A New Chapter Begins

At the end of June 2016, I retire after 15 years as the Head of Physics and Astronomy. I hand the reins of the physics department over to Chris Hughes and Ioana Niculescu, who have agreed to take them, at least for little while. I've had my turn and I have had lots of fun doing it.

Recruiting season begins

This week begins the annual freshman recruiting season for PandA. Those of you that have been through the process will remember it well: the phone calls from Dr. Staib (still doing our recruiting after all these years!), the visit, the scholarship exam, lunch with faculty and the department tour.

Between now and the first week of March we will host perhaps 40 prospective students and their parents. Not all will choose to attend JMU. Our job is try to convince that they should be here. The range of research options and opportunities for getting involved in the freshman year is central to our pitch. We are the place to be in Virginia.

The university is continuing the Madison Achievement Awards (MAS) and the Second Century Scholarships and the department continues the Presidential and Gordon Scholarships. Altogether we have about 14 scholarships total to award! Given the size of our typical freshman class, this means that nearly 1/2 of the freshman class will be on scholarship. This is an amazing ratio.

We're looking for the best and brightest for in-state and out-of-state (the MAS are targeted to out-of-state students). The number and quality of applicants in recent years have make a clear impact on our program. These scholarships are having a clear effect. This year we will continue on this path of growth and improvement.

In the histogram at the right is distribution of the number of graduates from undergraduate only physics departments in the US for the 2009-2009 school year. This data is the most recent was collected by the American Institute of Physics. The largest department graduated 30. In 2010, we graduated 21. This growth and the steady improvement in the quality of students (both due, in part, to the number and quality of scholarships we have to award) mean we are slowly but surely on track to be one of the very larges undergraduate physics departments in the country.

People are Beginning to Notice...

Every so often, PandA must go through an extensive self-study process and review by an external comittee. The external review happened in the spring of 2009. As a direct result, some good things are beginning to happen.

One of the external reviewers was Dr. Ruth Howes. She is one of the PI's on the SPIN-UP project. The Strategic Programs for Innovations in Undergraduate Physics (SPIN-UP) is organized by the National Task Force on Undergraduate Physics. The Task Force received support for SPIN-UP from the American Association of Physics Teachers, the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Physics, and a generous grant from the ExxonMobil Foundation. Between 2000 and 2002, visits were made to 20-odd physics departments that were deemed to be "thriving" to try to learn about what makes them so. Now the SPIN-UP folks are trying to use what they learned to help others departments also thrive.

One of the observations in the initial study was that the number of graduates (and total number of students) and their increase is a pretty good surrogate for other less easily measured characteristics of a thriving department. Given that our number of majors has grown from a bit over 60 in 2001 to about 110 now, we are identified as a thriving department.

As a result of Dr. Howes' visit to learn about our department, Dr. Whisnant was invited to discuss our program at a SPIN-UP workshop in Raleigh, NC, September 11-13, 2009. This went very well. This all leads to the current news...

On February 15th, Our department will once again be showcased as an example of a thriving department. This time it is at the joint meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers and the American Physical Society in Washington, DC. This gives us a national forum to tell everyone about the good things that are going on here.

So, we've arrived on a national stage as an example of what a vibrant undergraduate department can be. To give just a flavor of the progress we've made in the last decade:

• Since 2000, the number of majors has doubled.
  
• Since 2000, the number of graduates/year has tripled.
• Since 2000, the number of faculty has doubled.
  
• In 2008, our faculty brought in over $3.3M in external grants to support research with our undergraduates.
• We've added an astronomy park, the planetarium underwent a major upgrade, added astronomy to the department name, moved to a new building, and we're about to initiate a major new track in applied nuclear physics.
  
• According to the number of graduates, the 2008 AIP report places JMU ranked 9th (13 departments larger) among undergraduate only institutions and 30th (70 departments larger) among all physics departments in the US.

There's no telling what might happen as a result of this new opportunity to tell everyone about our department.