Physics Team Receives Provost Investment Funding for Studio-Style Teaching

The Provost's office just announced this year's Provost Investment Fund (PIF) awards, which support ideas that are truly innovative, aspirational, and aligned with the University's strategic goals. Out of 77 highly competitive proposals, the one submitted by the Physics team (Profs. Wolgemuth, LeRoy, and Milsom) on "Transformation of Introductory Physics to a Studio Format” was among 11 proposals selected for funding. The award to the Physics Department is $200k, out of the total $1.347M fund. Full details are on the PIF website: https://provost.arizona.edu/fall-2023-pif-report.    

This PIF funding will support the Physics Department's efforts to transform the way that we teach introductory algebra based physics courses.  Over the next two years, with the award from PIF and additional departmental funds, we will be redesigning these courses to be taught in a studio format. This format combines lecture, recitation and laboratory components into a single integrated studio course. The funding will enable a renovation of space in PAS to create a 48 person studio space for teaching these courses along with the purchase of new equipment to use in the studio class.  

Work on creating the new content for the course has already been underway this past semester with efforts from Profs. Burant, LeRoy, Milsom, Rozo, Visscher, and Wolgemuth. We are looking forward to teaching the introductory mechanics course for the first time in this new format in Fall 2024.