SPIN-UP/TYC: Strategic Programs for Innovations in Undergraduate Physics at Two-Year Colleges

This project is investigating and analyzing the role of undergraduate physics instruction at two-year colleges (TYCs) in encouraging students, particularly women and minorities, to pursue undergraduate degrees in physics as well as in other areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The project is seeking to discover how some two-year colleges succeed in encouraging students to take introductory physics and then transfer to four-year institutions and become physics majors. Based on information gathered through a survey of TYC physics activities and site visits to ten TYCs, the project is publishing a series of case studies that physicists in other two-year colleges can use to enhance their teaching of introductory physics and to encourage the production of STEM majors, particularly physics majors.

The SPIN-UP/TYC project is investigating the basic mechanism of change in the two-year college physics program. The site visits and survey that this project is sponsoring seeks to identify the key personnel at the TYC responsible for implementing changes in the physics/science programs. The project is also investigating ways to better bridge two-year college and four-year college physics faculty. Better communication between these segments of the physics community not only encourage recruitment of physics majors and pre-service physics teachers in the TYCs and facilitate transfer to the four-year programs, it strengthens undergraduate physics as a whole.

During the SPIN-UP/TYC project, information concerning teacher preparation (particularly physics and physical science teaching preparation) at two-year colleges is being gathered. The teacher preparation information concerns both the processes and scope that selected two-year colleges use in their preparation of future teachers.

The SPIN-UP/TYC project is a collaboration between the American Association of Physics Teachers, Lee College, and Southwest Texas Junior College in association with the American Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society.