From Newton’s Laws to the Higgs Particle—How Do We Update Our

Science Courses?

2013 VCCS New Horizons Conference Roanoke, VA

Walerian Majewski

Northern Virginia Community College Annandale, Va

We need to refresh our knowledge of discipline, and then update it for students

• Take time release from the VCCS Professional Development Program to study

• Take a sabbatical and visit science research labs as an educator

• Set up an undergraduate research program for your best students; get equipment grants and learn with students.

Small Research as opposed to Big Research!

• Go to field trips with your students to the area research labs; send your students to internships

• Establish a regular Science seminar, invite researcher speakers

CERN Large Hadron Collider Laboratory, Geneva

Funding

• Chancellor’s Innovation Find - release time; equipment • VCCS Professional Development program – release

time; equipment • Educational Foundations – release time; equipment • SCHEV Equipment Trust Fund – equipment • Society of Physics Students grants - equipment • American Chemical Society Student Chapter grants –

equipment • Geological Society of America: undergraduate grants • Enter into an undergraduate research consortium or a

partnership with a university next door

Undergraduate research through the student chapter of the American Chemical

Society

Create a place for students interested in chemistry careers to get together as a Student Chapter of the American Chemical Society and to be offered extracurricular activities, undergraduate research and internship finding opportunities otherwise not available to them. This should facilitate their choice of careers in chemistry or related professions and improve their chances of a desired transfer.

Chemistry/premed majors

• ACS Starter Student Chapter grant

• Undergraduate ACS Programming grant

• Activities: seminars, field trips, internship information

• Invite other instructors to be mentors in some of our research projects.

Authentic Research in Biology Labs

• A joint project of the Association for Biology Laboratory Education (ABLE) and the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR), the goal of this incubator Research Coordination Network in Undergraduate Biology Education is to engage faculty in a discussion of how to implement authentic research experiences in introductory biology laboratory courses.

Geological Society of America

• The Geological Society offers grants to support individual research by undergraduates. Supervise individual Undergraduate Student Research Projects funded by GSA for student members of GSA

The following NVCC student posters were presented at the March Meeting 2013 of the

American Physical Society, Baltimore, MD.

• 7,500 participants, 9,000 papers presented

• NVCC student’s impressions:

Our trip to Baltimore dramatically changed my ideas about physics. Before, I believed that physics was best done with nothing but a sheet of paper, a pencil, my professor’s words, and a healthy imagination. What I saw, though, is that the field is more populated, more specialized, more dynamic, but, still, more collaborative than I had thought.