The Department of Physics and Engineering at Centenary College of Louisiana has been actively engaged in the reform of its introductory physics labs over the last five years. The new lab philosophy is to take the "hands-on, minds-on" approach with no lab manuals, in many cases the students are given a task and they figure out what needs to be done, what needs to be measured and then they perform the measurements. Some of the labs are discovery based in nature in that we discuss a topic in lab and determine which variables might the topic of discussion depend upon. After group discussion the variables are assigned to groups and then various measurements are performed and then the students as a whole meet again at the end of lab and we discuss the results. The lab topics are also very closely related to the lecture material and the professor who teaches the course also teaches at least one lab section for the course. The Physics faculty is very pleased with our efforts, student evaluation of the labs is very positive. Our students score very well in a standardized conceptual test, the force concept inventory (FCI). An external review of the Department done by the state of Louisiana using Physics professors from: Vanderbilt University, The University of Texas at Austin and Howard University commended the department for its "admirable emphasis on hands-on learning".

With this in mind we would like to extend this success to our upper division physics courses that do not have a lab with them. The courses this would cover are: Dynamics, Thermal Physics, Math Methods, Electricity and Magnetism I and II, Quantum Mechanics, and Light and Optics. We would like to add some laboratory experiments and computer simulations to these courses to follow up our successes using our "hand-on, minds-on" philosophy. We feel that what has worked for the introductory courses and labs would also work in our upper division courses. Some goals of this reform are to illustrate principles of the courses and to further expose students to experimental methods and techniques.

The idea is to exam each course very carefully and select topics and problems that could be examined in a laboratory experiment or computer simulations that compliment the lecture part of the course. These projects would be done outside of class as a "sort of" homework problem.

The department began thinking about this idea in the early summer of 1997 as preparation for writing a National Science Foundation Instrumentation and Laboratory Improvement (ILI) grant to fund this project. We met a variety of times over the summer and realized that this is a large project and would require a careful examination of each course to determine the appropriate experiments and equipment that would be needed. . In many cases we already have some in-house equipment for this project but we need to determine what exactly is needed. Because of the time involved in working on such a project it is felt by the Physics department that a good approach to implement this project is to apply to the ACS Technology Fellows Program so that one of our faculty members can work on this during the summer of 1998. This faculty member in consultation with the other physics faculty would examine each course and select the appropriate projects. The equipment and or software needs would be determined and by the end of the summer an ILI grant would be written in order to fund the project. We have already identified some possible projects, but we need to further investigate those, along with looking for other suitable projects.

Some examples of how the technology will enhance the teaching and student learning in these courses may best be illustrated by some projects that we have already thought about. One of these involves using a mini-YAG laser with a student built dye-laser along with a student built Fabry-Perot interferometer. This equipment would be used in the Light and Optics course, the Quantum Mechanics course and a variety of existing laboratories. Measuring resistivity for a high temperature superconductor is another project, along with measuring the heat capacity of material as a function of temperature. Another project would be for the Electricity and Magnetism courses which would involve electric and magnetic field mapping both with hardware, (some of which we have), and software. We would like to simulate some of the homework problems for a variety of courses. Students already do some video analysis in our introductory courses and we would use this method in our Dynamics course. We feel that by doing "hands-on" work in conjunction with courses (some of which are very abstract) the students would have a better comprehension of the materials in the courses. Also, in each of these projects students would use equipment which they may use in the workplace or in their graduate education.

We feel that this is an innovative approach for teaching upper division physics courses and could serve as a possible model for other institutions similar to Centenary College inside and outside of the ACS. The results of our project will be disseminated in a variety of ways. The department has its own website (alpha.centenary.edu) that includes a large amount of information about the department and our present reform efforts. This project if approved would be included in the site and a link could be setup to the ACS homepage. The faculty is involved with, attends and presents our reform efforts at American Association of Physics Teacher meetings (Lisantti will present a paper at the Winter 1998 national meeting in New Orleans). We have presented papers about our introductory laboratory reform efforts at a number of the Texas section of the American Physical Society meetings and at Louisiana Academy of Science meetings. When appropriate we would also write papers for the Physics Teacher and the American Journal of Physics. The department is also actively involved with the Project Kaleidoscope which is a national organization involved in the reform of Mathematics, Science and Engineering education. Dissemination of our project could possibly be done through that organization.

This project would require no technical support from the ACS. The resulting ILI grant requires a 50% match from Centenary College. Our department has had two ILI grants in the last six years and the College has matched these grants, and we have been told to expect the same in the future.

In summary:

This Fellowship would allow for one Physics Professor at Centenary College, Jerry Lisantti to work on developing laboratory projects and simulations for upper-division physics courses that do not have an associated laboratory. I would examine each of these courses in consultation with the other physics faculty to obtain a suitable group of activities. These activities would be performed outside of class as "homework" type projects for the courses. The goal would be for students to get hands-on experience with the appropriate technology in order to examine physical phenomenon related to coursework, and to further their exposure to experimental methods and techniques. At the end of the summer the goal would be to submit to the National Science Foundation an Instrumentation and Laboratory Improvement grant. We feel that this is an innovative proposal and could serve as a model for other institutions similar to Centenary College.