One of the weaknesses of present day physics graduates, beginning their professional career with a bachelor's degree, is a lack of appropriate research and communication skills and experience with modern scientific equipment. Identifying this weakness, this project focuses on integrating inquiry-based learning in our bachelor degree program in physics with an emphasis on Instrumentation. In this program, the students are required to take an upper-level instrumentation course involving a research experience in faculty laboratories. The program fills the gap between the low-level skills taught in the introductory physics labs and the more advanced research skills needed in the Instrumentation Course. A review of the literature makes apparent that inquiry-based approach to the laboratories can provide the students the opportunity to learn necessary research skills. Multiple NSF-funded projects that have developed laboratories in spectroscopy, modern physics, and material science are the basis of the adaptation and implementation efforts in this project. Elements of these projects are incorporated into a single semester course where the students work in three broad areas of interest: 1)interference, 2) spectroscopy, and 3) materials science. This modern physics lab combines theoretical mastery of physical concepts with practical mastery of the skills necessary to work with modern scientific equipment and solve research problems using an inquiry approach. Specifically, after a guided introduction to the techniques, relevant literature, and available equipment, the students are responsible for developing their own research problems concerning the topic. This requires researching the literature and writing brief proposals for the three projects. The time scheduled for each project allows the students flexibility to change their proposed procedures dependent on the incoming results. At the end of each project the students submit written reports, and at the end of the semester they select one project for a seminar presentation. The effectiveness of this course is evaluated through several mechanisms: student surveys, analysis of the students' coursework, surveys of employers to evaluate the long-term effect of the course.
