Saturday, August 23, 2014

The academic year begins


On Friday last, the department gathered to once again sit for our group portrait.

In the photo from left to right:

Front row: Steve Whisnant, Anca Constantin, Art Fovargue, Klebert Feitosa, Brian Utter, Geary Albright

Middle row: Harry Hu, Jason Haraldsen, Shanil Virani, Kim Emerson, Kevin Giovanetti, Sean Scully,  Milka Nikolic, Adriana Banu

Back row: Mark Mattson, Gabriel Niculescu, Herb Slade, Costel Constantin, Ioana Niculescu, Scott Paulson, Giovanna Scarel, Keigo Fukumura, Chris Hughes

Absent: Harold Butner


To start the year, we have 31 enrolled in Phys 105. Of these, four are upperclassmen transfers from other majors, so we have 27 freshmen starting out.  This is a bit smaller than last year, but still larger than our record graduating class of 25 back in May, thus we continue to maintain our size.

This year we put the finishing touches on the design of the Madison Radiation Laboratory. this should be done by early spring semester and then the work begins in remodeling the space. We expect to move in the summer of 2016.

The number of visitors to the John C. Wells Planetarium continue to grow by leaps and bounds with just shy of 25,000 visitors last year, we are already on track for yet another record year.