Members of the faculty hold Ph.D.'s from many of the nation's leading universities. Each is a dedicated teacher and scholar, publishing their results in the nation's top physics journals. Our faculty have often been honored by professional and academic physics societies, including the American Physical Society, the U.S. Dept. of Energy, and NASA. The Department has a 10:1 student to faculty ratio, and does not award graduate degrees. This means that all classes are taught by professors and undergraduate students receive all the faculty attention and support that they need.
The Department serves nearly 120 majors in its physics, computer physics, physics teaching, and engineering physics programs. More than half are from the top quarter of their high school class. The mean ACT composite score is above 27. The lack of graduate students opens up numerous opportunities for undergraduate students in research, employment, and scholarships. Students may apply for employment as research assistants, lab graders and proctors, computer programmers, and planetarium assistants, or they may apply to assist faculty in professional research in the areas of laser physics, nanoscience, space physics, nonlinear systems, and atomic, molecular and optical (AMO) physics. Faculty regularly obtain grants from major national agencies such as NSF, NASA, and DOE that support our undergraduate researchers with paid stipends.
