This is a past event.

Harald Griesshammer from The George Washington University will be presenting at this week's Physics Colloquium.

Griesshammer's presentation is titled "GW's Graduate Curriculum Revamping: Experiences and Loose Ends."

The seminar will be presented in person at 4 p.m. on Thursday (Feb. 15) in Fisher 139.

ABSTRACT:

A new graduate curriculum at GW attempts to address nation-wide problems:

(1) a wide gap between 50-year-old curricula and the proficiencies expected to start research; (2) high attrition rates and long times to degree; (3) limited resources in small departments to cover all topics deemed essential. The new curriculum's goals were: (1) extend each course to 4 hours weekly for better in-depth coverage and cautious additions; (2) decrease the number of core courses per semester to 2; (3) increase synergies by stricter logical ordering and synchronisation; (4) free faculty to regularly offer advanced courses; (5) integrate examples tied to ongoing research in our department; (6) integrate computational methods into core-lectures; (7) encourage focusing on concepts and "meta-cognitive skills" in studio-like settings; (8) provide a qualifying exam as meaningful test of skills. I discuss the rationale of the changes, and what an ongoing review identifies as strengths and weaknesses. I emphasise the importance of input from faculty, students, and external sources to build as broadly as possible a consensus.

BIO:

Harald W. Griesshammer is a Professor of Theoretical Nuclear and Particle Physics at George Washington University (Washington DC), where he led the multi-year curriculum development which was also discussed in the APS and AAPT Graduate fori. He has been the Physics Graduate advisor for a decade. His other research in low-energy nuclear and hadronic Physics explores the emergence of the rich structure of few-nucleon systems from deceptively simple QCD interactions, and in turn the emergence of patterns in it.