Modernizing the Physics Undergraduate Curriculum

Times are changing fast in science, yet at many institutions the undergraduate physics degree is still taught the way it was done when I was an undergraduate student in 1988, with the teaching methods that were used then. While teaching methods have seen some development, but often less rigorous application, the curriculum itself remains often written in stone. A typical curriculum may, for example, never make it to the Standard Model of Physics, may never introduce theory much beyond beginner Quantum Mechanics, leaving the student knowledge somewhere in the 1930s, and will often fall short of introducing students to Methods in Physics and other applied skills, which a changing world demands of graduates. The situation is often exacerbated by the increasing knowledge gap between high school and college and a consequent slowing down of teaching to make up the indispensable facts and mathematical methods. Further complication can sometimes result from well meant modern teaching, which leads to a deeper understanding, but whose teaching usually takes up more time and thus contributes to further delaying or cutting the curriculum content. I present a local approach to square all these epistemological circles from the perspective of a practitioner of physics and of college teaching.