Physics

• Certificate (Not Applicable)

   

• Associate Degree (Not Applicable)

   

• Bachelor Degree

  At graduation, students completing a Bachelor of Science in Physics, Applied Physics, or Physics Teaching should have a thorough knowledge and comprehension of the core concepts of classical and modern physics and have a set of fundamental skills that can be applied to a variety of situations. These skills should include the following:

  • Presentation skills. Physics majors should be able to express (orally and in writing) their understanding of core physical principles, the results of experiments, and their analysis of physical problems.
  • Laboratory skills. Physics majors should be competent experimentalists. They should be able to design and set up an experiment, collect and analyze data, identify sources of error, and interpret their result and connect it to related areas of physics.
  • Computer skills. Physics majors should be competent users of basic software, such as word processing, spreadsheet, and graphing programs. They should also have an understanding of the fundamental aspects of a programming and/or computer algebra language (Fortran, C++, Mathematica, etc.).
  • Problem-solving skills. Physics majors should be competent problem-solvers. They should be able to identify the essential aspects of a problem and formulate a strategy for solving the problem. They should be able to estimate the solution to a problem, apply appropriate techniques to arrive at a solution, test the correctness of their solution, interpret their result and connect it to related areas of physics.
  • Physics majors should be adequately trained to apply their physics experience and knowledge to analyze new situations.
  • All physics students (majors, minors, support, and Gen Ed students) should understand the nature of science, as assessed by questionnaires, interviews, and student focus groups.
  • General Education students should understand several core concepts of physics.
  • Physics Teaching majors and Elementary Teaching majors should have an appropriate knowledge of physics and a variety of teaching strategies to accommodate the multiple learning styles of their students.
     

Physics is the study and application of the fundamental laws of nature, including the laws of motion, gravity, electromagnetism, heat, and microscopic interactions. These laws govern the behavior of objects at all scales, from the smallest subatomic particles to the entire observable universe. In between, physicists study nuclear reactions, the interactions of atoms with light, properties of solids, the chaotic dynamics of fluids, and the evolution of stars and galaxies, among many other applications.

Our courses in physics introduce all of the most important fundamental laws and many of their applications. Equally valuable, however, are the skills that students develop in these courses, from analytical thinking and problem solving to experimental design and interpretation. Majoring in physics can thus prepare a student for a variety of careers in research, education, business, industry, and government.

Physics Department Website

The Department of Physics and Astronomy has initiated a project in which all curricula and assessment are evaluated via focus group each semester. This has two major goals: First, while the involvement of the entire department in assessment efforts has been consistent through the years, the dissemination of this work is largely segregated as we collect those reports for reports such as these. How we're conducting assessment, what our course designs might be, and even what the evolution of our learning objectives could be (more on this below) are conversations worth having in a collaborative setting. Second, this allows us to think of assessment and evaluation of our courses and programs as ongoing and natural, rather than an extra obligation that is added on to other tasks. We want to harvest what instructors are already doing in their natural settings, rather than add an unnatural reporting of something they're doing in other manners. We're grateful that we can use the narrative format to document these efforts.
Going foward, a departmental assessment and curriculum focus group will meet twice annually to discuss both general education and program specific coursework. Current instructors will document their current curricular and pedagogical innovations (and failures), and relay information about assessment efforts. In this way, there can be a department-wide discussion around how we're implementing and evaluating instruction. (The department has a long history of discussion of this nature in the hallway or at lunch, but this will allow us to actually harvest and document those discussions, as well as learn from one another on an ongoing basis.) These focus groups can instigate reevaluation of outcomes and curriculum for out major programs, as well as provide suggestions for the general community around general education outcomes and assessment.
Our most recent efforts have simply been to evaluate the nature of instruction as it has evolved during and after pandemic upheaval. Overall, there's a sense that the nature of our instruction has had to shift as student and societal needs have evolved. For example, students have been differently prepared in the past few years, but their collection of tools is wildly different - including better ways to connect with one another and with instructors, but also eaiser ways to pull answer from online repositories. At the same time, we want to better prepare students at all levels to understand not only the information of science but its basis - how do we know that the climate is changing, that energy is conserved, that light is quantized, etc. - and how that information gets used in today's world. As we grapple with this, we'll focus our efforts more strategically, beginning in the spring of 2022. This will likely begin with one general education outcome and the nature of our signature assignments for general education coursework, and the nature of scientific communication and investigation in our program level coursework.

• 2021-2022

  The full report is available for viewing.

• 2019-2020

  1)    First year student success is critical to WSU’s retention and graduation efforts. We are interested in finding out how departments support their first-year students. Do you have mechanisms and processes in place to identify, meet with, and support first-year students? Please provide a brief narrative focusing on your program’s support of new students:

  Given the upheaval of COVID to our usual course dynamics, our recruitment and retention committee emailed all introductory physics students midway through the semester in our PHYS 2210/2220 courses to check in with them.  Through this process, the committee was able to guide several students to Colin Inglefield for advising as well as understand avenues to help increase student success in our current online environment.  All students who responded were appreciative of our efforts to reach out to them.  We plan to continue this effort in the spring and may potentially expand it to the upper division majors courses.

  The recruitment and retention committee is also in the process of planning a virtual brown bag lunch series for introductory physics students in the spring.  This effort is designed to help integrate our first year majors into our department remotely.  The brown bag lunch series should help students learn about research, introduce faculty, and provide them the opportunity to be involved with other physics students further along in their education here at WSU. 

  To help recruit new students, the committee is also highlighting introductory level research projects that can be taken on early in one's education to help provide another avenue to engage with our department.

  2)    A key component of sound assessment practice is the process of ‘closing the loop’ – that is, following up on changes implemented as a response to your assessment findings, to determine the impact of those changes/innovations. It is also an aspect of assessment on which we need to improve, as suggested in our NWCCU mid-cycle report. Please describe the processes your program has in place to ‘close the loop’.

  We have a department committee structure where committees and charges are drafted by the chair and approved by the whole department. Assessment informs charges to several committees, including Curriculum, Advanced Lab, and Introductory Lab.

  The full report is available for viewing.
   

• 2017

  1) Based on your program’s assessment findings, what subsequent action will your program take?
  As documented above, the Department of Physics will be reconsidering assessments of the following:

  • General Education Learning Outcomes along with “Signature Assignments” in our coursework. We will investigate if these can replace or augment other assessment practices in physical science general education.
  • Capstone and High Impact research experiences for our majors.

   

  2) Please provide a short narrative …

  • We are grappling with how to incorporate our capstone experience more overtly into department assessments. As described above, the Advanced Physics Seminar represents a capstone to all of our coursework and gives students the opportunity to demonstrate their research skills, physics knowledge, and scientific communication practices. Students (in exit interviews) nominate their research and seminar as a critical experience in their education, but we need to document this more clearly. We are investigating how this can be done more effectively while still retaining the robustness of the experience.

   

  The full report is available for viewing.

• 2016

  1) Based on your program’s assessment findings, what subsequent action will your program take?

  • Our assessment focus will be shifting toward courses within our major after completion of the major effort on General Education (PS) course renewal.

   

  2) We are interested in better understanding how departments/programs assess their graduating seniors. Please provide a short narrative describing the practices/curriculum in place for your department/program. Please include both direct and indirect measures employed.

  • We are pleased with the strategy we have for general education assessment – emphasizing two outcomes at a time and working with one another to both reflect upon what these really mean as well as how we measure them. We also think that there’s a rich collection of information in our capstone project (PHYS 4990) and exit interviews and surveys that we have yet to fully document. We continue to work on ways of keeping in contact with graduates during their next steps following graduation and would be open to any advice on that.

   

  The full report is available for viewing. 

• 2015

  1) Based on your program’s assessment findings, what subsequent action will your program take?

  • As described above, we are working to revitalize and systematize our assessment efforts. In fairness, we know that we have assessment data within individual courses, but we need to find a way to document this to a broader audience.
     

  2) Are there assessment strategies within your department or program that you feel are particularly effective and/or innovative? If so, what are those strategies and what do you learn about your students by using them?

  • We are pleased with the strategy we have for general education assessment – emphasizing two outcomes at a time and working with one another to both reflect upon what these really mean as well as how we measure them. We also think that there’s a rich collection of information in our capstone project (PHYS 4990) and exit interviews that we have yet to fully document.

   

  The full report is available for viewing.

• 2014

  1) Reflecting on this year’s assessment(s), how does the evidence of student learning impact your faculty’s confidence in the program being reviewed; how does that analysis change when compared with previous assessment evidence? 

  • In the previous year, we reviewed several general education (PS) courses for the university general assessment plan. We determined that the material being taught and evaluated was matched to the PS learning outcomes. Not surprising, as our courses are somewhat traditional in this regard. Our hope is that the new general education plan we’ve adopted will result in a more significant assessment, in terms of our own internal discussions and sharing of results and ideas within the department. So far, we have had some success in this regard.

   

  2) With whom did you share the results of the year’s assessment efforts?

  • This report will be shared within the department and with the Dean. The department’s new general education assessment plan was shared with the university general education PS working group.

   

   3) Based on your program’s assessment findings, what subsequent action will your program take? 

  • We continue to try and develop an assessment plan that is substantive and efficient. Our new general education document is a step in this direction. We are working to modify plans for the other parts of our program as well. We will continue the strategic planning process started last year by request of the dean.

   

  The full report is available for viewing

• 2013

  1) Reflecting on this year’s assessment(s), how does the evidence of student learning impact your faculty’s confidence in the program being reviewed; how does that analysis change when compared with previous assessment evidence?

  • This year we reviewed the general education (PS) part of the program. The general conclusion is that the material being taught and evaluated is well-matched to the PS learning outcomes. This is not surprising as several in our department were instrumental in writing the PS learning outcomes.

   

  2) With whom did you share the results of the year’s assessment efforts?

  • This report will be shared within the department and with the Dean. Some of the data shown here (along with previous data) was shared with the (external) review team during last year’s program review process.

   

  3) Based on your program’s assessment findings, what subsequent action will your program take?

  • Our main goal at this point, partially in response to the review team report, is to develop a more organized, planned approach to assessment. See, for example, the newly developed schedule in section E. This planning is also part of the overall strategic planning process initiated within the department this year as requested by the Dean.

   

  To see the full report, select this link: Physics 2012/13 Annual Assessment Report

2018-19

2012-13