Dear Friends,

It is my pleasure to bring you greetings from Fayetteville. Another eventful year has gone by. The Physics Department has continued to make progress in all of its varied activities.

Our new BS degree program has been approved by the various College and University Committees. The program calls for more laboratory experience and computer skills for our undergraduates and offers them three new career paths in addition to the traditional PhD-bound path. It becomes effective beginning this Fall (see the accompanying article about the new undergraduate programs).

With higher standards for admission to the University and an increased emphasis on quality, both the number and quality of students are expected to rise. We are emphasizing involvement of physics majors in research. Several of our majors have participated in NSF-sponsored competitive Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) programs around the country. The Physics Department won its own REU center in optics via an NSF grant to Professors Henry and Oliver.

The Department also established a new fellowship to support undergraduate involvement in research with a $20,000 gift from Emeritus Professor Richardson (see the accompanying article about the Richardson Fellowship).

Our efforts to modernize and streamline our undergraduate program are beginning to pay off. This year the Department granted 11 baccalaureate physics degrees, far exceeding our previous record of 6. Our congratulations to Professor Gay Stewart who was honored by the Fulbright College with an Outstanding Advisor Award for her mentoring of physics majors.

During the 1997-98 fiscal year the department's share of external grant support was the highest in the college reaching almost $2 million. Faculty members published 60 articles and presented 40 contributed and invited talks at national and international conferences. Professor Paul Thibado became the third faculty member to win the prestigious NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award. The Department strengthened its condensed matter and modern optics, a major step forward that was recognized when Chancellor White opened the Department's Semiconductor Growth and Characterization Facility this Spring. This $1.7 million facility combines state-of-the-art in semiconductor growth using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) with a powerful scanning tunneling microscope (STM) (see the accompanying article about the MBE/STM facility).

I thank you all for your continued support of the Physics Department. We would love to hear from you about the progress of your careers and job opportunities for new graduates. Any comments you might have about your studies at Arkansas and our current program will be greatly appreciated. Please stay in touch and keep us informed of your current addresses.

With my best wishes,