| Originator: | Cox, Russell Status: Approved Department: PHY Physics |
| Date Created: | 10/17/2020 Submitted: 10/17/2020 Completed: 10/20/2020 |
| ATF (Program or Discipline): | Physics, Physical Science & Astronomy |
| Date of the ATF: | 10/16/2020 |
| Statewide Update: | The three universities graduated 16,029 students with transfer credits from community colleges, and 10,355 new community college students transferred into the three universities last year. Of the students at the three Arizona universities, 54.23% have some sort of transfer credit. |
| University Curricular updates: | ASU has a new B.S. degree in astronomical sciences and a new minor in astrophysics. A new 4+1 physical science degree is coming soon. After spring break all classes were online, including labs. The number of upper level students dropped, though there are a record number of new physics students. ASU astronomy gave students the choice of online or in person: few choose in person. All courses with more than 100 students are online only, but it was easy since a lot of work had been done to bring these labs online prior to the pandemic. Astronomy enrollment decreased due to the missing international students. The astronomy lectures and labs (111/113 and 112/114) are being combined into single classes.
The University of Arizona has a new applied physics major. UoA deemed its physics labs essential and kept them in person with half of the class doing labs at a time and the other half watching videos of people taking data. It has smaller class sizes due to COVID. NAU's enrollment is down but the number of physics students are steady. NAU revenue is down and 100 non-tenure track faculty were laid off. There was going to be a major restructuring, but the president resigned. Half of the international students and two physics teachers left and NAU is offering 700 fewer classes. The intro to physics for physics majors was canceled. NAU does the flex model with labs having one third of the class in person and 2/3rds remote. PHY 111/112 are fully remote since they are more than 45 people. NAU astronomy split from physics in 2019, made a bunch of new courses that were originally shared with physics. Three new minors: astrobiology, astrochemistry, and astrogeology |
| Community college Curricular Updates: | Some colleges, such as Rio and Central have seen their enrollment stay steady or increase (most likely due to the online format), while others like Glendale, Chandler Gilbert, PVC, AWC, Cochise, and MCC have seen enrollment drop. Glendale, Chandler Gilbert, PC, Paradise Valley, Coconino, Central, and Pima have gone completely online, while Estrella and Eastern have some mixed online/in person classes. Chandler Gilbert, PC, and Paradise Valley are short on adjunct teachers while PVC and Eastern are trying to hire new full-time teachers.
Some of the teachers snuck into the labs to record data for the online labs, while others created split lab sections that required more lab equipment. Grades are generally down. There is also a trend of schools offering the physics of music classes, which many teachers were excited about, but few were qualified to teach. Paradise Valley said it was a great way to attract women into stem. Tohono O'odham Community College set up a physical science degree while PVC is attempting to teach PHY 241. |
| Suggested changes to matricies: | No changes were made to the Course Equivalency Guide, Common Course Matrix, and/or Exam Equivalency Guide. IB requested again for exam equivalency for their test without given any new material. Members were fed up with dealing with this, having turned them down in 2017, 18, 19 and now 2020. A motion was made to strike them from next year's agenda if they do not provide us with any new information.
The group was asked to investigate Study.com and see if they wanted to give their classes elective credit. Study.com was found to have no teachers with the required qualifications to teach physics, so even if their classes were equivalent to classes offered at the community colleges and universities, they still wouldn't be accreditable. Another thing brought to the group's attention was Acadeum.com. Acadeum is a program is similar to one of my previous ideas about smaller schools offering to pool classes together if they had small classes that didn't make. However, this group is a nation-wide consortium that required a $5000 buy-in from the schools participating. The $5000 earns the school the right to generally lose students to classes that are generally offered out-of-state. The group decided that it would be an accreditation nightmare and just warned all the current teachers to inform their administration about this group, as they have been giving very high-quality presentations to unsuspecting Arizona community college administrators. |
| Volunteering: | No |
| Additional Comments: | See above. |