On the day that Carl Wieman received the Nobel Prize for physics in 2001, he insisted that the time of a news conference be moved up 15 minutes so that he wouldn聮t be late to teach his undergraduate class on physics for nonscience majors.
His unwavering dedication to undergraduate teaching was recognized by two national organizations today when the distinguished professor of physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder was named Professor of the Year among all doctoral and research universities in the United States.
Wieman will be honored at a luncheon today at the Willard InterContinental Hotel in Washington, D.C., by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. A current or former student of each national winner will introduce them.
Wieman was selected from among 307 top professors nominated by universities throughout the nation. Rather than accepting the $5,000 prize that comes with the award he has asked the Carnegie Foundation and CASE to donate it directly to an account he established with his Nobel Prize money at the CU Foundation to support improvements in science education.
The judges honored Wieman 聯for his extraordinary work in the scholarship of teaching and learning in his undergraduate course for nonscience majors and in the simulations he makes available for physics teachers and students on the Web,聰 according to the award citation. 聯We also appreciate the ways in which he is using his prestige as a Nobel Prize-winning scientist to further faculty discussions about teaching and learning at the University of Colorado and on other campuses around the country.聰
Wieman will be introduced at the award luncheon by Sarah Wheeler, a former student in his class for nonscience majors on 聯The Physics of Everyday Life.聰 Wheeler is a 2004 CU-Boulder graduate with a bachelor聮s degree in philosophy and a minor in classics who will be attending Yale Divinity School next year.
On the same day that Wieman returns from Washington, Nov. 19, he will speak to middle school, high school and college instructors at a symposium on science teaching in Denver. And he will do it again in Boulder on Nov. 20.
Wieman, 53, has taught undergraduate and graduate students at CU-Boulder since 1984. He is one of only 25 faculty members who have held the title of distinguished professor on the CU-Boulder campus, is a President聮s Teaching Scholar, holds a Marsico Endowed Chair of Excellence and is a fellow and former chairman of JILA, a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
A campus celebration of Wieman聮s honor will be held Dec. 6 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the Glenn Miller Ballroom of the University Memorial Center. He is believed to be the first Nobel laureate to be named a national Professor of the Year.
CASE established the Professors of the Year program in 1981 and the Carnegie Foundation became the co-sponsor a year later. In addition to four national award winners there also were 47 state award winners, including Colorado Professor of the Year Robert von Dassanowsky at CU-Colorado Springs.
Wieman is CU-Boulder's first national Professor of the Year winner. CU-Boulder history Professor Patricia Limerick was named one of nine national runners-up to a single U.S. Professor of the Year for all institutions in 1988. And CU-Boulder has had three Colorado Professor of the Year winners: Dennis Van Gerven, professor of anthropology, in 1998; Klaus D. Timmerhaus, professor of chemical engineering, in 1993; and John Taylor, professor of physics, in 1989.
Wieman was selected from faculty nominated by four-year colleges and universities offering doctoral degrees throughout the country. The other three national winners were in categories for other types of institutions: community colleges, baccalaureate colleges and institutions where the top offering is a master聮s degree.
CASE assembled two preliminary panels of judges to select this year聮s finalists. The Carnegie Foundation then convened the third and final panel, which selected four national winners and each of the state winners.
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching was founded in 1905 by Andrew Carnegie 聯to do all things necessary to encourage, uphold and dignify the profession of teaching.聰 The foundation is the only advanced-study center for teachers in the world and the third-oldest foundation in the nation.
CASE is the largest international association of educational institutions, with more than 3,200 colleges, universities and independent elementary and secondary schools in nearly 50 countries, including the United States, Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom. Representing these institutions are more than 38,000 professionals in the disciplines of alumni relations, communications and fund raising.
TIAA-CREF, one of America聮s leading financial services organizations and higher education聮s premier retirement system, became the primary sponsor for the awards ceremony in 2000. Additional support for the program is received from the American Association of Community Colleges and other various higher education associations.
Wieman earlier this year was named chair of the National Research Council聮s Board of Science Education, which will examine U.S. science education at all levels from kindergarten to graduate school. He was selected for the post from among the 2,000 members of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, which advises the government on scientific issues.
聯Good science and technology education has a critical role in preparing the nation聮s workforce for the 21st century economy,聰 he said. 聯We also need a much more technically literate society because society is faced with major issues now that have science at their core. Global warming, energy sources and what to do and not to do in terms of genetic modification and manipulation -- these are all fundamentally technical issues. If people are going to make wise decisions about these things they have to know much more about them than they do now. And making the wrong decisions can have enormous detrimental impacts.
聯Because of these two reasons, science education is really much more important now than it was a few decades ago. It聮s not about just producing more scientists.聰
For many years, Wieman has been a leader in using technology to improve science education. His classes make use of computer simulations used to conduct 聯virtual聰 physics experiments, infrared transmitter 聯clickers聰 that provide immediate feedback on how well students are understanding classroom lectures, and other innovations.
In 2001, Wieman was one of the first seven scientists and engineers in the United States to receive the National Science Foundation聮s Director's Awards for Distinguished Teaching Scholars. The award is NSF's "highest honor for excellence in both teaching and research" and each recipient received $300,000 to continue sharing their teaching talents and research excellence with students at all levels and with the public at large.
Wieman used part of that money to start a Physics Education Technology Fund to support his science education efforts, and later contributed $250,000 of his Nobel Prize award to it. The fund was used to launch the creation of the Physics Education Technology project, or PhET, that provides interactive physics instruction on the World Wide Web.
Wieman, who shared the Nobel Prize for creating a new form of matter called Bose-Einstein condensate in 1995, has taught a large undergraduate physics class on 聯The Physics of Everyday Life聰 since 2000. Many of his students are CU-Boulder freshmen and all of them plan to major in disciplines other than science or engineering.
Among Wieman's numerous awards are the 2000 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics, the King Faisal International Prize for Science, the Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science and the Richtmyer Lecture Award from the American Association of Physics Teachers.
The physics department is part of CU-Boulder's College of Arts and Sciences.
For more information see the News Center Special Report: 2004 U.S. Professor of the Year