Instruction in Optics and Photonics: An Efficient Pathway for Attracting Students in Physics for a Terminal Degree

For twenty years, our Physics Department offers a senior Optics course. This course was introduced for enriching our Physics undergraduate curriculum with experiential learning, and to offer an elective for chemistry and electrical engineering students (including for graduate students). Dozens of students used this course as an inspiration for their capstone independent research projects. Many of them have presented their research results on spectroscopy, fiber optics, and light-matter interaction topics to regional (Texas Joint Meetings of APS, AAPT and SPS) and national (i.e. March Meeting) conferences. Several students received the Goldwater scholarship, Beck fellowship, or became McNair scholars with research done on optics and photonics projects. The content of this course offered a substantial contribution and inspiration to generate attractive physics demos presented in roadshows at various middle- and high-schools in our area, as well as to several two-years colleges, for attracting students to consider Lamar University for a STEM degree. A few students moved forward to prestigious optics and photonics schools, like CREOL of UCF, University of Rochester, Arizona State University, and eventually became professionals, as quantum optics or laser scientists, in national labs (i.e. Rochester, N.Y., Albuquerque, N.M.) Recently, Optics became instrumental in our TUT EXCEL project sponsored by AIP for increasing the number of majors in physics at Lamar, with focus on underrepresented population in physics-related jobs, including in becoming physics teachers in high-schools. For them, knowing to manipulate optics demos and run optics labs will be valuable knowledge for a successful teaching career. At graduate level, the Optics course (converted into two courses Modern Optics and Experiments in Modern Optics) attracted many engineering students, some who chose to do an MS thesis, and even to continue with a doctoral degree in the optics and photonics fields, either at Lamar or elsewhere, or search for a job in the photonics market. The Optics course is impactful because it offers good understanding of physics concepts through hands-on experience and offers practical knowledge for creating a modern workforce. We report statistical data and best practices that makes Optics so attractive for physics majors