Physics

Larry Kirkpatrick has always been a teacher; he just didn't know it. After receiving a B.S. in physics from Washington State University and a Ph.D. in experimental high-energy physics from MIT, he began his academic career at the University of Washington as a typical faculty member. However, he found that he was spending more and more time in the classroom and less and less time in the laboratory. Finally, he decided that he would get a position teaching physics full time or he would quit physics and use his computer skills to make lots of money. Fortunately, Montana State University hired him to teach physics. He served for eight years as academic director of the U.S. Physics Team that competes in the International Physics Olympiad each summer and has also served as President of the American Association of Physics Teachers. He retired in 2002 to concentrate on teaching, writing, ranching, and playing golf. Greg Francis is first and foremost a teacher. As an undergraduate at Brigham Young University he taught recitation sections normally reserved for graduate students. Later as a graduate student studying plasma physics at MIT he regularly found opportunities to teach classes normally reserved for research faculty. After finishing his doctorate in 1987 he served as a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. Although his day job gave him the opportunity to work with world-class scientists on exciting problems, he found that he really preferred his night job, teaching physics classes at the local community college. In 1990, Greg joined the Physics Education Research Group at the University of Washington-Seattle, learning the "science" of effective physics teaching. Since 1992 Greg has continued to experiment with active learning approaches in large introductory classes at Montana State University where he is currently an Associate Professor of Physics.