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Re: [Phys-l] Physics Program Reviews




We have done such a review five years ago and are in the process again this year (small department with 3 full timers). We send questionnaires to former students, questionnaires to coordinators in other disciplines that we service (chemistry, math, biology, etc.) add assessment data that we take annually and write an internal report. We then find someone to come in from outside and interview deans, vice chancellors, us, students, and write a report (the administration funds this). An external person, even if they only come for a brief period, can sometimes spot obvious things that need to be looked at. And generally our administration has paid more attention to comments from external reviewers than our comments. We were able to leverage comments from the last review (plus some additional data we collected) into an additional faculty position.

The ideas already posted sound good. Thanks, particularly to George for the tip about finding reviewers through AAPT. I would be grateful for any other ideas.

kyle

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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 14:20:45 +0000
From: "LaMontagne, Bob" <RLAMONT@providence.edu<mailto:RLAMONT@providence.edu>>
Subject: [Phys-l] Physics Program Reviews
To: Forum for Physics Educators <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu<mailto:phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>>
Message-ID:
<9DD8E6B7DA56BD4CA13E0C068DA57218432BC471@DAG01.providence.col<9DD8E6B7DA56BD4CA13E0C068DA57218432BC471@DAG01.providence.col">mailto:9DD8E6B7DA56BD4CA13E0C068DA57218432BC471@DAG01.providence.col>>
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This is basically addressed to those of you teaching in a college level physics program.

Have any of you had an outside agency or group of individuals come in and review your physics degree program. Did you use a group or agency that specialized in this service or did you just invite coleagues from another college or university?

We are being asked by our administration to review our program. We have been supplied very little in terms of guidance - the model the administration is using appears to be targeted at administrative departments instead of academic ones.

Since we have to do this, we would like to get the most value possible from the process. I would appreciate any recounting of experiences people have had with such reviews.

Bob at PC



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Message: 3
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 10:28:18 -0400
From: "Spagna Jr., George" <gspagna@rmc.edu<mailto:gspagna@rmc.edu>>
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Physics Program Reviews
To: Forum for Physics Educators <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu<mailto:phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>>
Message-ID:
<38D7A06836357C41B5E308E5AF3F7AAA206164DFAC@RMCEmail.rmc.edu<38D7A06836357C41B5E308E5AF3F7AAA206164DFAC@RMCEmail.rmc.edu">mailto:38D7A06836357C41B5E308E5AF3F7AAA206164DFAC@RMCEmail.rmc.edu>>
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AAPT maintains a list of individuals qualified and available to visit and evaluate departments.

********************************************************
"The road to Hell is unfortunately paved with adverbs. "
- Stephen King
********************************************************

Dr. George Spagna
Physics Department
Randolph-Macon College
P.O. Box 5005
Ashland, VA 23005-5505

phone: (804) 752-7344
fax: (804) 752-4724
e-mail: gspagna@rmc.edu<mailto:gspagna@rmc.edu>
http://faculty.rmc.edu/gspagna/public_html/index.html


-----Original Message-----
From: phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu [mailto:phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu] On Behalf Of LaMontagne, Bob
Sent: Thursday, October 06, 2011 10:21 AM
To: Forum for Physics Educators
Subject: [Phys-l] Physics Program Reviews

This is basically addressed to those of you teaching in a college level physics program.

Have any of you had an outside agency or group of individuals come in and review your physics degree program. Did you use a group or agency that specialized in this service or did you just invite coleagues from another college or university?

We are being asked by our administration to review our program. We have been supplied very little in terms of guidance - the model the administration is using appears to be targeted at administrative departments instead of academic ones.

Since we have to do this, we would like to get the most value possible from the process. I would appreciate any recounting of experiences people have had with such reviews.

Bob at PC

_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l


------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 14:32:13 +0000
From: "Rauber, Joel" <Joel.Rauber@SDSTATE.EDU>
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Physics Program Reviews
To: Forum for Physics Educators <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>
Message-ID:
<D9FFB2A414E03D40873588FFDDFA5A1F030B6D@SDSU-EX04.jacks.local>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

We have had a review program like this in the SDBOR system (South Dakota Board of Regents) for over 15 years or more in our Regental system. We are on a seven year review cycles and last year was the third one our department has gone through.

The requirements are to bring in one outside person for a site visit who writes a report. They are provided with an extensive self-study document prior to their visit. If you have the money and if your administration allows I recommend bringing in a panel of reviewers, three is not a bad number. The recommendations of a panel will be harder for your administration to ignore than the recommendations of single professor from Lower Nowhere University.

Our Chemistry Department actually contracted with AAAS consultant group to do the job. Their advice will be even harder to ignore, but they are more expensive.

This is becoming an issue in Physics in my opinion as administrations tend to not listen to anything other than what accrediting bodies say and physics has no disciplinary accreditation the equivalent of the ACS certification for chemistry programs.

Those that can manage it can create "Engineering Physics" programs and have that accredited by ABET; but I'd like it if APS would do something the equivalent to what ACS does. It would make some bureaucratic battles easier to fight.

Joel

_________________________

Joel Rauber, Ph.D?
Professor and Head of Physics
Department of Physics
South Dakota State University
Brookings, SD 57007
Joel.Rauber@sdstate.edu
605.688.5428 (w)
605.688.5878 (fax)

-----Original Message-----
From: phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu [mailto:phys-l-
bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu] On Behalf Of LaMontagne, Bob
Sent: Thursday, October 06, 2011 9:21 AM
To: Forum for Physics Educators
Subject: [Phys-l] Physics Program Reviews

This is basically addressed to those of you teaching in a college level
physics program.

Have any of you had an outside agency or group of individuals come in
and review your physics degree program. Did you use a group or agency
that specialized in this service or did you just invite coleagues from
another college or university?

We are being asked by our administration to review our program. We have
been supplied very little in terms of guidance - the model the
administration is using appears to be targeted at administrative
departments instead of academic ones.

Since we have to do this, we would like to get the most value possible
from the process. I would appreciate any recounting of experiences
people have had with such reviews.

Bob at PC

_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l


------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2011 10:58:10 -0400
From: Vern Lindberg <vwlsps@rit.edu>
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Physics Program Reviews
To: Forum for Physics Educators <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>
Message-ID: <B3C04674-2760-4010-83CC-2537DC515939@rit.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Not quite the same thing, but we used to have an advisory board consisting of people form high school, industry, and universities with graduate programs. Met every 2-4 years for a while, and gave good guidance.
We will be reinstituting this.

Vern

On Oct 6, 2011, at 10:20 AM, LaMontagne, Bob wrote:

This is basically addressed to those of you teaching in a college level physics program.

Have any of you had an outside agency or group of individuals come in and review your physics degree program. Did you use a group or agency that specialized in this service or did you just invite coleagues from another college or university?

We are being asked by our administration to review our program. We have been supplied very little in terms of guidance - the model the administration is using appears to be targeted at administrative departments instead of academic ones.

Since we have to do this, we would like to get the most value possible from the process. I would appreciate any recounting of experiences people have had with such reviews.

Bob at PC

_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l

Vern Lindberg
585-475-2546
people.rit.edu/vwlsps





------------------------------

Message: 6
Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2011 11:18:51 -0700
From: John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Physics Program Reviews
To: Forum for Physics Educators <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>
Message-ID: <4E8DF10B.8000401@av8n.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On 10/06/2011 07:20 AM, LaMontagne, Bob wrote:
I would appreciate any recounting of experiences people have had with such reviews.

1) As Vern Lindberg pointed out, you want to get people from industry
involved ... in particular, the industries that hire your graduates.
These are the people who know about and care about the quality of
your "product".

=======

NOTE: The next few remarks should be understood in the following
way: As always, it helps to think about the goal, and then think
about the best mechanisms for reaching that goal. This is better
than focusing too early on a specific mechanism.

2) You can gain a lot from a robust /visiting faculty/ program.
Somebody who is on-site for one or two semesters can judge your
program better than somebody who has only been on-site for one
or two days.

This is a slightly different mechanism, but serves many of the
same purposes as the "Review Program" that was asked about. See
the NOTE above.

3) Continuing down that road: You can gain a lot from having a
_Professor at Large_ program. No matter how prestigious your
institution, there will always be some guy you would like to hire
but can't, but maybe you can entice him to accept an appointment
as Professor at Large, which means that he visits the department
for a couple of weeks every year, for years on end. Example: At
Cornell, Tony Leggett was Professor at Large for many years.
(This is before he was famous. They recognized him as a Good Guy
before the Nobel committee did, which is a sign of good judgment.)

4a) As a further step down that road: The guys you invite to give
the department colloquium are obvious candidates to offer feedback
about the department. This saves you some work, because the
colloquium committee has already done a tremendous amount of work
identifying Good Guys and bringing them in. And while they were
on-site, they presumably got a tour of the department.

4b) Note that even if you don't ask the colloquium speakers for
feedback, the colloquium program in-and-of-itself is a step
toward the same goal, namely helping the locals keep perspective
about what is going on in the rest of the world.

5) Also note that some institutions, especially in Europe and in
Canada, have a tradition of getting an Outside Examiner to review
each PhD thesis. Again I mention this because the Outside Examiners
have already done a good bit of work becoming familiar with your
"product". The point is, this is directly a check on the student's
performance, and indirectly -- but no less importantly -- a check
on the advisor's work -- in the sense that if there are problems
with the thesis, the advisor should have noticed and done something
about it before it got to the thesis-defense stage. More indirectly,
this provides feedback on the whole department, including coursework
and even admissions.

Needless to say, if you don't have a tradition of Outside Examiners
you should consider establishing one.

The pilot-training business relies heavily on "outside" examiners.
The instructor does /not/ get to design the final exam to evaluate
his own students. The instructor can do whatever evaluation he wants
along the way, but then there are (usually) "stage checks" and
(always) a final "check ride" administered by an Examiner. He is
usually quite a bit more senior and more highly certified than the
instructor. Again: This is directly a check on the student's performance,
and indirectly -- but no less importantly -- a check on the instructor's
work.

Bottom line: There are many ways of obtaining feedback from outside.
You want to cultivate them all.


------------------------------


------------------------------

Message: 8
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 16:48:04 -0400
From: "Edmiston, Mike" <edmiston@bluffton.edu>
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Physics Program Reviews
To: Forum for Physics Educators <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>
Message-ID:
<5FB9F2E7A42745418A96DF9DDAB746E90AEF1CE3FA@webmail.bluffton.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I have had two experience with this type of thing. One experience struck me as reasonably good, and one was very bad.

For the good experience, I was on a team of three outside faculty members who spent a day reviewing a department at another private college similar in size to my institution. One of the other reviewers was from a private school a little larger than mine (and the institution being reviewed), and the third reviewer was from a larger state institution. The department got to choose the reviewers. I don't know if the administration had veto power or not, but the review team seemed a good mix, and we worked well with each other even though we had never met before.

John Denker commented that outside reviewers who come in for a short period of time cannot learn very much about the department such a short time. I agree with this, but I also think the review team I was part of was able get enough of a picture of the situation that we could give both positive comments as well as pointing out a few things that could be improved. I think we were also able to confirm to the administration that the reviewed department was basically doing good things. The department of course had also done a "self study" prior to our arrival, and that written study helped both the review team and the department.

For the bad experience... when we were suffering from a rather bad dean of academic affairs, he decided to force an outside review on us. But the dean chose the single reviewer with no input allowed from us. The chosen person happened to be a personal friend of the dean. The dean obviously had given the reviewer an agenda. When the written review was given to the department and administration, the department ended up writing a rebuttal that was longer than the review itself. Fortunately this occurred at a time when the board of trustees was becoming aware that the dean was no good, so the review was pretty much ignored.

It's not clear from Bob LaMontagne's post whether his administration has an agenda, and/or if the intentions are benevolent, malevolent, or neutral. Having been through one malevolent process, I can certainly say it was not pleasant. But having been a reviewer for another institution, and having that turn out well (from my viewpoint) I would not be inclined to say it served little purpose. If the department does its own self study, and then invites a team (of their own choosing) in for a day or two, I think you can learn some things that will prove helpful.

Michael D. Edmiston, PhD.
Professor of Chemistry and Physics
Chair, Division of Natural and Applied Sciences
Bluffton University
Bluffton, OH 45817
Office 419-358-3270
Cell 419-230-9657

-----Original Message-----
From: phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu [mailto:phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu] On Behalf Of LaMontagne, Bob
Sent: Thursday, October 06, 2011 10:21 AM
To: Forum for Physics Educators
Subject: [Phys-l] Physics Program Reviews

This is basically addressed to those of you teaching in a college level physics program.

Have any of you had an outside agency or group of individuals come in and review your physics degree program. Did you use a group or agency that specialized in this service or did you just invite coleagues from another college or university?

We are being asked by our administration to review our program. We have been supplied very little in terms of guidance - the model the administration is using appears to be targeted at administrative departments instead of academic ones.

Since we have to do this, we would like to get the most value possible from the process. I would appreciate any recounting of experiences people have had with such reviews.

Bob at PC

_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l


------------------------------

_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l


End of Phys-l Digest, Vol 81, Issue 5
*************************************

---------------------------------------------------------
"It is not enough to observe, experiment, theorize, calculate and communicate; we must also argue, criticize, debate, expound, summarize, and otherwise transform the information that we have obtained individually into reliable, well established, public knowledge."
John Ziman

Kyle Forinash
kforinas@ius.edu<mailto:kforinas@ius.edu>