Degree Tracks | EP3 Guide

Description Benefits Effective Practices Programmatic Assessments Resources Evidence Glossary

This section provides guidance on developing specialized degree tracks or majors within your physics program. Examples of such tracks include applied physics, engineering physics, biophysics, optics, astrophysics, and physics education, and can include BS and/or BA options. Such degree tracks may be developed within your department or collaboratively with other departments in your institution. This section explains how multiple degree tracks can be developed and sustained, and includes guidance on determining the degree tracks that would best fit your local context, establishing the resources and partnerships necessary to maintain each degree track, developing the curriculum for each track, and supporting and promoting your degree tracks. The section focuses on general guidance on degree tracks, rather than suggestions for specific degree tracks or their associated curricula. For guidance on how to establish a degree option for high school teacher education within a physics major or minor, see the section on High School Physics Teacher Preparation. For guidance on how to establish a dual-degree program within your institution or with a partner institution, see the section on Dual-Degree Programs.

Benefits

Offering multiple degree tracks provides flexibility and options for specialization that can support a broad range of students in meeting their educational goals. Well-chosen degree tracks can substantially improve recruiting and retention of students and prepare students for careers in the private or public sector or graduate school in specialty areas. These tracks provide students with curricular options to seek out and explore connections among physics subdisciplines and between physics and other disciplines, and to engage in interdisciplinary projects and research. By providing degree tracks that appeal to a broader range of students than traditional physics degree tracks do, your department can better meet the needs of an increasingly diverse population of students and thus support equity, diversity, and inclusion. Because specialized degree tracks often highlight career options that are more widely known than traditional physics careers, they can be a powerful recruiting tool, particularly for students who might not otherwise be interested in physics. Finally, such tracks can benefit your department by supporting shared curricula and closer ties with associated departments and relationships with faculty in those departments.

Effective Practices

Assess the institutional landscape with respect to creating or modifying degree tracks
Establish departmental and institutional resources needed for the success of your degree tracks
Develop a curriculum that engages students at all levels for each degree track
Engage external stakeholders to support and promote your degree tracks

Programmatic Assessments

The Cycle of Reflection and Action

Where are you and what are you trying to accomplish?

Who should be involved?

What will you do?

How did it go and what comes next?

To be intentional about change, a department must have a clear understanding of its present situation and a vision for what it would like to become. Our cycle of self-reflection questions will help your department start conversations and structure thinking about how to get from where you are to where you want to be.

The Cycle of Reflection and Action will help you put the EP3 Guide to work for your department.

Learn more about the Cycle of Reflection and Action and how it can help your department.

Guide to Degree Tracks

Benefits

Effective Practices

Assess the institutional landscape with respect to creating or modifying degree tracks

Establish departmental and institutional resources needed for the success of your degree tracks

Develop a curriculum that engages students at all levels for each degree track

Engage external stakeholders to support and promote your degree tracks

Programmatic Assessments

The Cycle of Reflection and Action

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