Sessions

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Sessions, Panels, Posters, Plenaries, Committee Meetings, and Special Events

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Plenaries

  • 2013 Homer L. Dodge Citation for Distinguished Service Awards

      • 2013 Distinguished Service Awards (A. James Mallmann, Stan Micklavzina, and Sarah "Sam" McKagan)

      • Mon 01/07, 10:30AM - 12:30PM
      • by
      • Type: Plenary
      • A. James Mallmann, Stan Micklavzina, and Sarah "Sam" McKagan to receive 2013 Homer L. Dodge Citation for Distinguished Service to AAPT.
  • AAPT Symposium on Physics Education and Public Policy

      • AAPT Symposium on Physics Education and Public Policy - S. James Gates, University of Maryland; Ramon E. Lopez, University of Texas, Arlington; Richard Steinberg, City College of New York

      • SPEC13
      • Tue 01/08, 3:30PM - 5:00PM
      • by Noah Finkelstein
      • Type: Plenary
      • Policymakers formulate decisions everyday that impact curriculum, standards, funding, and many other aspects of physics education at all levels. AAPT works with a number of partners to keep policymakers informed on the views of physics educators and to suggest appropriate policy options within the Association’s sphere of influence. This session brings together individuals who play pivotal roles in helping to shape policies and who provide information to policymakers. We hope to provide a look at the process of policy making as well as actions you might make to contribute to decisions about policies affecting physics and STEM education. Speakers: S. James Gates, University of Maryland; Ramon E. Lopez, University of Texas, Arlington; Richard Steinberg, City College of New York
  • Ceremonial Session I: Welcome to New Orleans; DSC Awards, SPS Awards, Oersted Award and Presentation

      • Oersted Medal: The Implications of a Theoretical Framework

      • PL01
      • Mon 01/07, 10:30AM - 12:30PM
      • by Edward F. Redish
      • Type: Plenary
      • Much of PER focuses on how to teach physics more successfully. But for many of us, our interest in PER is "curiosity driven." PER lets us apply our scientific skills to a new field, one that plays a pivotal role in the construction and evolution of our profession. It permits us to study such intellectually engaging questions as, "What does it mean to understand something in physics?" and, "What skills and competencies do we want our students to learn from our physics classes?" To address questions like these we need to do more than observe student difficulties and build curriculum. We need a theoretical framework - a structure for talking about, making sense of, and modeling how one thinks about, learns, and understands physics. This necessarily involves us in the complex and subtle issues of mind and society. In this talk I will outline the Resources Framework, a way of creating a phenomenology of physics learning that ties closely to modern developments about how people think and learn from research in neuroscience, psychology, and linguistics.
  • Ceremonial Session II: Passing of the Gavel; Retiring President's Address; Jackson Award and Presentation

      • John David Jackson Excellence in Graduate Physics Education : What We Don't Know, We Teach One Another

      • PL03
      • Tue 01/08, 10:30AM - 12:15PM
      • by David Pines
      • Type: Plenary
      • This was Robert Oppenheimer's 1946 description of theoretical physics as aprofession, but because his evocative phrase is equally applicable to teaching and learning about physics, and indeed all of science, and because he was my first mentor, it seemed the right title for this talk. I first describe how my early experiences as a student, teacher, and researcher led to my inventing and editing
  • Plenary I: Dr. Mark Whittle, Univeristy of Virgina

      • The Universe's First Million Years: Primordial Light and Sound

      • PL02
      • Mon 01/07, 4:00PM - 5:00PM
      • by Mark Whittle
      • Type: Plenary
      • The Universe's first million years, compared to the Universe's current age, is equivalent to the first day in the life of a human. As you might expect, conditions in the embryonic Universe were radically different from those we find around us today. The matter was spread about almost uniformly; there was a brilliant omnidirectional glow of light; and vast sound waves surged through the foggy gas. Perhaps surprisingly, we know about these conditions in great detail thanks to the famous cosmic microwave background whose feeble radiation comes to us directly from that time. My lecture aims to take us back to the Universe's first million years so that we can
  • The Mississippi River Delta Restoration as Science and Policy Issues of Public Concern: Opportunities in Science Education

      • Plenary II: Dr. Robert Twilley, Lousiana State University

      • PL04
      • Wed 01/09, 9:00AM - 10:00AM
      • by
      • Type: Plenary
      • Catchment environments share a level of complexity in that they are linkedover large scales by a river network, so that problems in downstream locations may be the result of decisions made thousands of kilometers upstream. Coastal landscapes represent some of the most altered ecosystems worldwide and often integrate the effects of processes over their entire catchment, requiring systemic solutions to achieve restoration goals. One example of such large-scale watershed and coastal restoration efforts is the Mississippi River catchment and its deltaic coasts. Extensive flooding including a major event in 1927 resulted in major public work projects that drastically altered regional hydrology. In addition, major agricultural development in the floodplains of the Mississippi River basin over the last four decades has increased levels of inorganic nutrients, leading to problems with eutrophication. The urgent need for wetland rehabilitation at landscape scales has been initiated through major hydrologic diversions to reconnect the catchment with coastal processes. But the constraints of sediment delivery and nutrient enrichment represent some critical conflicts in earth surface processes that limit the ability to design ‘self sustaining’ public work projects; particularly with the challenges of accelerated sea level rise. The science and engineering challenges to ‘restore’ some of the self-sustaining processes represent the type of challenges to teach ‘systems level’ approaches to present environmental problems. The integration of physical, biological and social sciences to reshape deltaic coasts will require interdisciplinary teaching frameworks in education. The Mississippi River Delta will be used as example of approaches that are necessary to respond to such challenges to the physical sciences.