Request for help from Brazillian colleague

["Dewey Dykstra, Jr." <dykstrad@EMAIL.BOISESTATE.EDU>]

The following note is a request for help.  I know that departments in the
US have been doing some reorganizing.  If anyone from some of those
departments can correspond directly with Jose, it would be of great help to
him and his department.  (My apologies for cross listing.) Dewey

> I am a Physics Professor at the Physics Department of the Federal
> University at
> Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Brazil. Up to now, the physics curriculum at UFJF, as
> well
> as the syllabus of all our courses, were determined by the Federal Government,
> through the Ministry of Education. With the passing of a new law
> regulating the
> universities in Brazil, we now have complete freedom to decide our curriculum
> and requirements for a physics program (with the exception of minimum
> number of
> total classroom hours). This is pretty exciting to us, as our curriculum is
> considered pretty bad by all (students and professors), and, as a consequence,
> we are starting a discussion about our curriculum. However, as you might
> imagine, none of our Professors at the Physics Department are experts in
> Physics Education, much less in physics curriculum. For this reason, I'm
> writing with the hopes that someone can give us some pointers on
> this subject, in particular helping us to find literature and proposals for
> curriculums, research done on this subject, stories of well implemented new
> curriculums, etc. Any help will be appreciated, and will help us shape
> what we >hope will be  a new and modern curriculum in our university.
>
> Thanks,
Jose Acacio de Barros <acacio@fisica.ufjf.br>


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Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr.                 Phone: (208)426-3105
Professor of Physics                  Dept:  (208)426-3775
Department of Physics/MCF421/418      Fax: (208)426-4330
Boise State University            dykstrad@email.boisestate.edu
1910 University Drive                 Boise Highlanders
Boise, ID 83725-1570                  novice piper: GHB, Uilleann

"As a result of modern research in physics, the ambition and hope,
still cherished by most authorities of the last century, that physical
science could offer a photographic picture and true image of reality
had to be abandoned."  --M. Jammer in Concepts of Force, 1957.

"If what we regard as real depends on our theory, how can we make
reality the basis of our philosophy? ...But we cannot distinguish
what is real about the universe without a theory...it makes no sense
to ask if it corresponds to reality, because we do not know what
reality is independent of a theory."--S. Hawking in Black Holes
and Baby Universes, 1993.
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