The Physics department colloquia are usually on Friday afternoons at 3:30 pm in Lapham Hall Room 160. Coffee and cookies are served at 3:15 pm in the same room. Anyone is welcome.

SPIN-UP Findings Applied Revive Faltering Department
Dr. Eric Hagerdorn, Upper School Physical Science Teacher, University School of Milwaukee

In 2003, the AAPT published the Strategic Programs for Innovations in Undergraduate Physics: Project Report (SPIN-UP), the results of a two year study of successful undergraduate physics programs. The project was led by Robert Hilborn and Ruth Howes. In 2009, Vivian Incera, the new Chair of the department of Physics at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), began implementing many of the findings of that report to save an undergraduate program that had dwindled to 15 total majors. As Incera’s Assistant Chair, I participated in the efforts that ultimately led to the department having over 100 majors by the Fall of 2013.

In this seminar I will present an overview of the SPIN-UP findings and what we did at UTEP that led to such tremendous growth. I will also offer some of my own reflections on what worked, what did not, and how these principles might be applied at another urban institution of similar size, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.