Lawrence Today magazine, Summer 2002
Against a backdrop of national enrollment declines in physics majors and the elimination of physics departments at some institutions, Lawrence University's physics program is thriving -- and its success in bucking that national trend continues to draw recognition.
Physics at Lawrence was recently hailed by Physics Today magazine as "an undergraduate physics success story." More than half of Lawrence physics majors go on to graduate programs in physics and related fields, a figure that places the college in the upper tier among other undergraduate institutions.
Lawrence has been awarded a $400,000 grant from the Los Angeles-based W. M. Keck Foundation to expand its physics program and assist in the revitalization of undergraduate physics education nationally. This is the third grant the physics department has received from the foundation since 1988, totaling $850,000.
In the mid-1980s, Lawrence launched an innovative physics initiative designed around two "signature programs." Under the direction of Professors John Brandenberger and David Cook, Lawrence constructed two high-tech laboratory facilities -- a laser laboratory and a computational physics laboratory -- and equipped them with more than $500,000 worth of research-grade hardware. The two programs focus on contemporary topics while generating specialty courses that emphasize student-faculty interaction and student learning.
The latest Keck grant will support the addition of a third signature program under the direction of Associate Professor Jeffrey Collett. A specialist in condensed-matter physics, Collett will develop a program that focuses on the effects of surfaces or "boundaries" on the properties of various materials, including semiconductor interfaces, thin magnetic films, and liquid crystals, among others.
"Our new surface-physics program represents a major attempt to bring condensed-matter physics into the mainstream of undergraduate physics," says Collett, who joined the Lawrence faculty in 1995. "Exposure to advanced techniques in this area will enrich the education of our physics majors while also helping train the next generation of condensed-matter physicists.
"Our goal is to develop a model program many small physics departments can emulate," he adds.
In addition to establishing a third innovative program, the Keck grant also will support an expansion of Lawrence's existing programs in laser and computational physics.
"These programs are showcase teaching endeavors that lend distinctiveness to a department and serve as powerful catalysts for change," says Brandenberger, a laser physicist and former head of the physics branch of the Council on Undergraduate Research, as well as a fellow of the American Physical Society. "This grant will allow us to promote signature programs as generators of departmental vitality and improvement, not only at Lawrence, but at institutions around the country. We want to export, as it were, the concept of signature programs, emphasizing their importance in the teaching and learning of science."
Cook, the recipient of a $175,000 grant from the National Science Foundation in 2000 to compile Lawrence's extensive instructional and reference materials in computational physics into a textbook for use at other institutions, says the Lawrence physics department has yet to tap its full potential.
"The addition of a third signature program will raise physics at Lawrence to a new level," he says. "We're poised to become one of the country's premier small physics departments."