TOPS, A Program for Undergraduates to Stimulate Teaching Careers in Pre-College Physical Science

TOPS$^{1}$ (Teaching Opportunity in Physical Science) is a six-week summer program for undergraduate physics and engineering majors who are considering teaching careers. The program is hosted by the Center for Ultracold Atoms (CUA) at MIT and Harvard. The goal is to provide these students with an experience that could be pivotal in leading them to choose a teaching career. Participants work in two teams of four, each team under the supervision of an experienced teacher. They design courses that emphasize hands-on experiences, which they teach to middle school students at the Museum of Science in Boston and to high school students at MIT. TOPS is now in its third year. The themes of this summer's courses will be light and heat. \newline \newline *Co-author: Dan Kleppner, MIT \newline $^{1}$TOPS is sponsored by the CUA which is funded by the National Science Foundation