At this workshop 50 physics people from 23 leading research universities shared information and insights on how lasting systemic changes in physics teaching are or can be achieved in large universities.  

“Systemic”  distinguishes durable changes embedded in a physics department’s culture from “heroic” changes that fade when their originators go on to other undertakings.

Participants were asked to attend with one or two other people from their university, to think of themselves as an action team, and to prepare a plan for some sort of change in physics instruction at their home university.

TALKS ON
Systemic Change in Physics Teaching at Large Research Universities

Examples of Systemic Change
Gary Gladding, UIUC
Changes at UIUC and what had to be done to achieve them: Obstacles to change; strategies for overcoming them; how UIUC physics got faculty buy-in.

Ken Heller, U. Minnesota
Systemic changes in Minnesota’s physics teaching: How changes were achieved; what steps were needed to embed the changes durably in the department’s culture.

John Belcher, MIT
Systemic changes in teaching introductory physics at MIT – project TEAL; what facilitated those changes, what impeded them; the current prognosis for lasting change.

Carl Wieman, U. Colorado
Plenary discussion

Bob Beichner, NCSU
Poster on changes at NCSU

R. Shankar, Yale University
Getting mobilized; taking steps; prospects for lasting change

What other sciences want from physics teaching
Linda Katehi, Provost UIUC (formerly Dean of Engineering, Purdue University)
What engineers want and need from physics teaching

Charles F. Stevens, Salk Institute
What biologists want and need from physics teaching – BIO2010