More than 250 physicists representing more than 100 colleges and universities from around the nation gathered in Arlington for a conference on “Building Undergraduate Physics Programs for the 21st Century.” The group included physicists with a wide variety of research and teaching interests at all stages of their careers united by a conviction that strong undergraduate programs in physics are essential to the health of the physics community and the nation in the next century. Building on the previous “Revitalizing Undergraduate Physics” conference held in September, 1996 and the May, 1997 Physics Department Chairs Conference, which concentrated on undergraduate physics, this conference focused on planning for, implementing, and assessing change in undergraduate physics.

Participating physics departments sent teams of two to four faculty members. Each team brought a poster describing activities in its home department. The poster session showed that there are many challenges facing physics departments at all levels of their programs. In their introductory courses, departments are teaching students with broader ranges of backgrounds and skills and with broader ranges of interest than the faculty experienced when they were undergraduate students. Many of the departments either had seen or were seeing a drop in the number of physics majors they graduate each year. This decline reflects national trends: the number of physics graduates at the bachelor’s level has dropped steadily for the last few years and is currently at a pre-Sputnik level. Departments have met these challenges in a wide variety of ways and are at various stages in crafting responses. The variety of activities and concerns showed that a "one-size-fits all" response is unlikely to work. Instead, the physics community needs to encourage a wide variety of efforts aimed at undergraduate physics revitalization.

The mood of the participants was generally upbeat. All participants recognized that a continued decline in the number of undergraduate majors might eventually produce significant changes in the role of physics departments. On the other hand, the conferees agreed that physics is too vital an ingredient in today's technological society to allow a decline such as that experienced by classics departments. Physics departments indeed face problems, but the tools to solve them through changes within the departments are available.

No summary can capture all the nuances of discussion at a meeting with 250 participants. What follows, however, presents the major ideas and issues raised during the conference.

Important Changes External to Physics

Today's college students differ from their predecessors in a number of important ways, many of which have a direct impact on the operation of a physics department:

• A majority of students are motivated to attend college because they see higher education as a requisite for a future career, hopefully one that is both financially lucrative and personally fulfilling. Fewer students are driven by the kind of intellectual curiosity that motivates most faculty.
• Our current students have been prepared differently from the high school graduates 20 years ago. While they have high levels of skill in some areas such as using computers and gathering information from the Web, they frequently have weaker math skills than their predecessors.
• The number of students who have taken physics in high school is increasing. College-level physics must build on these high school courses.
• Our students' backgrounds are more economically, culturally and ethnically diverse then they were before. This diversity of backgrounds is accompanied by a broader range of preparations in science and mathematics, leading to challenges for instructors in introductory physics courses.

Students graduating from physics programs will enter a job market different from the market most faculty members experienced when they graduated. Students today encounter a new set of expectations that require them to have the versatility to change from research to marketing to management, for example. Improved communications skills are necessary to work as part of interdisciplinary teams and to interact with customers. Students will need to learn constantly in order to maintain their productivity and marketability in a global marketplace driven by high tech competition. Bachelors degree physics graduates rarely hold jobs that have “physicist” in the job title; so, the opportunities for jobs in industry and business and the routes to those jobs are not always apparent to students or their professors.

On a global scale, the end of the Cold War and the increase in global economic competition has changed the nature of defense-related research that employed many physics graduates. At the same time, large industrial labs are focusing on research more directly related to product development. Federal funding for physics research has decreased while the number of working physicists has increased. In the world of academe, universities are experiencing increasingly tight budgets as they strive to hold down tuition increases while facing declines in state support for higher education. These budgetary challenges are reinforced by the widely held perception that the intellectual frontier of science has moved away from physics. Certainly physics has a lot more competition from other disciplines than it had in the 1950s. For example, computer science, molecular biology, and neuroscience did not then exist as separate academic disciplines.

Changes in information technology are affecting how we interact with colleagues for research and teaching and how we publish both research results and reports on pedagogical and curricular innovations. Those same changes offer the prospect of affecting the way we deliver information and education and how we interact with our students.

Responses by the Physics Community Locally

The challenges facing undergraduate physics offer opportunities, but they also pose threats to the vitality of our profession. We cannot afford to ignore them. Neither can we blame the changes themselves for the difficulties our departments face. We must seek solutions and focus on making changes that will enhance the physics profession and society at large in the next century. The responsibility lies with each of us to change what we do in our individual classrooms, to change the programs within our departments, to improve the climate in which our students learn physics, and to enhance public recognition of the value of physics. The necessary actions include not only changes in the way we teach in the classroom, but also changes in the infrastructure of our departments.

A key element of revitalizing undergraduate physics education is improving the way we teach, particularly in the introductory courses. Physics education research has shown that passive methods (such as straight lecturing) are less effective than teaching methods that actively involve students in learning. Active engagement techniques have been shown to improve students’ conceptual understanding, and physics education research has led to the development of instructional methods and materials that improve conceptual understanding and problem-solving skills. The physics community needs to make a greater effort to disseminate these materials and methods and to provide faculty development programs to help professors learn how to use them. Using such materials and methods in introductory courses will help retain students interested in becoming physics majors and improve service courses for general education students, other physical science students, engineers and life science students. These techniques can also improve pre-service teachers' understanding and appreciation of physics.

The participants discussed the following question: Given the significant number of pedagogical and curricular innovations, why haven’t changes in undergraduate physics programs become widespread? The participants suggested that there are two major barriers to adopting these changes. First, a significant number of faculty members see no need to change. They are teaching as they themselves were taught and believe that it is the students’ responsibility to adapt to the system. Some of these faculty members may be persuaded to make incremental changes in their teaching methods. Many active learning methods require little investment in equipment or extra personnel for small class instruction. For example, introducing tutorials or peer instruction in large lecture courses requires far less investment of time and money than moving to “workshop” or “studio” styles of teaching, which necessitate rescheduling of course time and require class space other than large lecture rooms. Most participants anticipated adopting a "go-slow" approach with their colleagues.

The second barrier is the reward system in many colleges and universities. The reward system rarely recognizes the value of spending a significant amount of time on developing and implementing educational innovations. Many institutions tend to recognize and reward research efforts while downplaying time spent improving pedagogy and curricula.

Faculty members at research-intensive institutions face a conflicting set of demands. Progress towards promotion and tenure often depends almost entirely upon research productivity. Faculty members face real time constraints in meeting their research obligations and their teaching commitments and still finding time for family or life outside physics. These time constraints are intensified for untenured faculty by the imperative of professional survival. The solution seems to be finding better ways to allow faculty members to become familiar with new educational materials and showing them how to use these materials effectively, without needing to reinvent these materials and methods from scratch. We need to persuade ourselves, our colleagues, and our administrations to change the faculty reward system. Faculty members should be encouraged and rewarded for adopting and adapting new teaching strategies in their courses, for working on improvements in other aspects of the department’s undergraduate program, and for integrating teaching and research. Although not every faculty member will be equally involved in teaching and research, it is crucial to note that for the profession as a whole, the vitality of teaching and the vitality of research are closely linked.

Revitalization of undergraduate physics extends beyond classroom reform. It requires attention to all facets of an undergraduate student’s interaction with a physics department. In the departmental plans developed by the teams at the conference, several common themes appeared:

• Improve mentoring and advising of undergraduate majors.
• Implement options and multiple tracks within the major (for example computational physics or applied physics curricula) that will provide their bachelors graduates with marketable skills. These tracks will also encourage students with broad scientific interests to major in physics.
• Add or improve career and professional development activities for the major to meet the needs of today's job market. These activities will provide students with an accurate and comprehensive view of their many career options.
• Improve recruitment efforts, including interactions with local high schools and open houses for first-year students who express an interest in physics.
• Increase cooperation with engineering schools, other science departments, and/or the school of education on their campuses.
• Enhance the role of the physics department in educating future K-12 teachers and working on in-service education for teachers in the field.
• Establish or increase interactions with industries in the area and aggressively market the department’s graduates.

The preparation of K-12 teachers was a recurring theme during the conference. We all recognize that there is an urgent need for well-prepared physics teachers, particularly as many secondary school teachers approach retirement age. Participants also agreed that the discipline-based departments need to do more in helping prepare all K-12 teachers. While there are frequently many problems in working with schools of education and with other science departments, there are usually many ways to make contact and open a dialog.

Response of the Physics Community Nationally

Many of the issues discussed at the conference had national as well as local implications. For nation-wide action, the main themes were the need for

1. dissemination of information about existing reform efforts involving pedagogy, curricula, and infrastructure.
2. improved “public relations” to communicate the importance and value of physics to students, employers, funding agencies and the public.
3. a discussion of accreditation for undergraduate physics programs.
4. increased involvement of physics departments in educating future K-12 teachers.

Nearly all the participants felt the need for better mechanisms for departments to share strategies, successes, and failures for revitalizing undergraduate programs. Most felt that the best way to spread ideas for revitalizing undergraduate physics would be through site visits by teams or further conferences at the national or regional level designed for departmental teams. All agreed that revitalization must be local--at the departmental level. All agreed that the department as a whole must plan for and implement change if there is to be a chance for the changes to be sustained. Real change must involve the department chairs; so they should be part of the departmental team. In addition, participants recognized that we need to involve university administrators in reform and revitalization efforts.

All participants agreed that we need to do a better job of explaining the value of physics effectively to undergraduate students, to prospective employers, to research funding agencies and to the public at large. While the participants agreed that the professional societies, particularly AIP, have done some excellent work in this arena, they also felt that there is an urgent need for a more focused effort at the national and regional level. Only a small percentage of those in attendance were aware of resources available from the professional societies such as AIP, APS and AAPT. Other public relations efforts might include publicizing site visits, improved outreach to the public and increasing interactions with employers of physicists.

The development of an accreditation program for undergraduate physics programs was a hot topic of discussion. While there are advantages to such a program in terms of arguing for resources and personnel, the participants were concerned about the dangers of forcing departments into a rigid mold and discouraging creativity. The strong differences of opinion among the participants about the desirability of instituting an undergraduate physics accreditation program indicate the need for continuing discussion of this issue.

Finally almost all participants agreed that we need to increase the involvement of physics departments in K-12 education and the preparation of K-12 teachers. A number of mechanisms were discussed, including summer programs for teachers, courses for pre-service teachers tied more directly to the methods and materials they will use with their students, in-service programs for practicing teachers, and summer or academic year activities targeted at high school students. The issue is complex and deserves more discussion in the physics community and with colleagues in departments and colleges of education.

Participants left the conference recognizing that undergraduate physics faces challenges from many quarters. More importantly, they recognized that we have available many responses to those challenges. We need to focus on implementing those solutions and working together as a community to revitalize undergraduate physics. In responding to changes in the external environment, undergraduate physics has an opportunity to grow in ways that increase its interest and utility for students and for society.

Outline of the Conference Program

The conference was designed to promote interaction among the participants. The program included plenary talks and breakout sessions in which small groups of participants discussed the issues raised by the speakers. Leonard Jossem, Professor of Physics emeritus at The Ohio State University, began the conference with an historical survey of the development of physics and physics education during the last 100 years. He pointed out that the basic educational questions raised 100 years ago remain the same today, but each generation needs to find new answers because of a constantly changing environment. The current generation of physicists faces new educational challenges resulting from the explosive growth in the subject matter of physics as well as the social, economic and cultural changes taking place in our society. Challenges also come from the rapid development of new communications technologies, and perhaps most importantly, from a new focus on students (rather than on the teacher) and on the processes of learning and teaching (rather than focusing solely on content).

During dinner on Friday, Bob Watson, Director of the Division of Undergraduate Education at NSF (on special assignment), challenged participants to find better ways of educating K-12 teachers and to work with colleges of education at their institutions to improve the quality of precollege science education.

After dinner, Howard Georgi, Professor of Physics and former chair, described reform efforts at Harvard. He pointed out that programmatic changes are relatively easy to make; so Harvard has instituted a flexible major and devised mechanisms for informal contact between faculty and students. At the same time, faculty pride themselves on developing their own approaches to teaching so that lasting pedagogical reform is very difficult. For example, his Harvard colleagues do not use peer instruction, popularized by Harvard’s Eric Mazur. Georgi noted that the current lecture-based system of physics education is probably a "local minimum" in education space and that changing it will require moving to a deeper minimum. He urged the community to seek “passes through the mountains” rather than “scaling peaks.” Small changes have a better chance of being institutionalized than major revolutions. We need to consider how to get to a better system as well as what that better system might be.

On Saturday morning, Jeanne Narum, Director of Project Kaleidoscope, outlined lessons learned from Project Kaleidoscope on how to effect lasting revitalization. She presented six lessons:

1. Identify the right questions.
2. Then bring the right people to the table.
3. Pay attention to all facets of the learning environment including facilities. For example, many pedagogical reforms using small group methods have benefited from the construction of new science buildings that provide more small classroom space.
4. Give proper attention to the changing context in which science and technology are being practiced and in which education takes place.
5. Have the courage to take risks.
6. Remember that “community” is both a driver and a goal of reform (i.e. don't forget to involve your students in planning reform).

Participants were asked to apply these lessons to their own situations.

Ten college and university departments presented “case studies” of their responses to the challenges faced by their physics departments. A departmental team, generously sharing the successful strategies and the pitfalls in planning and implementing change on its home campus, presented each case study. The departments had taken different paths, but many programs had overlapping themes. Some promoted mentoring and recruiting of undergraduates and involving undergraduates in research as soon as possible. Others had made major modifications in their curricula to promote double majors or to allow students to take courses in engineering specialties to make themselves more marketable. Still others had made major changes in the way they teach their introductory courses to make them more attractive and useful to students.

Bob Ehrlich, Professor of Physics and former chair at George Mason University, presented data collected from physics departments that had seen a significant change in the numbers of majors they graduate. He analyzed the situations for those who experienced an increase (7 “Big Gainers”) and those who had seen a significant decline (28 “Big Losers”) in the numbers of majors they graduate. He found it significant that the “Big Losers” blame their declines mainly on external factors such as increased competition from other departments, changes in student preparation or skewed statistics. Few of the department chairs see themselves or their fellow physics faculty members as the problem, although one chair mentioned aging faculty as a significant factor in the decline. In contrast, the seven "Big Gainers" had implemented reformed curricula, particularly in the introductory courses. They had focused on increased recruitment efforts and adopted mentoring programs to increase retention. These departments encouraged early involvement of undergraduates in research, provided lots of departmental advising, and community-building within the department. Some of them cited grants as being critical to their success. Nearly all of the Big Gainers had introduced flexible, multiple-track majors that allowed their students time to take courses outside the physics department--in engineering or computer science, for example.

After lunch, three panelists focused physics departments as viewed by those who employ physics graduates or those whose students take physics courses. Dan Hodge, Accreditation Director at ABET, pointed out that the new ABET guidelines (Engineering Criteria 2000) no longer specifically call for a two-semester calculus-based physics sequence. He also outlined ABET's new strategy for accrediting applied science programs. Joseph Jasinski, a senior manager in the Nanoelectronics and Optical Science Research Division at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, detailed four skills that industrial employers have always sought in new hires: technical depth, drive and intellectual curiosity, the ability to formulate and solve significant problems, and leadership. In today's highly competitive world, IBM is also looking for breadth as well as depth, good communication skills, flexibility, and the ability to work as part of a team. The message for physics departments is that their graduates need training in these "soft skills" as well as in traditional physics.

The third panel member, Ed LeMaster, chair of the Engineering Department at the University of Texas-Pan American, described activities that engineering departments routinely carry out but that physics departments rarely do. A former physics professor, LeMaster has built an engineering program whose enrollment grew from 35 to 600 students in about five years. He recommends establishing an industrial advisory council, promoting summer internships, using multidisciplinary capstone design projects, insisting on teamwork in labs with each team submitting a single report, changing the way we teach and what we teach in response to industry, and using accreditation as a tool to improve continually. He advocated vigorously marketing graduates by maintaining a file of student resumes and providing the industrial advisory committee and any other prospective employers with a file of these resumes. He suggested that the physics community should consider introducing professional specializations at the bachelor's level or perhaps changing professional standards so that the masters degree is the first “professional” degree in physics.

The next speaker, Ramon Lopez of the American Physical Society and the University of Maryland, discussed the research on how institutions change. Much is known about the process of change from research in business and K-12 education. There is a clear association between the level of use of an innovation and the “expressions of concern” that a user has about the innovation. For example, a teacher who is just starting to use an innovation typically focuses on the classroom mechanics of the innovation. Successful implementations need to pay attention to these concerns and how to shift attention to other issues as users become more comfortable with the innovation. Research also shows that identifying leaders and early users of an innovation can help frame the political approaches needed to build support for an innovation. The bottom line is that individuals change first and institutions follow. If you want individuals to change, you must provide proper support and understand the context in which people do change.

Finally Joe Redish, professor of physics at the University of Maryland, pointed out that Robert Millikan's work on the charge of the electron has become an almost unquestioned tenet of physics. On the other hand, Millikan’s efforts in physics education are essentially unknown even though they presage many of the results of contemporary physics education research. He then asked why work on physics education does not become more widely accepted and why we end up reinventing the educational wheel. His answer is that we do not support physics education research with the same sort of infrastructure we use in physics per se, where research results are critically reviewed by the community, published, criticized and discussed, and finally generally accepted if they stand up.

Redish then linked several results from cognitive research to physics education. First our success as teachers must be evaluated by what our students have learned, not by what we have taught. Second, what students actually do, not what teachers present, is the primary factor in determining what students learn, hence the emphasis on teaching strategies that involve “active learning.” By interviewing individual students, researchers have found that what students learn is only tenuously related to what we think we are teaching. We need to recognize that students are not blank slates, and that students often have strong reactions to the material we present because it conflicts with what they believe to be true. Students also react strongly to teaching methods that differ from what they expect for a science course. Both of those facts should inform how we choose methods of teaching and learning. We now have sufficient data to recognize that physics education research results, even those based on a few hundred students, are robust and that curricula based on physics education research are effective. The physics community needs to support physics education research as a subdiscipline of the profession because the results of physics education research are critical to the health of physics in general.

On Sunday morning, the departmental teams presented posters describing plans for revitalizing their own undergraduate physics programs. These plans varied widely but nearly all of them stressed involving the entire department in new efforts at recruiting and retaining students. Some planned significant revisions in the teaching of the introductory physics course, some with changes in content, some with changes in pedagogy or in both. Most hoped to create a more flexible, multiple-track physics major to allow their students the opportunity to develop breadth as well as depth or to explore other fields such as computer science or biology. Many planned to set up an industrial advisory council for the department. Nearly all took to heart the lessons on planning reform and implementing change. They recognized that change requires both departmental and institutional support. As Jim Stith pointed out, "The best way to spend $10 on revitalizing a physics department is to take your dean out to lunch!" Many of the teams planned more formal steps to contact and involve their administrations. Where Do

We Go From Here?

The conference Steering Committee is considering the recommendations for action put forward by the conference participants. From these considerations will come plans for concrete activities to further undergraduate physics revitalization across the country. As a first step, AAPT will provide a Web page with links to the case-study departments and other conference participants who are undertaking substantial changes in their undergraduate programs. The conference discussions suggest three major efforts:

1. Raise the awareness of physics faculty across the country about already existing undergraduate physics revitalization efforts with information about both the content and the processes of revitalization, including efforts to improve the infrastructure for undergraduate students. Site visits and regional conferences have been suggested.
2. Develop mechanisms for the dissemination of existing pedagogical and curricular innovations, along with assessments of their effectiveness in different kinds of institutions. One way to do this would make use of AAPT’s Physical Sciences Resource Center web site.
3. Discuss the development of a substantial funding program (perhaps involving NSF and private foundations) to catalyze widespread efforts in a variety of institutions across the country to revitalize undergraduate physics.

The document “Revitalizing Undergraduate Physics – Stage 2,” used for planning this conference, laid out a vision of what a revitalized undergraduate physics program would accomplish. The list of goals is worth repeating here:

• Physics departments offer flexible majors’ (and minors’) programs that prepare students for
• 1. a wide variety of entry-level positions in business, industry, and public service.
  2. further study in professional schools.
  3. graduate study in physics, other sciences, engineering and in cross-disciplinary fields such as materials physics, geophysics, and biophysics.
• Physics majors graduate with a solid preparation in solving experimental, computational and theoretical problems.
• Businesses, the public sector, industries, and professional schools actively recruit physics majors recognizing the flexible skills they possess.
• Physics curricula and courses are based solidly on the results of physics education research. Students completing those courses can demonstrate conceptual understanding, problem solving skills, and flexibility and experience in applying their knowledge and skills to new areas.
• Introductory physics courses are perceived by students from all majors as challenging, but exciting experiences with relevance to their lives and future careers.
• The courses for future K-12 teachers provide a solid core of physics content and the techniques and attitudes necessary to present physics comfortably and enthusiastically to their students.
• Faculty involved in research take an active interest in the undergraduate curriculum, helping to ensure that materials presented are current and that the program provides appropriate opportunities for student involvement in research. They take the lead in integrating research and teaching. Excellent departments have strong commitments to both activities and have a reward structure that recognizes both.
• Physics education researchers comprise an active and respected segment of the physics community.
• An easily accessible communications infrastructure keeps all faculty members informed of the latest results in curriculum development, physics education research and the latest examples of best practice in undergraduate physics teaching. The system provides multiple mechanisms for faculty members to share their experiences and curricular materials.
• Summaries of the results of physics education research are available in a form readily accessible and immediately useful to all those who teach physics.
• The physics community recognizes the value of contributions by physicists in a wide range of industrial, government, and academic positions. The curriculum provides the training needed for students to follow a wide range of career paths. All physicists applaud the interesting and diverse careers pursued by physics students and design programs to provide the breadth of training valued by their future employers.

Most of the participants left the conference committed to revitalizing undergraduate physics in their own departments in accord with the goals stated above. Working together within our own departments and nationally, we can soon begin to have a substantial impact on undergraduate physics. The road to a bright future for undergraduate physics education will undoubtedly be rocky and nonlinear, but we have begun to traverse it.

Conference Co-Chairs: Robert C. Hilborn, Ruth Howes, James H. Stith
The Case-Study Departments:
Angelo State University
Colgate University
Dutchess Community College
Illinois State University
Lawrence University
Miami University
North Carolina State University
Rutgers University
University of Illinois
University of Washington