It is my pleasure to bring you greetings from Fayetteville and share
exciting news of the past year.
Our new BS degree program went into effect in Fall 1998. It is flexible,
offering our students optics, electronics, and computational tracks
in addition to the traditional PhD-bound track, depending on career
goals. Partly due to higher University admission standards, eight
scholarship students joined the physics program. Increased attention
to undergraduate mentoring by Drs. Stewart, Oliver and others, and
undergraduate research, are reflected in the success of our majors.
Several students won national and campus scholarships such as materials
research society and SILO grants, the John Bower Buckley Scholarship,
and American Physical Society Centennial grants. These efforts to
improve our undergraduate program have continued to pay off. This
year the Department granted 11 baccalaureate physics degrees, far
more than the national average for departments of our size. We hope
that, during the next year or two, we can similarly tap the BA program's
potential.
There are changes at the graduate level too. An interdisciplinary
MS Degree program, ACEMI (Arkansas Center for Electronic and Photonic
Materials), was approved and implemented. An applied physics MS Degree
was also approved and becomes effective in Fall 1999. Other changes
are under consideration to provide students more flexibility and early
research exposure.
Looking at major faculty achievements, Gupta was elected a fellow
of the American Physical Society and Salamo was elected a fellow of
the Optical Society of America. Xiao and Henry won a $1 million NSF
grant to initiate a collaboration with Lucent Technologies. Thibado
won Research Corporation's Research Innovation Award and Bellaiche
won the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement award. Professor
Art Hobson is retiring after 35 years. He developed the Physics and
Human Affairs course, taken by some ten thousand students! Research
Professor Ken Vickers joined the Department as Director of ACEMI,
following 20 years at Texas Instruments. Laurent Bellaiche joined
the department in Spring 99 as a condensed matter theorist, adding
further strength to our condensed matter program.
I appreciate your continued support to our Department. Please keep
us posted of your progress, write to us about your experiences at
Arkansas, about job opportunities for new graduates, or about any
aspect of our program.
