CIRTL forum to feature lecture by Nobelist Wieman

Nobelist Carl E. Wieman, a University of Colorado physicist, will be the distinguished lecturer for the annual forum of the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) at UW–Madison.

Wieman used the money that accompanied his Nobel Prize to create the award-winning Physics 2000 Web site.

Famous for his explorations of atoms cooled to just 100 millionths of a degree above absolute zero and the resulting creation of a new form of matter, Wieman will deliver a lecture on the interfaces of teaching and research at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 5, in the Memorial Union Theatre. The lecture, “Applying the Tools of Science to Teaching Science,” is free and open to the public.

His lecture is part of a forum program that includes talks by Joseph Bordogna, deputy director of the National Science Foundation (NSF); Lee Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; and Orlando Taylor, dean of Howard University’s Graduate School.

The CIRTL forum, to be held at the Edgewater Hotel, is intended as a “status report on the preparation of science, engineering and math graduate students in teaching and learning,” says Robert Mathieu, a UW–Madison professor of astronomy and CIRTL director. “These students will become the college and university faculties of tomorrow.”

CIRTL, begun this year with support from NSF, is an initiative to develop a national faculty in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) committed to implementing and advancing effective teaching and learning for diverse student audiences.

The forum, CIRTL’s first, will bring together graduate school deans and provosts from the nation’s major research universities, the institutions that produce much of the nation’s college faculty.

A primary goal of CIRTL is to facilitate the dissemination of research practices in STEM higher education, but Mathieu says a necessary first step is assessing the status of graduate-through-faculty teaching and learning development programs in the nation’s large universities. Subsequent forums will focus on dissemination of research, expertise and diverse perspectives of STEM learning.