Approximately 30 chairpersons participated in this breakout group discussion on the general subject of how institutional rewards/recognition practices can better foster excellence and innovation in teaching. Recommendations we agreed upon are set off from the text in bullet format.

Hiring an individual is the first 'reward' bestowed upon him or her, and is therefore one of the most important elements in the rewards/recognition structure. Most colleges seek to appoint to their faculties persons who have previously demonstrated a serious interest in teaching. Therefore

• Graduate programs should allow interested students significant teaching opportunities beyond the routine TA and should work to change the 'cultural' landscape that tends to discourage such activity at most institutions.

In the interest of truth in advertising and to encourage future candidates for college positions,

• Colleges should be explicit in advertisements about their interest in candidates who can provide evidence of serious interest in teaching.

After an individual is hired his or her senior colleagues usually focus on supporting the new professor in establishing a research presence. Furthermore, structures that encourage the development of the ability to carry out scientific research are in place and extend all the way from graduate school to the first years of an academic appointment. Encouraging good teaching is undertaken less uniformly and systematically. Therefore, we believe that

• Mentoring the development of effective and innovative teaching is just as important and necessary as supporting new appointeesí efforts to establish productive research programs.

On the issue of re-appointment and tenure decisions, it was noted that methods for evaluating excellence in teaching are inherently quite different from how one judges research achievement. The latter is usually more readily and reliably judged. Furthermore, structures that encourage the development of the ability to carry out scientific research are in place and extend all the way from graduate school to the first years of an academic appointment. Evaluating and encouraging good teaching is trickier, and less uniformly supported. Nevertheless most of the institutions represented are serious about their efforts in this area. The methods that have been developed for evaluation of teaching success in connection with academic promotions are quite diverse, and the group recommends that

• A suitable equipped group should undertake the task of collecting, compiling and publishing the various procedures used by academic institutions to evaluate teaching effectiveness in connection with tenure decisions and other promotions as these many novel approaches might be useful if more broadly known.

There was also consensus that it is difficult and perhaps even misleading to attempt to numerically weight the importance of teaching and research in tenure decisions. It was our sense that the science faculties are more effective in our institutions when candidates are expected to be successful in both areas. Therefore

• It is appropriate for institutions to expect of their faculty both excellence in teaching and research productivity and that the absence of either is reasonable grounds for denying tenure. Such expectations should, of course, be clearly indicated to candidates at the time of their initial appointment.

To ensure that senior professors continue to bring energy, innovation and effectiveness to their teaching activities most of the institutions represented in the group use some form of mandatory evaluation at intervals ranging from 1 to 5 years. Such evaluations are often the basis for the allocation of both monetary (salary increases) and non-monetary (examples include: beneficial course scheduling, usually within the context of nominally uniform teaching loads; release time for course development; etc.) rewards. This being so it seems worthwhile to state that

• It is appropriate for institutions to review on a regular basis the teaching effectiveness of their senior faculty and to use such reviews as the basis for allocation of both monetary and non-monetary rewards.

1. The group endorsed flexibility as a means of better serving physics majors' differing interests. We viewed it as a broadening of educational and career options. It is implemented by increasing elective courses and options and lowering the number of required courses.
   
2. Greater flexibility brings a responsibility for better academic advising to ensure that elective courses or options are chosen in a cohesive manner.
   
3. We need to survey employers to learn what they are seeking in broadened physics education; The American Institute of Physics could play a large role in this market research.
   
4. In recognition of the growing importance and success of areas such as biological sciences and complex systems, we need to bring down the walls between disciplines and increase interdisciplinary dialogues.
   
5. The Worldwide Web should be used to quickly disseminate information on flexible physics curricula.
   
6. We need to assess the success of flexible curricula by creating a database of B.S. physicists in industry.

Our commentary is responding to two stimuli:

1. Enrollment in physics is declining, while interest in biology is increasing;
   
2. The number of our majors who go on to graduate school in physics is decreasing.

Responses and Recommendations:

A. Increase the flexibility of graduation requirements for the major so students can graduate in 4 years and also co-major or minor in another field or engineering. This means decreasing the number of required courses for the B.S. Degree for students who do not intend to go to graduate school in physics - and permitting substitutions from departments such as chemistry or engineering in order to help students broaden their education.

B. Introduce topical courses to capture interest.

C. Throw out or delete courses and material which, although important, hinders students from exploring other fields and disciplines.

D. Learn how to use WWW resources to offer information about things done at other schools and incorporate some of this material in local courses.

E. Improve advising through the admissions office rather than the advising center.

F. Develop multiple tracks (see A) to encourage diversity of career goals.

This breakout session addressed the question of "Why physics courses are neither competitive nor attractive to the non-physics major?" (Can't we even find a more positive term than non-physicist?) We explored the experiences of some 50 chairpersons, two-thirds from 4 year colleges and one third from universities with graduate programs. The problems appear to be the same for physics departments from both types of institutions (except the concerns of large class sizes and the use of teaching assistants at the big universities, which we did not address).

The clientele for physics courses dedicated to non-majors can be divided into two classes:

a) Non-science majors, who are generally required to take a science distribution course. For these students, physics is in heaviest competition with biology-based courses, where the subject is familiar from high school courses, and does not suffer from the stigma attached to the word "physics". Generally we fare best with those students who have had a positive experience in high school physics, but that is a small minority. We also lose out to courses based on geology and astronomy.

b) Pre-professional students, primarily pre-medical and engineering students who are required to take an algebra or calculus-based physics course. Here the students are generally bright, but they resent taking a required-course which they feel (even afterwards) has little relevance to them. Their bad experience in physics leads to a large group of technically-trained people with a negative attitude toward physics.

For the non-science major, the goal of us physicists is to capture this largely untapped audience and to excite them about science in general, and physics in particular. We want to show them what science is good for in real life. This is a major opportunity to turn around the generally negative attitude students have toward taking a physics course. For the pre-professionals, our aim is to inculcate the physicist's approach to critical thinking and problem solving. As a spin-off, we may even convert some of these students into physics majors.

Our breakout group developed a consensus on the following suggestions for physics departments:

1) In addition to the traditional evaluations of teaching at the end of each course, we need to assess the attitude towards physics developed by the students during the course: "Are you more positive and receptive to physics than before taking this course?" "Why or why not?" We need this and other instruments to measure the success of our public relations effort with these students, the future leaders of their fields and voters on science funding.

2) To attract non-science students who would not normally opt for a course carrying the "p" word, we must invent non-threatening course titles and themes, e. g. the "How Things Work" course at the University of Virginia. We can get the goal of "looking at the world and analyzing problems as a physicist" through the back door. Only by developing broad-based conceptual courses with large throughput will we eventually affect public attitudes. It is not "us" vs. "them": We must take what they want to learn, and transform it into what we want them to learn.

3) We should pull students into physics by appealing to their special interests, e.g. music, lasers, cosmology, history of science. It is easy, and natural, to segue from their specific interest into a broader approach to conceptual physics.

4) In class, we should use demonstrations, peer participation, students involvement in experiments, and other means to engage the student's minds. For newly developed courses, before all the bugs are worked out, we should put the showman teachers on display.

5) We should involve those students who are not mathematically inclined by written and oral participation, e.g. term papers and essay questions, to allow them to demonstrate their mastery of and competence in the physics material.

6) We should use labs as a natural opportunity to give individual attention to students. Further, they provide hands-on experience to a generation largely lacking it.

1. Summary as presented verbally:

Participants in the discussion quickly recognized that widely differing characteristics of the institutions represented meant that the problem of "courses for non-majors" was actually a range of different problems. We agreed to discuss under the general headings of a) courses for non-physics majors and b) courses for non-science majors.

a) Non-physics majors

These courses are largely intended for pre-engineering or pre medical (or comparable life science) students. Design of such courses is generally subject to constraints: there is the problem of the nature of secondary school preparation for the physics course (input-imposed constraints) and the expectations of the customer (output-imposed constraints). Both of these are somewhat aggravated by the role of standardized tests -- AP examinations for incoming students and the expectations of exams like the MCAT on students taking our courses. Another problem is the perceived "need to cover" a certain body of material in such a course.

Proposed solutions:

i) press agencies that design tests to reform their tests to reflect recent progress in science education, stressing understanding rather than computational facility.

ii) get better information from clients about their actual needs (probably miss-perceived at present), not neglecting the value of what can be conveyed about problem solving, the nature of science, etc., but in an attempt to focus our efforts better.

iii) design texts to provide needed materials rather than to be absolutely encyclopedic.

b) Non-science majors

These courses are relatively unconstrained and offer opportunities for real creativity. They ought to meet the needs of citizens: to be able to think, solve problems, understand the process of science (model-building, experiment, replication, publication, peer-review, etc.), read and evaluate news, make intelligent judgments. The group believes that physics courses ought to develop (or at least point out) bridges to other fields (biology, chemistry, geology, oceanography, etc.); that we should talk to colleagues in these fields in order to find out how they think we can best do this. We should value the flexibility that is currently available to us in meeting these needs.

2. Other points that arose and that were not explicitly noted in the verbal report:

a) Students who take college courses in science while in high school often have a harder time getting college credit for them than they do getting AP credit for high school courses.

b) Some good books exist for life-science physics: Sternheim and Kaneís General Physics and Cameron and Skofronickís Physics of the Boyd" were mentioned.

c) It is more valuable for students to think about the effects of changing parameters than to apply formulas.

d) Pharmacy schools, queried about their objectives for students taking a physics course, tend to reply "For the student to survive your course."

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