speaking about green energy and Artemis Spyrou talking about nuclear physics and outreach at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) located at Michigan State University.

During the APS April meeting, the FEd Executive Committee got together (online) for its annual business meeting and discussed various budgetary issues, in light of the fact that the bulk of our travel budget would remain unused this year due to major restrictions. We discussed several ways of putting our funds to good use during this particularly difficult period, and we came up with the idea of FEd Minigrants, which would be limited fund allocations to individuals or small groups who wanted to pursue a short-term project. The details of this solicitation were sent out to the entire FEd membership on June 9, so please check your e-mail inbox to find the details contained therein. If you have any questions, the person to contact is Laura Rios (lrios02@calpoly.edu), who is our FEd Secretary/Treasurer. We have set three interim deadlines (June 22, July 20 and August 24), and so even if the first one has passed by the time you read this Newsletter, the other deadlines will still be open.

As always, we want to remind all of you that the Forum on Education sponsors two major APS awards, and we encourage members to consider nominating your worthy colleagues for such honors in the coming year. The two FEd awards have already been mentioned above, but just to list them explicitly, here they are:

• Reichert Award for 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 U.S. institutions.
• 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.

In addition, FEd works closely with the APS Committee on Education (COE), and there are two other related awards/prizes that are under the purview of COE:

• 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.
• Prize for a Faculty Member for Research in an Undergraduate Institution
  To honor a physicist whose research in an undergraduate setting has achieved wide recognition and contributed significantly to physics and who has contributed substantially to the professional development of undergraduate physics students.

In addition, we hope that all of you will recognize and honor our most accomplished FEd members by nominating our worthy colleagues for APS Fellowship. We have a long line of distinguished FEd APS Fellows spanning the history of the Forum on Education, dating back to 1993. Please consider the efforts of your colleagues and the people that they have worked with to see if you know someone who is deserving of this recognition – and if so, please take a few minutes to begin the nomination process. You can find more information at the following website:

https://www.aps.org/programs/honors/fellowships/

In the ongoing work of the FEd Executive Committee, I would like to mention that Catherine Crouch is leading the Program Committee for the March 2021 and April 2021 APS meetings, so if any of you have ideas or suggestions for education-related sessions at those meetings, please be sure to get in touch with Catherine. Also, Eric Brewe is heading the Nominations Committee this year, and he welcomes your recommendations for potential candidates for the leaders of the Forum on Education. This includes a new incoming Vice Chair, new Executive Committee members, and (for this coming year) a new Graduate Student representative. So please keep Eric in mind if you have any promising candidates to suggest to him.

Members of the FEd Executive Committee recently participated in a “brainstorming” session with the APS Committee on Education (COE) to explore issues pertaining to the recent push for online classes due to the global health situation and the possible inequities that can arise due to the pandemic. The discussion focused on how students have been impacted and the corresponding ramifications for student learning due to various demographic factors. This is an ongoing concern among educators across the country, and this is only the start of a much longer investigation. We welcome your input on this important subject, and on any other issues that are relevant to the imposed modifications in our educational pursuits.

In the ongoing cooperation between FEd and COE, one of the recent topics for discussion was put forward by Amy Flatten (APS Director of International Affairs). In November 2018, APS published a report from the Task Force on Expanding International Engagement (see link below).

https://www.aps.org/programs/international/upload/APS_TaskForceReport_AC.pdf

Through this study, APS is hoping to find ways to enhance its international profile and strengthen international partnerships. Through the COE, we focused our conversation on how to increase educational connections extending outside the domestic domain. This could pertain to attracting new international members to APS, or solidifying pedagogical collaborations through Physics Education Research, or increasing educational connections around the world through attendance at education-related conferences or teacher exchanges in the U.S. or abroad. If any of you have had enlightening or transformative educational experiences with international institutions or collaborators, either here in the U.S. or abroad, please let us know!

Finally, on a lighter note, for those of you who read the monthly APS News thoroughly, the Forum on Education has been featured in the recent June issue. Each month, an APS unit is highlighted, and this month it was our turn to be in the spotlight. So check out the article in the June 2020 issue of APS News that just recently appeared. In case you have not been checking your office mailbox very often these days, here is a link to the article:

https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/202006/fed-unit.cfm

In the end, while we still endure the trials of this very unusual period and we learn to adapt our daily lives to what has been termed the “new normal,” we hope that you are all able to carry on and continue your professional activities related to research and teaching. As always, we welcome your input and your ideas to help further the mission of the Forum on Education. Here’s hoping that we will be able to meet again in person very soon and get back to business.

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.