Departmental Aspirations

In the mid 1980s, the Department of Physics at Lawrence University adopted the goal of becoming one of the premier small undergraduate physics departments in the country. To be sure, if a department is to be included in that elite group, the departmental course offerings---its curriculum---must be first rate. We are convinced, however, that a departmental program must be much more than its curriculum. In particular, we strive each year to

foster out-of-class interactions among students and between students and faculty (teas, department-wide weekend retreat, fall picnic),
involve students in hosting visitors and candidates for positions,
discuss matters of departmental concern with students,
actively recruit prospective students and involve current students in those efforts,
encourage students to work together,
provide spaces that students can call their own,
maintain a departmental colloquium series,
engage aggressively in faculty and student/faculty research in order to extend faculty productivity and longevity so that attempts at innovation and searches for funding are based upon a continuous record of professional involvement and achievement,
pursue outside support to keep facilities and equipment up to date, and
provide 24/7 access to student spaces, the computational laboratory, and departmental library holdings.

Our faculty offices lie side by side along a single hallway and student study spaces are near to those offices. We try to build a community in which we work together to help students grapple successfully with course material and to continue the forward-looking development of our Department.

That we have had some success in achieving our goal is suggested by the following items:

Since 1987, the Department has attracted more than $2.5M of outside support for faculty research, curricular development, summer stipends for student researchers, travel to meetings, and dissemination of developments at Lawrence.
The Department was invited to participate as a case-study department in the October, 1998, AIP/APS/AAPT Physics Revitalization Conference.
Professor Cook delivered an invited talk on developing undergraduate physics programs at the April, 2001, meeting of American Physical Society.
In April, 2002, the Department hosted a visit by a team from the National Task Force on Undergraduate Physics, a group that was seeking insight into how we have strengthened our program so as to pass that information on to departments which seek to do likewise.
Professor Brandenberger gave an invited talk on developing signature programs in physics at the May, 2002, meeting of the Canadian Association of Physicists.
Professors Cook and Brandenberger delivered invited presentations on aspects of the Lawrence physics program at the March, 2004, meeting of the American Physical Society in Montreal.
Professors Brandenberger and Collett conducted an invited workshop on signature programs at the Tenth National Conference of the Council on Undergraduate Research, held at LaCrosse, WI, in June, 2004.
In 2005--06, Professor Cook was invited to serve as a member of an external review team for another college, and Professor Brandenberger was a member of two such teams.

During the past decade and a half, the Lawrence program in physics has attracted national attention as an ambitious, forward-looking department whose approach to departmental growth and physics education may be worthy of emulation.

Departmental Profile

The following items provide short answers to various questions regarding the program in the Lawrence Department of Physics:

The Lawrence Department of Physics has five full-time faculty members and, in 2005--07, has a Lawrence Fellow. This faculty is supported by an electronics technician (who does much more than electronics) and a part-time machinist. Information about these individuals can be found at this link.
The Department's 40,000 sq ft in the recently (2001) renovated Youngchild Hall of Science includes six offices, generous teaching and research laboratories, signature laboratories in laser physics and spectroscopy, computational physics, and surface physics, student study spaces, and student project spaces.
Majors have 24/7 access to student spaces in the Department and, when appropriate, have similar access to the advanced laboratory and research spaces.
Typical class sizes depend on the level of the course. In
- Introductory courses, enrollment is typically 30--45, with weekly laboratory sections of 16
- Intermediate courses, enrollment is typically 10--18
- Advanced courses, many of which are offered only in alternate years and draw enrollment from both juniors and seniors, enrollment is typically 6--18
Each year, 15--18 Lawrence sophomores declare themselves to be prospective physics majors, i.e., they are taking the sophomore courses that are required of physics majors, while 10--12 juniors and 10--12 seniors are declared physics majors. We award 10--12 B.A. degrees in physics each year.
Each year, 50% our graduates pursue advanced studies in physics or related fields. In recent years, graduates have received offers of admission from Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, CalTech, MIT, SUNY-Stony Brook, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Oxford, University of Colorado, University of Oregon, University of Minnesota, University of Virginia, University of Michigan, University of Arizona, University of Kentucky, Princeton University, Cornell University, Washington University, UCal-Berkeley, UTexas--Austin, UCal--San Diego, UCal-Davis, UCal-Los Angeles, University of Illinois, Duke, Northwestern, Colorado State, Montana State, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Rochester, Kansas State University, University of Iowa, Vanderbilt University, University of Washington, University of Chicago, UCal-Santa Cruz, UCal-Irvine.
One or two Lawrence graduates each year complete an engineering degree by participating in the Lawrence 3-2 engineering program. We have formal affiliations with Washington University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Columbia University, but we can also arrange informal programs with any accredited engineering school in the country. Students have also pursued engineering at Dartmouth, University of Wisconsin (Madison), University of Minnesota (Minneapolis-St. Paul), Iowa State, Northwestern, University of Illinois (Urbana), Lehigh, Berkeley, Penn State, and Purdue.
In a typical year, we can number 7--10 women among our sophomore, junior, and senior physics majors.
While credit in physics is awarded for strong scores on the AP exam, advanced placement beyond the introductory calculus-based course is rare, mostly because physics at Lawrence starts in the winter and has calculus as a prerequisite, not---as is more common---a corequisite. Further, because of our calendar, our curriculum is a three-level curriculum (not the more common two) and our introductory sequence occupies only two terms rather than the more common three terms or---equivalently---three semesters. In the first term, we make a sophisticated though admittedly quick pass through both mechanics and electromagnetic theory, which are commonly treated in two separate courses. Finally, our introductory sequence has a critical laboratory component, an experience often lacking in even the best AP courses. The few students we have allowed to bypass the introductory course---or at least its first term---sometimes later express regret that we had allowed them to do so.
Typically, 4--6 physics majors are offered full-time appointments as summer research assistants in the Department. Beyond Lawrence, physics majors have been successful in finding scientifically significant summer employment at such places as Northwestern, Virginia, Notre Dame, Indiana Cyclotron, Argonne, CERN, IBM-Almaden, IBM-Yorktown Heights, Michigan State, Battelle (Richland, WA), NASA-Langley (Newport News, VA), MIT, University of Michigan, University of Colorado, University of Washington, University of Washington, ...
One-quarter of our graduates in the past two decades have completed Ph.D. degrees in physics or closely allied fields.

Institutional Profile

The following items relate to questions often asked about Lawrence University as a whole:

Lawrence University consists of the undergraduate College of Arts and Sciences and the Conservatory of Music.
Lawrence has been coeducational since its founding in 1847.
Lawrence is home for 1400 undergraduates, 1100 of whom are pursuing the (four-year) B.A. degree in the College, 165 of whom are pursuing the (four-year) B.Mus. degree in the Conservatory, and 135 of whom are pursuing the (five-year) B.A./B.Mus. double degree program that involves both the College and the Conservatory.
About 10% of Lawrence students come from countries other than the United States.
About 35% of the faculty members at Lawrence are women.
Information about the class that entered in the fall of 2005 is tabulated in this 2005 new student profile.
Lawrence is located in Appleton, WI, a town of 72,000 situated in northeast Wisconsin on the Fox River and at the northern end of Lake Winnebago. Appleton is surrounded by several smaller communities (Menasha, Little Chute, Kimberly, Grand Chute, Combined Locks, Neenah, Kaukauna) which raise the population of the Fox Cities area to about 125,000. The city of Oshkosh (63,000) is 25 miles to the south on the western shore of Lake Winnebago, and the city of Green Bay (100,000) is 30 miles to the north where the Fox River empties into Green Bay of Lake Michigan.