December 2003

Dear Physics/Astronomy Alums,

Here it is! Your eagerly awaited annual newsletter, chock-full of information about your classmates and those who came before and after you. We always greatly enjoy perusing it and finding out some of the latest news on what you all are doing.

The last year has brought much change to the Department, some very sad and some quite good. I described the painful news in my letter soliciting your entries last month. On the plus side, we have welcomed Kris Wedding ’91 as a visiting professor this year. Kevin Pettit is now in Boulder where he enjoys spending time with his son and finding new ways to help students learn physics (see his entry below). A poignant note is the upcoming retirement of Rich Noer. We will greatly miss his outstanding teaching and steady presence. I always call him the diplomat of the department, and I depend on him to help me avoid (some of) my worst hotheaded tendencies. But of course he will be able to enjoy other sides of life, as he eloquently testifies below.

If you would like to feel proud of your physics department, be sure to check out “Why So Many Undergraduate Physics Programs are Good But Few Are Great,” in the September 2003 Physics Today, p. 38. We were one of 21 physics departments visited by the National Task Force on Undergraduate Physics (NTFUP) to find out what we are doing right, and needless to say we are touted in the article as one of the “great” ones. I can say with great pleasure that the responsibility lies both with my wonderful colleagues and with our fantastic students, present and past.

Despite some serious financial challenges facing the College, we were granted permission to search for a tenure track experimentalist to start next year. We are in the midst of that process. Meanwhile we are also gearing up to look for three additional professors for next year to replace people on leave–an astrophysicist, another experimentalist, and a theorist. You could help us greatly by pointing candidates (including yourself as appropriate!) our way.

Joel Weisberg, Chair