Combining an Early Teaching Experience and Recruitment with an Advanced Physics Academy

Bridgewater State University (BSU), with funding from a PhysTEC Recruitment Grant has piloted an Advanced Physics Academy (APA) for high school students who have completed a year of any level of physics and are interested in majoring in physics or engineering. The APA serves as an early teaching experience for our Physics Education majors. Additionally, the APA highlights the work of BSU physics students and faculty in a hope to encourage students to apply to BSU and study physics. Initially efforts have been very successful. We hoped to enroll 20 students and actually enrolled over 40. Students are attending four, three-hour workshops on the topics of optics and astronomy, relativity, quantum physics, and photonics engineering.