Physics
- Mission Statment
The mission of the Physics Department at Weber State University is to provide high-quality instruction in physics at the undergraduate level. This includes providing courses in the general education area of physical science, pre-professional and pre-engineering courses in physics, and courses and programs for those desiring to major or minor in physics.
Further purposes of the Department include providing counseling for the students served by the Department, providing opportunities for research and other scholarly activities of both faculty and students, and serving as a resource for the campus and the state of Utah in the areas of physics and astronomy.
[As described on our web site http://physics.weber.edu and in our departmental booklet]
Statement of Purpose:
- To provide excellent instruction and counseling for all students whom we serve.
- To promote the professional growth of the faculty by pursuing opportunities for research and other scholarly activities.
- To increase global scientific knowledge through research and scholarship.
- To serve the campus, the greater Ogden community, and beyond as a resource and as a source of expertise in physics and astronomy.
General Objectives:
- To promote learning and enhance the learning environment.
- To optimize opportunities for the success of each student.
- To enhance the expertise of the faculty and staff.
- To efficiently capitalize on existing strengths and resources, and continue to build and develop our programs as future opportunities arise.
- To maintain a high level of morale among students, staff, and faculty.
- To promote good public relations with the schools and the community, and to seek public and private support for our programs.
- To monitor, evaluate, and recognize the progress and success of departmental programs and activities.
- To plan for future success by building a solid base of personnel, programs, and facilities to be ready to serve Weber State University and northern Utah.
- Student Learning Outcomes
- 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.
- Certificate (Not Applicable)
- Curriculum Grid
- Program and Contact Information
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.
Contact Information:
Dr. Colin Inglefield
1415 Edvalson St., Dept. 2508
Ogden, UT 84408
Tracy Hall
(801) 626-6127 - Assessment Plan
The Assessment Plan currently documented (re-pasted below) still reflects department policy and action. In addition, the department is discussion additions to our plan, including:
- Department discussion and possible plan for assessment of students in our “capstone” Seminar (PHYS 4990) course. All faculty are engaged in determining how we best serve all of our majors as we recruit more students, how we recruit and direct students into research projects, and how we assess the capstone project. As the course can represent a culmination of all work in a physics students’ program, it’s both an important part of our students’ learning and a critical touchpoint to see student outcomes.
- Signature Assignments and “Big Questions” in Physical Science general education coursework are being adopted by some faculty and shared with others. Of interest to us is how these can be used in place of or in addition to other assessments in general education (for GELOs as well as for “old” PS outcomes). This will be part of a department working group, and we will consider re-vamping our entire general education assessment plan at that point. (Although we successfully completed our general education assessment review last year, we feel that we could still make this process more useful for our courses and our students.)
The Department of Physics is devoted to providing an education for all students and towards scientific literacy that prepares individuals for both professional goals and the responsibilities of citizenry. Many of these goals are inherent in the General Education outcomes created by university faculty and approved by our faculty senate. However, we are taking on an experiment to try to develop more authentic and meaningful evaluations of these outcomes than we’ve seen modeled for us thus far. Our process will be as follows:- For a given academic year, individual instructors involved in General Education instruction (PHYS 1010, 1040, 1360, 2010, 2210; HNRS 1500; and other future courses as approved) will assemble and select two learning outcomes, one from the “Foundations of Natural Sciences” list and one from the “Physical Sciences” list (see below; or http://www.weber.edu/academicaffairs/natural_sciences.html).
- Collaborating instructors will first share what they already do to assess such outcomes, whether these be formalized on standard assignments or part of other formative assessments (course discussions, student interviews, etc.).
- Instructors will collaborate on how to further develop these strategies and/or brainstorm on other assessment strategies. These should be varied, as appropriate for a given learning outcome.
- Instructors will collaboratively plan how they can document the evaluation of these assessments, to be included in the Department’s annual report and other assessment documents.
An overarching objective is to create a strategy that gives instructors more useful information about their students’ learning than a percentage of correct answers on a test. For example, a one-paragraph essay at the end of a class session may tell us more about the nature of student learning and instructional needs than a quantitative answer to a problem. Or, instructors may find a way to diagnose student difficulties by documenting conversations with small samples of students in lab settings. Or, a class session may utilize an in-class survey that is designed to gauge understanding of how evidence refutes an explanation. Or, instructors could document the occurrences of specific categorical flaws in students’ analysis of forces on a test problem. There are limitless possibilities.
Our hope is that these efforts will become more than just a spreadsheet of percentages, but information that we can use in our courses. Additionally, this gives us the chance to collaborate (something we naturally do anyway) and focus on reasonable chunks that can generate helpful information for both ourselves and our students - Assessment Report Submissions
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- 2021-2022
- Program Review