There is, however, much to be optimistic about this academic year. Our entering graduate student class, at fifteen members, is larger and stronger than it has been in years, and it features many prospective first-rate physicists, including our first combined MD-PhD candidate. We have a new Chancellor, Ralph J. Cicerone - our own former Dean, and the winner of the prestigious 1999 Bower Award and Prize for Scientific Achievement - and a new Dean, the dis- tinguished mathematician and former Chair of Mathematics, Ronald J. Stern. As the new Chair of Physics and Astronomy, I am looking forward to working with both of them to build a better Department, and one of the more exciting such building tasks has already begun: for the first time in several years, we are recruiting for two new faculty positions in Physics and Astronomy - an astronomer and a theoretical particle physicist.
The new year brings several innovations to the curriculum. Among these are the new concentration (with the Department of Chemistry) in Chemical and Materials Physics and a completely redesigned (and to date partially implemented) undergraduate program. Please see the accompanying articles on these innovations by Peter Taborek and William Heidbrink, respectively, in this issue. I am particularly proud of the revised graduate curriculum, which we have updated and modernized, most significantly by adding courses in numerical methods, modern laboratory techniques, and the phenomenology of modern physics and devices.
The driving force behind the new graduate curriculum is the conviction on the part of a number of the faculty (which resonated with opinions expressed in our recent alumni survey) that we can better prepare our students for research, in graduate school and beyond, by addressing essential skills such as numerical computation directly and early on, in a classroom setting, rather than by relying on the previous (and prevailing) haphazard, pick-it-up-as-you-go-along approach. An immediate benefit of teaching this material at the beginning of graduate school is that numerical exercises can then be incorporated into higher level classes, providing insight into the advanced material and at the same time helping to develop the numerical expertise that only comes with extensive practice. We also believe that the "traditional" curriculum had become too formal and rigid, and that the physics of devices, for example, often got short-changed from both the theoretical and practical points of view. As a succinct and compelling, if anecdotal, argument in favor of the new phenomenology course, one of my colleagues cites the fact the current widely-used graduate text in electricity and magnetism nowhere contains the word "laser!" All students are strongly encouraged to take the phenomenology course, the inaugural edition of which is being taught by Professor Clare Yu (whose article on phase transitions in glasses appears in this issue). The numerical methods class is required for all students. The course in modern laboratory techniques is recommended for all experimentally inclined students; their more theoretical colleagues may substitute an advanced course in mathematical physics. Finally, we have moved the first course in statistical mechanics up from the second to the first year, so that this essential material is now considered fair game for the qualifying exam, normally taken by students at the start of the second year.
In addition we are now for the first time explicitly offering the M.S. degree by thesis, in addition to the existing M.S. degree by exam. Formerly, the thesis option was only available "under special circumstances." The new emphasis on the M.S. by thesis reflects the fact that it is now widely acknowledged that this route better prepares students for subsequent employment in physics and related fields. Our incoming graduate student class includes the first two of what we hope will be many Master's degree students to come.
As noted above, opinions expressed in our recent alumni survey contributed to the momentum for curricular change, and were also a factor in the development of the new Master's program. Your perspective is valuable to us and we sincerely appreciate your input. I would welcome hearing from you at any time; I am most easily reached by email.