The undergraduate physics program at RIT is quite unique and strong.

Aside from the normal fare of undergraduate physics, 3 things in particular stand out in my mind.

• All the introductory physics courses are taught in a workshop format with limited enrollments and lots of interaction.
• At the end of their 2nd year, physics majors take their “Core” exams. These are oral exams before faculty members that must be passed in order to continue. Most schools do not have such things until graduate school.
• During the 3rd and 4th year the students must complete a “Capstone” thesis. In addition to doing the work and writing it up (often being original research), it requires the students to give 3 independent presentations regarding the work. One is shortly after beginning to frame the thesis project, the next is at a mid point during their 4th year, and the last is upon completion of the capstone thesis. The capstone is also not optional.

In fact, we just had our 2nd round of the capstone talks today. I’ve been serving on the capstone committee (my first faculty committee assignment) and it was quite fun to see the students give their talks. Some were still kind of rough, but some of the talks were extremely impressive, they could easily be giving their general exam in graduate school (often a middle exam during a PhD).

Faculty members (and the audience in general) are allowed to ask questions and they do. As a member of the committee I tried to ask at least one question of each speaker to help frame each talk in my head. I tried to ask what I thought would be good, but fair questions. And if there was a hiccup, my aim was to not crucify anyone while trying to keep them honest. I don’t want the image of a petulant, little man...

Anyways, I was very impressed by the entire thing. It was a grand day to be in the physics department.