December 2009 —
Prof. John Portman, and Prof. Laura Bartolo (Director of the Kent State Center for
Materials Informatics) are collaborating with faculty from Carnegie Mellon and MIT on an
project to develop and implement virtual laboratories for instruction, with funding from
the National Science Foundation. Details of this innovative project can be found in an
e-newsletter story published in
mid-December 2009.
Fall 2009 —
New data on introductory physics class enrollments at universities nationwide have
recently been released by the American Institute of Physics (AIP). On the basis of
published AIP data averaged over the past decade, a study shows that
the Kent State physics department ranks number-one
in the US in making physics interesting and attractive to non-science majors. A closely
related statistic also demonstrates that we are #1 nationwide in physics instructional
productivity.
September 2009 —
A special welcome to
...Dr. Hamza Balci, our first new tenure-track faculty
member in six years.
May 2009 —
Congratulations to:
...undergraduate physics majors Andrew Konya, Andrew Kubera, Danielle Lahurd, and
Richelle Teeling, and graduate student Jeremy Alford, all recipients of academic awards
(see link for details and photos).
...Dr. Elizabeth Mann on being promoted to
Full Professor, effective from AY 09/10.
...Dr. John Portman on being awarded tenure and promoted to
Associate Professor, effective from AY 09/10.
May 2009 —
Physics People in the News:
Kent State Magazine for Summer 2009 has an update on former astronaut
Carl Walz,
a BS Alumnus of our department. Carl has set some impressive
records during his time as an astronaut. Back on earth, the exceptional success
of Prof. Jon Secaur in communicating to his students the excitement of physics has
been written about in KSU's electronic newsletter e-inside.
Spring Semester 2009: An enterprising group of physics undergraduates led by
Aaron Slodov has been making great progress towards establishing a
Radio Astronomy project at Kent State.
More details can be found in a recent story about the project in the online newsletter of Kent State
University.
January 2009:
Newly-released data from the National Science Foundation reveal that Kent State ranks first in the nation,
among non-Historically Black institutions with under 30 physics faculty,
for our number of African-American PhD Physics graduates. We are third
in the nation among non-HBCU departments of any size.
Congratulations to Prof. Makis Petratos on being elected a Fellow of the
American Physical Society. The citation states that Prof. Petratos was honored
"for numerous contributions to high energy electromagnetic physics, including the SLAC
nucleon spin physics program, and the SLAC and Jefferson Lab few-body physics programs."
You can also find archived news & announcements concerning past physics programs
and events from calendar years
2008,
2007,
2006,
2005,
2004,
2003,
2002, and
2001.
