Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: Teaching Masters



How about some info on the NON-traditional programs?

NCSU must be one of them.
Bob Beichner, Ruth Chabay, Bruce Sherwood are the first faculty names
that come to mind.

There, it is the physics faculty who are involved with the graduate
program in physics teaching (NOT a dept. of education)

I suspect other schools that harbor PER folk offer similar programs.

At 3:46 PM -0400 10/13/04, John Denker wrote:
Jim Peters wrote:
Is there a place where a student with a BS in physics, top GRE
physics field test scores, and a talent for teaching can get an MS in
Physics, a teaching certificate, and also get support for his studies
through an assistantship or fellowship?

The student may need to ask some additional questions and make
some decisions.

Traditionally, there is a choice:
a) Primarily a masters in physics ... with a teaching certificate
on the side.
b) Primarily a masters in education ... with a little physics
on the side.

In one case the program is controlled by the physics department,
while in the other case the program is controlled by the
education department. Traditionally, you would expect a
radically different experience in the two cases.

Typically I would expect more assitantships to be available in
case (a), because the physics department may have research
assistantships paid for via research grants, and also teaching
assistantships to deal with "service" courses.

Being a bit of an eccentric myself, I would urge him to look
into case (a) with a _research_ assistantship, if that can be
arranged. That would put him in the all-too-unusual situation
of having a teaching certificate and real research experience.
That would prepare him to do things that most other people can't.
(This may be tricky to arrange, because many places that offer
assistantships like to give teaching assistantships to the
first-year grad students, and give research assistantships
to the more-experienced students. Also beware that some
hoity-toity physics departments would consider anyone avowedly
working toward a terminal masters to be a pariah.)

====

Notice that the previous remarks assume a "traditional" program.
The other possibility is a non-traditional interdisciplinary
program offered by the education department and the physics
department jointly. Such things must exist, although I don't
know of any specific examples.

=======================

Another line of attack is to find a fellowship before finding
a school. There exist portable fellowships. Once he's got
a fellowship, most schools will fall over themselves to get
him to enroll. There are some fellowship programs that
heavily weight GRE scores, so he has some definite potential
for success here. The best sources of info on this are
the financial aid offices at relevant grad schools. (In
apallingly many cases, the guidance offices at four-year
schools have no clue, but the grad schools know what works
and what doesn't.) Contact some schools that have roughly
the desired program and ask what relevant fellowships exist.