9455656 Laws Funding from NSF would support the development of five new upper level courses in a renovated physics curriculum. Since only about 3% of students in introductory physics courses nationwide continue on to upper level courses, the curriculum must be made more appealing and the aims broader. Traditional curricula have been directed almost exclusively toward the training of undergraduates for graduate school and thence to becoming "physicists." Without sacrificing that goal, the aims of the undergraduate program can be broadened to provide benefits to those who will apply their conceptual understanding and logical problem solving abilities to a wide variety of future activities. Courses within the model Dickinson College physics major curriculum will be project-centered, dealing with real-world topics that appeal to students' curiosity. Learning is thereby motivated not by a vague possibility of future usefulness, but by an immediate need for understanding in order to deal with the course projects. This approach is an outgrowth of the Workshop Physics introductory courses developed at Dickinson College, a program that has been used at many other institutions. In a similar way, the new curriculum, the newly developed courses, the project modules, or supporting materials can be useful to other institutions. Projects included in the new courses will overlap topics covered in traditional courses, but will provide new emphases. For example, experiments with chaos will be incorporated into the dynamics course; magnetic resonance imaging will join other modern physics topics in Medical and Radiation Physics.
