December 2002

Dear Physics/Astronomy Alums,

We've received many, many responses from you to our request for contributions to this annual letter and you've demonstrated once again that the term "Carleton Physics/Astronomy Alums" covers a huge range of interests, experiences, and career paths. Ex-president Steve Lewis was fond of saying "A typical Carleton student would be appalled at the notion that there is a typical Carleton student." I think that the same thing goes for the subset of those that concentrate on physics and astronomy.

For the first time in many years, there are no new faces among the faculty although there has been a bit of shuffling around. Cindy Blaha has returned from leave and Bill Titus is now in the midst of a fall-winter leave. We hired Maurice Clark to replace Cindy last year and he agreed to stay through this year to replace Bill too. Rich Noer is phasing down to half time and Kevin Pettit is phasing up to half time.

In contrast to the stability of the faculty, half of our (4-person) support staff is new. Last spring Doug Foxgrover assumed the role of Computing Coordinator for the Natural Sciences after serving many years as our Electronics and Lab Manager. To replace him we stole Tom Baraniak from a similar position at the University of Minnesota last summer. Among the many benefits that Tom brings us is improved communication with the Chemistry Department &endash; see Tom's note (below) for details. The other new person is Drew Weitz (Carleton '02 CS major) who, as our Technical Assistant, has shouldered the responsibility for keeping all of our computer users happy by keeping all of our computers running.

Our program was one of 23 that were singled out for a visit last year by the National Task Force on Undergraduate Physics. The goal of the task force was to identify common elements of successful physics programs as part of an effort to reverse the national decline in the number of students majoring in physics. The group that visited us was generally complimentary about our program, but they were particularly impressed that our students were so enthusiastic, articulate, and interested in things outside of physics.

Incoming president Rob Oden began his first presentation to the faculty last fall with a somber review of the parallel recent histories of the stock market and the college's endowment. The current stance toward next year's budget is to plan on significant increases in expenditures for student aid and for health insurance and to hold the lid on everything else - "flat" budgets, no new positions. That is not as bleak as it might be; many schools are planning on reductions in budgets and in personnel. And just before the freeze was announced we successfully prevailed upon the Associate Dean for some special funds to purchase the pieces necessary to put together an interesting experiment involving quantum mechanical mysteries associated with "entangled photons" and Bell's Inequality. So there will still be new developments in our program in spite of the overall restrictions.

We're interested in hearing from you at any time, not just for this one-a-year special effort. For sure, if you are in the area, please stop and see us. And, as always, we hope that the coming year will be a good one for you.

Bruce Thomas, Chair