Walter Freeman
Syracuse University, NY·Education Research
Computing skills are central to modern science and engineering, yet many undergraduate physics courses teach little of them. This project aims to change that by helping physics instructors across the country build computational activities into their courses.
- Fields
Education Research
Physics
- Topics
physics education research
computational physics
undergraduate physics
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2028
What they work on
- Establish regional PICUP faculty-development workshops, sustained by local leaders, that help physics instructors integrate computational activities into undergraduate courses, with emphasis on Minority Serving Institutions and two-year colleges.
- Build a national community of physics educators who teach computation through national workshops and leadership development within PICUP.
- Investigate how undergraduates learn computational physics across varied course and institution types, and use the results to develop an assessment framework for student learning of computation.
More about the research
It builds on the Partnership for Integration of Computation into Undergraduate Physics (PICUP), a community of educators formed around this goal.
Why it matters
Physics students at many colleges, including Minority Serving Institutions and two-year colleges, could gain computing skills that science and engineering careers demand. Trained faculty and a shared assessment framework could help instructors measure what students actually learn about computation and improve their courses.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Larry Engelhardt
Francis Marion University, SC·Education Research
Establish regional faculty-development workshops, built on the PICUP community and sustained by local leaders, that help physics faculty add computational activities to undergraduate courses.
Arthur Sikora
Nova Southeastern University, FL·Education Research
Identify the supports for and barriers to implementing and sustaining the BASIL biochemistry CURE across institution types, using faculty surveys, implementation plans and semi-structured interviews.
Mindy Reynolds
Washington College, MD·Education Research
Establish FAMNet, a structured co-mentoring network that pairs faculty experienced in evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs) with faculty mentees across two-year and four-year colleges.
The school
Syracuse University: 13 labs on PI Pages, $199M a year on research, 168 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.