Physics at WMU

A Message From The Chair

As I see it, the mission of this department is to support the goals and mission of the College of Arts and Sciences, and the university as a whole. Since our last newsletter, the university has revised its mission statement, so that we now formally define WMU as "a student-centered research university, nationally recognized and internationally engaged". It is not hard to see many ways that the physics department directly contributes to this mission and to the specific goals it contains (described here). Our faculty continue to be very active in research, enhancing Western's national recognition while providing excellent opportunities for our students to learn and experience what physics really is. Our doctoral program is in good health, producing a few quality Ph.D. graduates every year. It is not always easy, but maintaining a balance between forefront research and excellent teaching at all levels will always be my highest priority.

I hope that elsewhere on this website you will learn about some of the many projects, plans, and accomplishments of our faculty, staff, and students. By way of broad overview, the most significant change in our department recently is a major expansion of the faculty, mainly because we have added a new research area: physics education. The Science Education Department which was chaired by our own Larry Oppliger until his recent retirement, was formally dissolved, and its faculty dispersed among the science departments. As a result, and since the physics discipline has had a strong presence in science education both locally and nationally, our full-time faculty now number 18, the largest. This total is bolstered by newly hired faculty who specialize in physics education research. Add to this our participation in the federally-funded PhysTEC project, and you see that we plan to do significant work in this field well into the future.

Paul V. Pancella, Chair (paul.pancella@wmich.edu)

About the Physics Department

The department offers a range of lectures and lab courses, at undergraduate and graduate levels, and the faculty conduct research activities covering a wide array of fields. The research projects are conducted both at WMU and at facilities around the country. In a number of cases experiments are conducted in collaboration with other researchers from U.S. universities and from other countries.

Undergraduate programs

The department offers courses for physics majors, minors and general education levels. The majority of lab courses are taken separately from lectures they partner and are typically 1 credit hour. Ambitious physics majors have many opportunities to participate in research. Physics majors may choose to engage in a senior thesis project in collaboration with the honors college.

Graduate programs

The department offers graduate programs leading to the Master of Arts or Doctor of Philosophy in Physics. These programs prepare students for careers in physics, including research and teaching. Participation in research may occur in one of the following theoretical areas:

• astrophysics,
• atomic physics,
• nuclear structure,
• nuclear reactions,
• condensed matter,

or experimental areas:

• astronomy,
• atomic physics,
• nuclear physics;
• condensed matter physics,
• materials analysis with accelerated ions.

Research

The department's research interests cover an array of fields, with both theoretical and experimental emphasis. In most cases, these opportunities are open to undergraduates as well as graduate students, and often involve collaboration with physicists from other universities and laboratories. Physics Education is our newest area of research specialization. This group is applying the latest results of educational theory to the unique problems of learning physics.

Campus experimental research facilities include a Van de Graaff accelerator in the sub-basement of Rood Hall and a low-temperature physics laboratory. In addition, we have experimental programs which make use of large research facilities off campus :

• the Hubble Space Telescope,
• the Advanced Light Source (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, CA),
• the Advanced Photon Source (Argonne National Laboratory, IL),
• Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System facility at (Argonne National Laboratory IL),
• the Michigan State University National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory,
• the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (Brookhaven National Laboratory, NY).