Effective Practices
Assess the institutional landscape with respect to creating or modifying degree tracks
- Learn about your students’ educational goals and career aspirations through, e.g., informal conversations, focus groups, and/or exit interviews with students; and/or discussions with academic advisors and research mentors.
- Identify groups of students your department might want to recruit to additional degree tracks, e.g., students with particular interests or backgrounds, transfer students from community colleges, students in your introductory courses and service courses, and/or students from . Talk to and/or survey students from these groups to learn about their needs and interests and identify potential degree tracks for your department to consider.
- Consider degree tracks that allow students to specialize in a content area in which your department or institution has particular strengths (e.g., applied physics, astrophysics, biophysics, and/or optics) and learn associated skills (e.g., experimental, computational, communication, and/or research skills). Also consider degree tracks that address a particular need (e.g., to prepare students for medical school or for careers with local employers).
- Become familiar with examples of successful degree tracks at other institutions, such as the Applied Physics degree program at California State University San Marcos, the Astronomy and Astrophysics degree program at Florida Institute of Technology, the Biophysics degree program at Duke University, and the Electro-Optics option at San Diego State University.
- Discuss with your administration your plans for looking into degree tracks, to learn about any potential barriers to their, e.g., budgetary or enrollment concerns. See 2.A below for details.
- Analyze data, likely in partnership with your office of institutional research, on enrollment and interest in various STEM majors and minors over time. Explore opportunities to create degree tracks in areas related to popular STEM majors.
- Collect and analyze data on recruiting, retention, and enrollment of students in your department’s current degree track(s) and look for patterns that suggest whether additional degree tracks are needed and, if so, which ones. For example, if students in your introductory courses don’t choose to major in physics because they are more interested in other subjects, then broadening your degree programs might help recruit from a larger base of students. On the other hand, if students are interested in physics but don’t choose to major in it for other reasons, then it might be more effective to focus on recruiting into the tracks you already have. Or, if your program recruits a large number of students who then leave the major, then it might be more effective to focus on retention in the tracks you already have.
- For each potential degree track, estimate the number of students who might be interested in pursuing the track and consider the benefits and drawbacks of creating the track. For instance, if a given track seems likely to attract a significant number of additional students and/or students from groups your department has not historically been successful in recruiting, it may be worth investing the time, effort, and other resources needed to build and maintain this track.
- Consider whether additional degree tracks could be useful for recruiting students into your program, even if some students end up switching between tracks within your program and some tracks end up graduating fewer students than others.
- Assess resources available within and opportunities for mutually beneficial partnerships with other related STEM departments, programs, schools, and/or units within your institution. For example, a degree track in applied physics might take advantage of resources available through programs in biophysics, chemical physics, computational physics, an engineering discipline, innovation, and/or entrepreneurship.
- Identify existing degree programs at your institution that align with degree tracks you are considering creating, and determine whether these programs could serve as partners and/or provide courses for your degree tracks. Examples might include electrical engineering for an applied optics track, mechanical engineering for a robotics track, materials science for a thin-film technology track, and/or data science for a computational physics track.
- Identify costs associated with establishing and sustaining potential degree tracks. Consider both budgetary costs (related to, e.g., teaching time or faculty FTEs, administrative or staff time, and lab space) and opportunity costs (i.e., the time and effort needed from department members to create new degree tracks).
- Identify obstacles that might prevent students from completing each potential degree track. Obstacles might include lack of existing courses and/or flexible pathways through these courses, limited faculty expertise, additional prerequisites for specialized courses, lack of equipment or laboratory space, and/or increased time to degree.
- Identify other departments with specialized degree tracks and talk to those tracks’ faculty leaders about how they developed and maintained their curricula, dealt with unexpected obstacles, etc.
- Identify how your administration measures enrollment, time to degree, , student-faculty ratios, and degrees awarded (e.g., at the degree-track level or the department level) to ensure that each degree track will meet administrative expectations for viability and sustainability according to these metrics.
- Determine the potential impacts additional degree tracks could have on your undergraduate program. Consider both potential positive impacts (e.g., recruiting of more students into your program) and potential negative impacts (e.g., fewer majors in existing degree tracks and/or decreasing enrollment in upper-level courses not required for some degree tracks).
- Determine the appropriate number and breadth of degree tracks given your administration’s metrics and the number of students likely to be interested in each track.
- Work with collaborating departments, employers, and graduate school programs to identify the prerequisite skills students in each degree track need to be prepared for relevant careers and/or graduate programs. Use this information to help shape each track.
- Learn about national initiatives that can help shape your degree tracks, e.g., the National Quantum Initiative or Manufacturing USA.
- Create a working group to identify goals and potential learning outcomes for each degree track. Include stakeholders from outside your department (e.g., alumni, representatives from local employers, and/or faculty from potential partner departments) on this committee, particularly for multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary degree tracks.
- Incorporate the development of additional degree tracks into your department’s strategic plan. See the section on How to Create and Use a Strategic Plan for details.
- Identify faculty with appropriate expertise in course content and/or external engagement to lead each degree track’s development, implementation, assessment, and improvement.
- Identify a diverse and committed group of faculty to develop each degree track’s curriculum, provide academic and career advising, and engage students in research projects related to the track. See the sections on Upper-Level Physics Curriculum, Undergraduate Research, Advising and Mentoring of Students, and Career Preparation for details.
- Identify regional professionals who could serve as adjunct faculty members, research mentors, subject matter experts, and/or internship supervisors for your degree tracks.
- Identify collaborating departments or units (e.g., biology, computer science, or engineering) for each degree track, and create any needed shared leadership structures (e.g., a steering group or curriculum committee).
- Identify the primary ‘home’ for each degree track, which departments will provide necessary support (e.g., fiscal, teaching, advising, and laboratory resources) and who will be responsible for administrative oversight (e.g., deans and/or department chairs of physics and supporting departments).
- See Programmatic Assessments below for examples of relevant data to collect about each degree track.
- Regularly revisit the needs identified in 1.A above to determine how they are changing over time, and if changes to your degree tracks are needed.
Establish departmental and institutional resources needed for the success of your degree tracks
- Identify administrators who are supportive of specialized degree tracks.
- Proactively work with administrators to ensure you are meeting their expectations for, e.g., course and degree track enrollments, recruiting of students from , students’ post-graduation outcomes, and benefits to other programs and external stakeholders.
- Explain the measurable benefits of your degree tracks for your institution, students, and other stakeholders. Provide a timeline for realization of these benefits, and advocate for the resources your department will need (e.g., faculty lines or adjunct positions, course offerings, classroom space, and lab equipment) to ensure that these benefits materialize.
- Explore whether joint faculty appointments (with, e.g., biology or environmental engineering) could be a cost-effective way for administrators to support degree tracks.
- Leverage findings from national reports (e.g., the Phys21 report) and initiatives (e.g., the National Quantum Initiative or Manufacturing USA) when advocating for specialized degree tracks.
- If needed, seek internal funding to support your degree tracks with, e.g., marketing, equipment, and/or personnel to support and teach in the program. Work with collaborating departments to make joint requests, as such requests are more likely to be successful.
- Keep relevant administrators aware of the goals and successes of your degree tracks, for instance in preparing students for careers, improving equity and inclusion, and increasing the total number of physics majors. See Programmatic Assessments below for additional ways to measure the success of your degree tracks.
- Ensure that your department’s faculty and staff have sufficient breadth of expertise to support your degree tracks, e.g., by hiring faculty and staff with diverse expertise. See the section on How to Be an Effective Chair for guidance on how to hire strong and diverse faculty and staff.
- Ensure that your department has faculty with sufficient experience and longevity who are willing to assist with and/or lead the effort to create and sustain new degree tracks, advocate for departmental resources, and integrate new degree tracks into your departmental culture.
- Provide guidance to support who teach in each degree track in understanding and educating students about the track and its associated career and/or graduate school trajectories.
- Assign who teach in each degree track as advisors or co-advisors to students who might be interested in pursuing this track. See the section on Advising and Mentoring of Students for detail.
- Ensure that faculty and are positively recognized for their work supporting specialized degree tracks in personnel reviews for, e.g., retention, tenure, promotion, and merit.
- See the section on How to Be an Effective Chair for guidance on how to support faculty and staff in achieving excellence.
- Identify the most effective collaborations for a particular degree track. For example, you might collaborate with a biology department to offer a degree track in biophysics; an engineering department to offer a degree track in engineering physics; and/or mathematics, engineering, and/or computer science departments to offer a degree track in quantum information science.
- Identify departments that can support each degree track by offering required courses. For example, the mathematics department might offer applied mathematics courses, and/or the English department might offer technical writing courses.
- Work with faculty in collaborating and supporting departments to identify courses in their departments that could be integrated into your degree tracks. See 3.B below for details.
- Highlight your degree tracks’ benefits for students (in, e.g., presentations and reports) to supporting departments and other units and to relevant administrators such as deans and the provost.
- Create structures to engage faculty members from collaborating departments and units. For example, establish a working group of faculty from multiple departments who work together to solve problems that arise in implementing degree tracks.
- Coordinate with collaborating departments on the curriculum and course sequences for each degree track. Coordinate with collaborating and supporting departments on the scheduling of course offerings for each degree track.
- Regularly connect with academic advisors in collaborating and supporting departments and in institutional academic advising structures. Share current information (e.g., sample schedules and promotional materials) and points of contact for students interested in your degree tracks. See the section on Advising and Mentoring of Students for details.
Develop a curriculum that engages students at all levels for each degree track
- Use a consensus process among relevant faculty in your department and collaborating departments (see 1.B.ii above) to develop encompassing subject matter topics and professional skills for each degree track.
- Consider an assessment structure in which all of your department’s degree tracks share some common and each degree track also has some specific outcomes.
- For degree tracks designed to prepare students for particular careers or for graduate school in particular fields, see the sections on Career Preparation and Preparing Students for Graduate School in Physics and Related Fields for guidance on related learning outcomes.
- Identify existing courses within your department that could serve as a foundation for a degree track, e.g., electronics, optics, and computational physics courses.
- Identify existing courses within your department that can be modified to support your degree tracks, e.g., experimental physics and mathematical physics courses.
- If necessary to ensure adequate enrollment in the specialized courses needed for your degree tracks (e.g., biophysics or optics courses), make these courses appealing and accessible to students from other relevant departments (e.g., by ensuring that the prerequisites are appropriate).
- Identify courses from outside your department that could be part of your degree tracks. Ensure that the associated prerequisites for these courses are reasonable for your students.
- Identify any new courses that will be needed and determine how they will affect your department’s budget and teaching assignments. For example, determine whether these courses will require new equipment or facilities, whether they will be taught by existing or new personnel, and whether they will replace or supplement existing courses.
- Ensure faculty leaders of each degree track are knowledgeable about the prerequisite skills determined in 1.C.iv and how they will be used, so that they can appropriately design tracks and advise students.
- Use a to identify how skills and content for each required course map onto the for the degree track.
- If courses from other departments are required for a degree track, develop agreements among your department, supporting departments, and relevant administrators. These agreements should ensure that required courses are offered regularly and that they are accessible to physics students in this degree track, e.g., through waivers for physics students to take biology courses designated as “for majors only.”
- Ensure that there are no hidden prerequisite courses (i.e., required courses whose credits are not accounted for in the degree) within the degree track.
- Design or modify each degree track so that students can complete the required courses within a four-year period (or a three-year period for transfer students or late switchers with the appropriate prerequisites). This may require negotiation and adjustments from your department and/or supporting departments, such as modification of course offerings, availability, corequisites, or prerequisites.
- Ensure that degree tracks are available to all students, including transfer students and late switchers into physics. Understand and help students navigate the financial aid resources that may be available for those who switch too late to graduate in four years.
- Ensure that students are easily able to switch between tracks, recognizing that students may be initially attracted to (and recruited through) a particular degree track but may decide later that another track better fits their interests and goals.
- Provide supporting each degree track with the flexibility to waive prerequisites for students who demonstrate competence in relevant skills without having completed specific courses, such as transfer students with similar coursework backgrounds or experiences. Collaborate and communicate with instructional staff teaching relevant courses, particularly courses in other departments, to ensure that waivers are appropriate and accepted by everyone.
- Identify course sequencing, timing, and options in a document that advisors and students can use to plan pathways through the track, particularly if some courses will be offered every other year and/or in other departments.
- Examine curricular paths in collaborating and supporting departments to determine whether there are opportunities for their majors to take introductory physics in their first or second years (rather than third or fourth years), thus allowing time for them to double major in physics using a shared degree track.
- See the section on Retention of Undergraduate Physics Majors for additional guidance on how to ensure that your program is flexible and relevant for students with a wide variety of backgrounds, interests, and career aspirations.
- Use national reports on career preparation, such as the Phys21 report, to determine appropriate content and skills for each degree track.
- Work with collaborating departments, employers, and graduate school programs to identify authentic problems that support and that can be incorporated into courses and projects throughout the degree track.
- Provide opportunities for students to participate in design and development processes, cost-benefit analyses, and problem-solving strategies that correspond to authentic industrial or research scenarios associated with the track.
- Provide opportunities for students to apply specific skills to increasingly complex scenarios, vertically integrated throughout the curriculum.
- Provide opportunities for students to participate in and help lead small-team projects that last for a term or longer, and that could support or benefit local employers.
- Provide opportunities for interdisciplinary teams of undergraduates to participate in research and course projects that enable each student to bring their discipline-specific skills and perspectives. For example, a drone survey of invasive plants could involve skills from physics (drone building), biology (plant identification), and computer science (image processing).
- Use a project-based learning approach to give students experience working on career-relevant projects, through, e.g., capstone experiences or internships.
- See the section on Career Preparation for additional guidance.
- Identify and promote curricular and co-curricular opportunities (e.g., internships, research experiences, and service learning projects) that enhance or expand student experiences in each degree track. See the sections on Internships, Undergraduate Research, and Community Engagement and Outreach for details.
- Provide opportunities for students to use projects facilitated by research collaborations with industry to replace prerequisite course requirements for relevant degree tracks, when appropriate.
- Work with relevant graduate programs to ensure that your degree tracks fulfill all their requirements for admission.
- Collaborate with relevant graduate programs to provide pathways for students to transition directly into the programs while completing their undergraduate degrees through, e.g., 3+2 or 4+1 BS/MS programs. See the section on Dual-Degree Programs for details.
- Provide professional development opportunities for students to learn about the application process and expectations of graduate programs related to your degree tracks. See the section on Preparing Students for Graduate School in Physics and Related Fields for details.
Engage external stakeholders to support and promote your degree tracks
- Ensure that faculty leaders of each degree track initiate and maintain collaborations with representatives from relevant employers and/or graduate programs in order to remain knowledgeable about their current needs and to periodically update and refine the degree track’s curriculum based on their feedback.
- Periodically contact external partners and stakeholders to provide updates on degree track successes (through, e.g., a newsletter, social media, blogs, and emails with links to your department website) and keep them engaged.
- Engage with and keep track of alumni of all of your degree tracks through, e.g., LinkedIn. Promote their career paths via, e.g., your department’s recruiting materials, website, posters, bulletin boards, and electronic display boards.
- Consider creating an advisory board for each degree track, including current students and alumni of the track, to, e.g., provide feedback on student learning outcomes, goals, initiatives, fundraising, assessments, and the relevance of the degree track’s curriculum.
- Periodically invite external stakeholders, partners, and advisory board members to campus to connect with faculty, students, and administrators by, e.g., giving a seminar or leading a lunch-and-learn discussion.
- Invite collaborative external partners and stakeholders to co-mentor or suggest projects for students, particularly for senior capstone projects.
- Identify professional development opportunities such as data collection workshops, demonstrations of research techniques, and/or demonstrations of research capabilities (e.g., scanning electron microscope) that your department could offer to external partners and stakeholders, to help build relationships.
- Connect with your development or fundraising office to identify ways to engage external stakeholders, alumni, and other potential donors to support your degree tracks. For example, engage them as participants in after-work gatherings or as judges for student posters.
- See the section on Recruiting of Undergraduate Physics Majors for guidance on promoting your program and recruiting students in your introductory and service courses, prospective students, other students at your institution, and students at appropriate high schools and community colleges.
- Include all degree tracks in all recruiting efforts, including collaborations with your admissions office and other campus student outreach programs to promote your program to prospective students. Work with collaborating departments to include joint degree tracks in both departments’ recruiting efforts.
- Ensure that faculty and students perceive all degree tracks to be similar in status.
- Educate advisors, research mentors, , and students on the and , in order to mitigate their effects on which degree track a student pursues or is encouraged to pursue. Systematically track which students are pursuing and completing each of your degree tracks, and look for and address sources of inequity. See the section on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for details.
- Work with new faculty and other to ensure that they understand and communicate the opportunities and requirements of your degree tracks to students. Regularly review these opportunities and requirements with your entire department.
- Identify students and alumni who can speak (e.g., at recruiting events, in introductory courses, and to external stakeholders) about their interests in and benefits from particular degree tracks.
- Promote the accomplishments of alumni of all of your degree tracks by, e.g., creating a networking website with summaries of alumni career paths and inviting alumni to give seminars about their careers.
- See the section on Career Preparation for guidance on educating students about the variety of careers that physicists pursue. See the section on Preparing Students for Graduate School in Physics and Related Fields for guidance on educating students about how going to graduate school might benefit them.
