The project is holding a Summer Conferences on Faculty Scholarship: Combining Excellence in Research and Innovation in Physics Education. This two-week long conference will be held in the summers of 1998 at Harvard University and be open to about 35 participants. Priority will be given to young faculty, faculty who teach (or will be teaching) introductory physics, and women and minority faculty. The goals are to: 1. Help narrow the gap between the research and education communities in physics; 2. Introduce faculty to educational innovations that can be readily implemented; 3. Develop curricular materials for a new approach to teaching introductory physics. The conference will include presentations on leading edge research and educational innovation, workshops on educational technologies, and group work on curriculum development. Research talks will be by members of the faculties of Harvard University and MIT, with a preference for faculty who are not only active in research but also have an interest in education. For the presentations on education we will draw from a broader national pool of speakers. An important criterion for these talks will be that the pedagogies, innovations, or educational technologies presented must be ready and easy to implement at the participants' home institutions. The participants will receive detailed materials to take home. Lastly, to make the participants stakeholders in the process of educational innovation, they will collectively work on the development of tutorial worksheets, conceptual questions, and a variety of problems for a new conservation-law based curriculum for introductory physics. A number of activities are planned to evaluate, and follow up on, the conference.
