Physics and Astronomy
- Mission Statement
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 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. - Assessment Report Submissions
- Program Review
This information is part of the cyclical program review process. Details such as mission statements, learning outcomes, etc., are updated as part of the biennial assessment reporting process, an integral component of program review.