Featured Awardees & Speakers

AWARD LECTURERS
Klopsteg Memorial Award, Neil deGrasse Tyson
Robert A. Millikan Award, David Sokoloff
Excellence in Pre-College Physics Teaching, Jan Mader
Excellence in Undergraduate Physics Teaching, Steven Manly

Monday, July 30

Plenary I: Max Dresden 2nd Memorial Lecture
Gerald F. Wheeler, Executive Director, National Science Teachers Association, Arlington, VA
"The Many Ways to Do Physics"
11 a.m.-Noon


As the Executive Director of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), Gerald Wheeler heads the world’s largest professional organization representing science educators of all grade levels. Prior to joining NSTA, Wheeler was Director of the Science/Math Resource Center and Professor of Physics at Montana State University. He also headed the Public Understanding of Science and Technology Division at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and has served as President of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT). Wheeler received an undergraduate degree in science education from Boston University and a Master’s degree in physics and a PhD in experimental nuclear physics, both from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Between undergraduate and graduate school, he taught high school physics, chemistry, and physical science.

For much of his career Wheeler has played a key role in the development of mass media projects that showcase science for students. He was involved in the creation of 3-2-1 Contact for the Children’s Television Workshop, served on advisory boards for the Voyage of the Mimi and the PBS children’s series CRO, and created and hosted Sidewalk Science. Wheeler is the recipient of numerous awards for his teaching and mass media work, including outstanding teaching awards from Temple University, the University of Hartford, and Montana State University, as well as the AAPT Millikan Award.
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Klopsteg Memorial Award Recipient
Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist and Director, Hayden Planetarium, American Museum of Natural History, New York
"Adventures in Science Illiteracy"
2 p.m.-3 p.m.


Neil deGrasse Tyson earned his BA in physics from Harvard and his PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia. Tyson’s professional research interests are broad, but include star formation, exploding stars, dwarf galaxies, and the structure of our Milky Way. Tyson obtains his data from the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as from telescopes in California, New Mexico, Arizona, and in the Andes Mountains of Chile. In addition to dozens of professional publications, Tyson has written, and continues to write for the public. He is a monthly essayist for Natural History magazine under the title “Universe.” And among Tyson’s seven books are his memoir The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist; and Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution, co-written with Donald Goldsmith. Origins is the companion book to the PBS-NOVA 4-part mini-series “Origins,” in which Tyson serves as on-camera host. Tyson is the recipient of seven honorary doctorates and the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal. His contributions to the public appreciation of the cosmos have been recognized by the International Astronomical Union in their official naming of asteroid “13123 Tyson.” Tyson is the first occupant of the Frederick P. Rose Directorship of the Hayden Planetarium, where he also teaches.

Read more about Neil deGrasse Tyson at Time.com

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Robert A. Millikan Award Recipient
David Sokoloff, Professor of Physics, University of Oregon, Eugene
"Building a New, More Exciting Mouse Trap Is Not Enough"
11 a.m.-Noon


David Sokoloff is Professor of Physics at the University of Oregon. He began his studies of physics at Queens College of the City University of New York, and went on to earn his PhD in AMO physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972 under Ali Javan. Prior to his current position, he was a faculty member at Western Illinois University and University of Michigan, Dearborn. He has held visiting positions at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and Tufts University, and spent a year as Science Director of WISTEC, the hands-on science center in Eugene, Oregon.

His physics curriculum development work and extensive dissemination efforts are nationally and internationally recognized. For over two decades, he has conducted research into students’ understandings of physics, and used the results of this research to develop active learning approaches to enhance student understanding in introductory physics courses. These new curricula—which were developed with longtime colleagues Ronald Thornton and Priscilla Laws—include the four modules of RealTime Physics: Active Learning Laboratories (RTP) and Interactive Lecture Demonstrations (ILDs), both of which are published by John Wiley and Sons. Since 1999, he has been part of a UNESCO team presenting active learning workshops in Australia, Vietnam, Korea, Sri Lanka, Ghana, Tunisia, Morocco, India, Tanzania, and Brazil. Sokoloff is the editor of Active Learning in Optics and Photonics, the training manual published by UNESCO for use in the most recent series of these workshops in developing countries. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Citation by the American Association of Physics Teachers in 1997.

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Plenary II: "Racing As Metaphor"
Janet Guthrie, President, Guthrie Racing LLC, Aspen, CO
2 p.m.-3 p.m.




Before becoming the first woman ever to compete in the Indianapolis 500 and the Daytona 500, Janet Guthrie had a diversified background. She was a pilot and flight instructor, an aerospace engineer, a technical editor, and a public representative for major U.S. corporations. She had 13 years of experience on sports car road-racing circuits, building and maintaining her own race cars, before being invited to test a car for Indianapolis. She graduated from the University of Michigan with a BSc in physics, then joined Republic Aviation in Farmingdale, NY, as a research and development engineer, working on aerospace programs. Meanwhile, she purchased a Jaguar XK 120 coupe and began competing in gymkhanas, field trials, and hill climbs. This led to the purchase of a Jaguar XK 140 for competition in Sports Car Club of America races.
In 1977 she became the first woman to qualify for and compete in the Indianapolis 500; she was also first woman and Top Rookie at the Daytona 500 in the same year. She finished ninth in the Indianapolis 500 in 1978, with a team she formed and managed herself. Her 2005 autobiography, Janet Guthrie: A Life at Full Throttle, was described by Sports Illustrated as “an uplifting work that is one of the best books ever written about racing.”

Drawing on her difficult and sometimes hilarious experiences as the first woman ever to compete in this country’s major oval-track auto races, Guthrie speaks of the qualities necessary for anyone to be successful on a fast track.

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Excellence in Pre-College Physics Teaching Award Recipient
Jan Mader, Great Falls High School, Great Falls, MT
"Those Who Can Teach"
11:05 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
   


When Jan Mader was in the second grade she came home to inform her mother that she was going to be a nuclear physicist. She attended Montana State University on a physics scholarship graduating with a BS in physics with an education endorsement. In 1988 as a National Diffusion Network Teacher Trainer in PRISMS and the Mechanical Universe, Mader began providing physics inservice to physics and physical science teachers throughout the United States. She was awarded a NASA Fellowship in 1990 and received an MS from the University of Northern Iowa with an emphasis in Physics Education. She was director of the Space Science Activities Workshop for the University of Northern Iowa—Summers 1991-1994, and director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower funded Mathematics and Science Team Spring Workshops and Summer Institute for 1998.

Mader’s affiliation with AAPT and the PTRA program began in 1987 when she attended the AAPT/PTRA program in Bozeman MT. She was the “dorm mom” for the meeting under the direction of Larry Kirkpatrick. From that summer forward she became an AAPT groupie attending both Winter and Summer meetings, serving on assorted committees, providing paper sessions and workshops and becoming an official PTRA in 1992. Mader has authored or coauthored curriculum for Waves, Optics, and Holography for MSU’s STIR Program, S.P.A.S.E: Space Science Projects and Activities for Secondary Education; for the Iowa Space Consortium, and more. Mader is a physics and holography instructor at Great Falls High School in Great Falls, MT. Her motto is: Those Who Can Teach and her students will tell you that a day without physics does not exist.

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Excellence in Undergraduate Physics Teaching Award Recipient
Steven Manly, University of Rochester, NY
"Experiences in Collaborative Learning at the University of Rochester—It's All in the Shoes,"
11:35 a.m.-11:55 a.m.


Born and bred in rural North Carolina, Steve Manly graduated from Pfeiffer College with a triple major (mathematics/physics/chemistry) in 1982. Looking for a change, he moved to New York City and earned a PhD in experimental high-energy physics from Columbia University in 1989. Manly joined the Yale faculty from 1990-1998 and then moved to the University of Rochester.

His research interests are primarily in the areas of high energy, nuclear, and gravitational physics, focusing on the nature of matter and the fundamental forces of nature and how they evolved in the early stages of the universe. Most of his work has been with large, international, scientific collaborations running experiments at accelerators sited at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and Brookhaven National Laboratory. Manly has published over 150 articles in scientific journals. His efforts in the classroom have focused on large introductory physics courses for both physics and non-physics majors and the conveyance of physics concepts to nonscientists. He was named NY State Professor of the Year in 2003 by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and was the Mercer Brugler Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Rochester from 2002 to 2005.

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Plenary III: "Dance of the Fertile Universe: Cosmic and Human Evolution"
George Coyne, Adjunct Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona, Tucson (Former Director of the Vatican Observatory, Rome)
2 p.m.-3 p.m.

George Coyne obtained his PhD in Astronomy from Georgetown University (Washington, DC) in 1962 and the Licentiate in Theology from Woodstock College (Maryland) in 1966. In addition he has received PhD degrees honoris causa from St. Peter’s University (New Jersey), Loyola University (Chicago), The University of Padua (Italy), the Jagellonian University (Krakow, Poland) and Marquette University (Milwaukee). Since 1966 he has been associated with astronomy programs at the University of Arizona (Tucson) and from 1976 to 1980 he served in various capacities in the administration of the astronomical observatories at that university.

From 1978 until 2006 he was Director of the Vatican Observatory (Specola Vaticana), which has its headquarters at Castel Gandolfo (Rome, Italy) and a research branch at the University of Arizona in Tucson. His research interests have ranged from the study of the lunar surface to the birth of stars; and he pioneered a special technique, polarimetry, as a powerful tool in astronomical research. Currently he is studying cataclysmic variable stars, the interstellar dust in the Magellanic Clouds, and the detection of protoplanetary disks. Parallel to his scientific research he has developed an interest in the history and philosophy of science and in the relationship between science and religion.

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