Ph.D., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1994.

Initial work in crystalline surface theory.

Current interests include physics education research and the structure and modeling of physics as an information system

CO-PI Arkansas PhysTEC site. One of 6 national sites dedicated to improving the quality and quantity of science teachers by building links between physics departments, education departments, and local school systems.

EDUCATIONAL ENGINEERING

My goal since coming to the University of Arkansas has been to develop a new discipline, Educational Engineering, which would be separate from traditional educational research just as Mechanical Engineering is a separate discipline from its parent discipline Physics. Educational Engineering would focus on producing reliable, cost-effective, reproducible, and efficient educational systems. To do this, educational systems must be understood and characterized in far greater detail than has been possible in the past.

Fundamental Educational Research

To make educational engineering possible, characterization systems and measurement systems for a class as a whole have been developed. Physics has proven a fertile environment for studying educational systems and the methods of physics have been the key to understanding those systems. We have examined the effect of student behavior on success in a science class, the degree to which a studentÕs knowledge at the end of a science class is uncertain, the effect of the quality of the presentation of student work on success, and the bias created by multiple-choice conceptual examinations. We are currently measuring the flow of information in a science class and should soon be able to answer the fundamental question in any educational enterprise, "How much is there to know?" Other research has examined the textual structure of traditional physics textbooks and tracked changes in that structure over time.

Physics Teacher Education Coalition (PhysTEC)

There is a growing national crisis in K-12 education. Many science teachers are nearing retirement and their replacements are nowhere to be seen. The Arkansas Physics Department with their participation in the PhysTEC project is in the forefront of the push to address this crisis and currently produces 1% of the new high school physics teachers graduated annually. The educationally engineered classes with their educational mentoring have been a key component to the increase in teacher production.

Building the Second Curriculum

The research and development focus of the physics education community has been in the introductory classes that serve the majority of students taking physics classes at most universities. Little attention has been paid the advanced undergraduate and graduate physics classes. We are beginning a project to build a secondary curriculum to augment the traditional junior and senior level physics curriculum.