United States

At the USAF Academy, 36.4% of the cadets who intended to major in STEM before their first semester ended up graduating in a nonSTEM career. This study investigated factors associated with cadets declaring STEM majors or switching out of them. Of the 3,248 cadets with a declared major at the end of the academic year, 128 switched majors, with the most cadets switching within either STEM or nonSTEM. Twenty-four cadets switched out of STEM, and seven switched into STEM. STEM departers were more likely to have a low GPA and to come from a preparatory school, and were less likely to be scholars, international or ESL students. Cadets who went from undeclared to STEM majors were more likely to have higher Core GPA and SAT scores and were less likely to participate in athletics. STEM attrition must be addressed through academic support and advising before cadets declare a major.

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Selecting and Switching STEM Majors at USAF: Associated Retention Factors

student academics

career selection

stem attrition

Join AAPT and Physics Educators worldwide in developing and strengthening your professional connections by attending the 2021 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting. AAPT meetings are a great way to reflect on your teaching, recommit to best practices and re-energize your career with new research, products, and techniques.

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AAPT® is a strong professional physics science society dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in physical science education.

Winter and Summer National Meetings:
These National Meetings, held each winter and summer, are opportunities for members, colleagues, and future physicists from around the world to:

- participate in physics workshops
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- engage exhibitors and learn about the latest physics resources
- discuss innovations in teaching methods
- share the results of research about teaching and learning.

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The idea of Peer Review is inherent to NextGen PET. Many problems within the curriculum propose a conversation between students where each students defend a different idea. In these cases NextGen PET provides a specific method on how to evaluate the ideas of these hypothetical students. Step 1) Is the information accurate?&nbsp;Step 2) Are all aspects of the argument presented? Step 3) Is the argument presented in a logical way? This semester I wanted to apply this kind of framework as a type of Canvas assignment called Peer Review.&nbsp;Students must complete a rubric regarding a randomly assigned peer's ideas in order to help teach how to evaluate the ideas of others in group discussions.&nbsp; I will present how to set up in the assignments in a Canvas environment and lessons learned during the Fall 2020 semester at Los Angeles Pierce College.

NextGen PET Oriented Canvas Rubric for Online Elementary Education Majors

The start of the spring semester 2020 for universities all over China was postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak. The team of Fudan Physics Teaching Lab actively explored new mode in Physics-experiment teaching for sophomore in special period. We divided the course content into several modules and adopted different teaching methods according to the existing resources, such as recording instructional videos, online Q&amp;A, Physics experiment based on smartphone, virtual experiments, optical simulation experiments etc. As our lives enter into the Network Information Age, it brings us a lot of convenience. We can use a variety of ways to make up for the regret of not being able to teach in class, so that students can complete experimental courses at home.

Physics Experiment Teaching Case sharing in COVID-19 Pandemic

There is abundant research showing systemic biases in STEM and academia. Facilitating a discussion around these issues, and ways to mitigate them, can be challenging. In this poster, I present a board game demonstrating how biases in the system disadvantage some people disproportionately, creating an inequitable system. This generates discussions about sources and consequences of these biases (unconscious bias, socioeconomic strata, etc.) Students brainstorm strategies to 'change the system' and with these new structures, the game is replayed to demonstrate decreased inequity.

Board Game to Facilitate Discussions on Systemic Bias

Exploring Physical Phenomena: What happens when light from the Sun shines on the Earth?&nbsp; &nbsp;is now available at&nbsp;https://open.oregonstate.education/physicsforteachers/. We developed this open source textbook in a laboratory-based physics course for prospective elementary and middle school teachers. Explorations mostly involve everyday equipment so portions also are appropriate for use in general science courses,&nbsp;hallway exhibits, and outreach activities.&nbsp;Units include the nature of light phenomena, nature of thermal phenomena, influence of light and thermal phenomena on local weather, influence of light and thermal phenomena on global climate change, and nature of astronomical phenomena such as phases of the moon. Emphasis is upon questioning, predicting, exploring, and discussing what one thinks and why.&nbsp;This open source textbook also emphasizes the integration of science and literacy learning. Each unit ends by making connections to the&nbsp; Next Generation Science Standards. &nbsp;Supplementary materials include equipment lists suitable for both on-campus and&nbsp;remote learning contexts. &nbsp; &nbsp;

Open Source Textbook: Exploring Physical Phenomena

The rapid transition to virtual teaching in March 2020 created opportunities for panic and chaos in high school classrooms across the country. Our physics teacher advisory group (TAG) in Northeast Indiana quickly became an important resource for high school and university faculty. In multiple Zoom meetings, participants shared strategies, evaluated digital tools, created wish lists, and vented frustrations. Grant funding was diverted to schools in need of materials for at-home laboratory activities. Two members shared their personal experience and recovery from COVID-19. While an significant resource before the pandemic, the ability of the group to provide community to otherwise isolated physics teachers demonstrated the need to broaden our mission and increase our commitment of university resources for this venture.&nbsp;

Physics Teacher Collaboration in Pandemic Times

This talk focuses on how a traditional, face-to-face teacher professional development workshop series on electric guitars, acoustic guitars, CNC/Electric guitar hybrids was rapidly switched to be delivered in an online environment using Canvas.&nbsp; The switch posed a particular problem because of the hands-on nature of the workshops.&nbsp; The workshop series also served as a model for teachers as they were considering how to teach a project-based course online.&nbsp; This talk will highlight a roadmap for PD providers who may be facing similar situations.&nbsp; Workshop outcomes and lessons learned will also be shared.

Delivering Integrated STEM Professional Development in an Online Environment

How does physics fit into the Classical Education paradigm? What must any student pursuing a minor in Classical Education know about physics? A previously-offered one-credit undergraduate seminar course “Teaching Secondary Physics” has been redesigned to be accepted as an elective in the Classical Education minor program at Hillsdale College, directed toward future physics teachers in a classical school setting. In addition to modules on physics standards and the various components of a standard physics course (lecture, lab, equipment, demos, homework, exams, texts), the course specifically addresses the place and role that physics can and should play in the growing Classical Education movement. Topics of discussion in this component of the course include views of physics and physics education in the Classical School movement, what Classical pedagogy might look like as applied to the physics classroom, and special topics dealing with thinkers from Aristotle to Francis Bacon to C.S. Lewis.

Physics for a Classical Education Minor

One of two complementary panels dedicated to raising awareness about improving the accessibility of undergraduate physics laboratory courses. In this panel, undergraduate and graduate physics students talk about their previous and current experiences in physics labs, and they make suggestions for improving accessibility of labs.] Physics labs are an exciting opportunity to teach and learn about physics by collaboratively planning, building, and carrying out experiments and interacting with advanced phenomena, apparatus, and software. Students, staff, and faculty with disabilities deserve full access to these learning environments, and it is everyone’s responsibility to recognize and mitigate the specific barriers to participation posed by space, technology, and pedagogical constraints that are unique to labs. To that end (and with support from an AAPT Special Projects Grant), the AAPT Committee on Laboratories assembled a task force whose charge is to issue an open call for increased investment in accessible physics labs.

Making Physics Labs More Accessible: Perspectives of Current Physics Students

Steve Oldham is CEO of Carbon Engineering Ltd., a Canadian-based clean energy company. Carbon Engineering&nbsp;is focused on the deployment of Direct Air Capture technology that captures carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere at large scale, so it can be stored permanently underground or turned into clean transportation fuels. As more and more government and corporate leaders around the world are committing to net zero emissions, attention now turns to the cost, feasibility and societal impact of different solutions. Steve will discuss how Direct Air Capture technology is a feasible, available and affordable solution for removing carbon dioxide from the air at large scale;&nbsp;the opportunities it brings for the economy and how it provides the key missing ingredient in net zero plans.

Direct Air Capture and Achieving Net Zero Emissions

Electricity production is one of the top contributors to global carbon dioxide emissions. In 2019 almost two thirds of the world’s electricity was produced by fossil fuels; over half of that was produced by coal alone. As the rate of climate warming increases, it is essential that renewable and low-carbon generation be expanded, both to add new generation capacity and replace fossil fuel plants. For over 50 years the world’s nuclear power plants have produced reliable electricity, and nuclear is the best option for replacing base-load fossil fuel sources like coal, oil, and gas with a tiny fraction of the carbon emissions. NuScale Power, LLC, an Oregon-based startup, has developed a small modular reactor that combines that nuclear operating experience with an existing supply chain to provide evolutionary advances in efficiency and safety.

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Selecting and Switching STEM Majors at USAF: Associated Retention Factors

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NextGen PET Oriented Canvas Rubric for Online Elementary Education Majors

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