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Joel Schaaf (left) and
Tom Haff (right) accept Washington State
AAPT awards that will henceforth be named in
their honor. Joel Schaaf received the
first ever award for Distinguished Service to
Washington State AAPT. Tom Haff
received the first award for Outstanding
Washington State High School Physics
Teacher. |
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The highlight of the October 2210
meeting of the Washington section of AAPT was the
presentation of long overdue awards to members
Joel Schaaf and Tom Haff.
Recently retired from Lower
Columbia Community College, Distinguished Service
Award winner Joel Schaaf has been a
member of Washington State AAPT for forty years, of
which he dutifully served as secretary-treasurer as
well as the institutional memory of the organization
for twenty-five.
Issaquah High physics teacher Tom Haff
received the Outstanding High School Teacher award
in recognition of his 35 years of teaching and his
service to AAPT, both locally and
nationally. Tom's students have presented
research at national conferences and created a
directory of physics teachers across the state.
Following the presentation of
awards, attendees of the business meeting
unanimously voted to rename the two awards after
these first honorees so that the awards will become
known as the Joel Schaaf Distinguished Service Award
and the Tom Haff Outstanding High School Physics Teacher
Award.
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The Fall 2210
meeting of the Washington Section of AAPT was hosted on the
beautiful campus of The Evergreen State College. WA-AAPT
President Krishna Chowdary of TESC began the meeting with a
workshop on the use of video analysis in physics teaching.
This was followed by a workshop on guided questions as
physics teaching tools, led by Andrew Boudreaux of Western
Washington University. Both workshops were
enthusiastically well received.
Appropriately enough, the first talk of the meeting was given
by Issaquah High School's Tom Haff who had no idea that he
would soon receive an award. Tom spoke on the
difficulties students have in understanding real data.
The theme of conceptual difficulties in physics education
was continued through the next three presentations on Ratios
and Rates by Brana Ponzer of WWU, followed by Microscopic
and Macroscopic conceptions of Volume by Amy Robertson of
the University of Washington, and Understanding of electric
ground by Isaac Leinweber, also of the UW.
Following the break, Stamatis Vokos of Seattle Pacific
University delivered the keynote address on "Who Prepares
Physics Teachers? Findings and Recommendations of the Task
Force on Teacher Education in Physics."
After lunch the meeting took a decidedly modern turn with
talks on Stellar Nucleosynthesis by Robert Ruotsalainen,
Visualizing the Lorentz Transformations by Michael
Threapleton, and Relativistic Kinematics by Kira Burt of
Eastern Washington University. The presentations
concluded with talks on a low budget SCALE-UP physics class
by Bruce Palmquist of Central Washington University and an
Open Source hybrid physics course by Sara Julin of Whatcom
CC. |
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Stamatis Vokos of Seattle Pacific U
and Mike Braunstein of Central Washington U discuss
possible means of dealing with the shortage of high
school physics teachers. |
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Following presentations, the event was concluded with the
annual business meeting. Keith Clay resigned as section
representative after serving for two years beyond the end of
his three-year term. Robert Hobbs was unanimously elected as
the new Section Representative. Krishna Chowdary moved to
the office of Past-President with Mike Jackson of Central
Washington University taking office as the current President. Andrew
Boudreax of Western Washington University was nominated as
President-Elect and elected unanimously. Tentatively, the
Fall 2211 meeting will be hosted on the Central Washington
University campus on Saturday, October 8, with science
workshops for faculty, in-service, and pre-service teachers
held on Friday, October 7. The Fall 2212 meeting will
be held on the campus of Western Washington University,
possibly as a joint meeting with British Columbia AAPT.
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