Education & Diversity Update

Nearly 100 physicists gathered February 9-10 for the annual conference of the Physics Teacher Education Coalition to network and learn more about preparing future physics teachers. Several of them stayed for the next two days (February 10 & 11) for the triennial Building Thriving Undergraduate Physics Programs workshop, where more than 100 faculty developed strategies to strengthen their undergraduate physics programs.

To help institutions prepare future physics teachers, the PhysTEC project has released a new rubric for characterizing teacher preparation programs in order to help faculty identify how their programs can grow and improve. The Physics Teacher Education Program Analysis Rubric, along with its user-friendly supporting materials, can help program leaders emulate the thriving programs.