a. Program Name - Department of Physics and Astronomy
b. Report prepared by – Jerry Hinnefeld, Chair
c. Who is the current assessment contact for your program? Jerry Hinnefeld
d. Should assessment information be sent to anyone else in your department? no

1. What are the program’s educational goals? (Please take goals directly from your program’s assessment plan, and highlight any changes made this year.)

Physics majors
1) Students completing the major in physics will know and understand in detail many of the concepts that are used to describe the physical world, including the structure of matter, the fundamental interactions of nature, the relationship between force and motion, and the concept of energy.
2) Students completing the major in physics will be able to apply fundamental physical principles to the solution of complex problems.
3) Students completing the major in physics will be able to communicate results of their experimental or computational work clearly, both orally and in written form.

Students majoring in other natural sciences or mathematics
4) Students completing physics courses as cognate requirements will know and understand physics concepts that will help them to better understand concepts in their own major areas of study.
5) Students completing physics courses as cognate requirements will understand the relevance of their studies in physics to their own major areas of study.

Students studying physics, astronomy, or geology for general education purposes
6) Students completing courses in these areas as part of their general education curriculum will know and understand a limited set of concepts that illustrate a scientific approach to explaining the physical world.
7) Students completing courses in these areas as part of their general education curriculum will have gained an appreciation of the scientific approach to understanding the physical world.

2. What assessment techniques did the program use? (Please take assessment techniques directly from your program’s assessment plan and highlight any changes made this year.)

       - Classroom assessment
       - Students' oral and written reports
       - Research experience
       - Pre-/post-testing
       - Success in graduate school admission
       - Faculty end-of-semester surveys

3. What has your program done with assessment information this year? (i.e. communicated results to faculty, staff, alumni and students, made changes in the curriculum, made changes in the budget, added new courses...)

The department's assessment coordinator presented an internal assessment report to department faculty and staff at a department meeting.

We reaffirmed our commitment to offering an elective majors’ course in each semester.

We created an introductory seminar course, PHYS-S106 Contemporary Physics Seminar, offered for the first time in Fall 2007.

4. What are two concerns about student learning you identified this year?

There seems to be a larger proportional of poorly prepared or unmotivated students in the Common Core courses, AST/GEOL/PHYS-N190, than has been typical in the 100-level courses they replaced.  For example, versions of AST-N190 have replaced AST-A100 The Solar System and AST-A105 Stars and Galaxies.  We suspect that students may be taking the N190 courses at earlier points in their careers than they took the older courses.  We may need to come up with ways to convince students of the value and importance of the quantitative reasoning they’re asked to learn in these courses.

Our majors who wish to go on to graduate school could be better prepared for the discipline-specific GRE.  We should become more familiar with this instrument, so that we are in a better position to assist these students in their preparation.