The mission of the Department of Physics at Lawrence University encompasses three major areas: the engagement in and teaching of physics at several levels, the pursuit of faculty research and scholarship, and the discharging of various obligations to the university at large.

In our approach to teaching, the department embraces essentially the same objectives regardless of whether the audience consists of prospective scientists, physics majors, or non-scientists. We aim to acquaint students with the basic laws, the fundamental principles, the major accomplishments, the basic methodology, the special character, and some of the contemporary tools of both theoretical and experimental physics and to develop both confidence and facility in the use of these tools. Further, the department tries to imbue its students with the ethos that physicists are problem solvers and scientific generalists. Although we interact with students mainly through courses and structured laboratories, we seek particularly to encourage student projects, independent study, and undergraduate research. Finally, the department aims to be accessible to students and to create an environment that is friendly and supportive while intellectually challenging. We strive to produce a graduate who has developed considerable skill in working with the tools of physics through doing physics; who has come intellectually and professionally to appreciate physics as a whole, unfettered by the artificial division of the subject into courses; who is alert to developments in the field; who is articulate and forceful in the use of English; and who, most of all, has learned how to pursue the study of physics effectively, efficiently, independently, and aggressively.

Paralleling our objectives in the teaching arena (and supportive of our continued ability to meet those objectives), we expect, encourage, and support faculty involvement in such professional activities as scholarly research, attendance at meetings, participation in professional organizations, consulting, writing, refereeing papers and proposals, writing proposals, writing annual reports, reading papers at meetings, reading journals, perusing trade journals, and talking regularly with sales engineers. These activities are critical to the sustaining of a viable program in physics, and they keep faculty menbers interested and current in their disciplines. Through activities of this sort, the department strives to remain better informed and better poised to respond to new developments. We feel that students will find such a department more vibrant and exciting. Outside contacts open doors for students, advance the reputation of the department and the college, and facilitate other good things that hardly require mention. We lay considerable stress on a faculty member's attention to these responsibilities.

Finally, because we are after all a department within a liberal arts college, we are prepared to carry our share of university obligations, however they may from time to time be identified, defined, assigned, or delegated.

Allocation of faculty time among these three areas has frequently been a matter for discussion within the department. In principle, the department endorses the following rule of thumb: 75% of a faculty member's time should be devoted to teaching and institutional obligations, while 25% of one's time should be jealously guarded and used in the pursuit of scholarly interests connected with physics as a profession. In the area of teaching, it has long been departmental policy to allocate time and resources as follows: 1/3 to the intoductory physics courses which serve both prospective physics majors and other students; 1/3 to the intermediate level core of the curriculum for majors; 1/6 to advanced courses for majors; and 1/6 to service to the larger university (physics courses for the non-scientist such as Physics of Music, Light! More Light!, History of Planetary Astronomy, etc.; Freshman Studies; courses in computer science, etc.).