The Guilford College Physics Department proposes to drive its upper-level curriculum with experiments in modern physics. The Department has been undergoing curriculum revision for several years beginning with its introductory courses and systematically moving through the entire physics sequence. The guiding principle underlying the revision is to better accommodate our students who, as a whole, have a wide spectrum of career goals and interests. Central to our new curriculum is the development of Portfolio Development courses with an emphasis on modern physics. By offering a substantial collection of Theory and Practice modules, students will have the opportunity to more effectively tune their education to their interests. Currently, our first-year course introduces our students to modern physics rather than to the more traditional topics of classical mechanics and electricity & magnetism which we instead begin during the second year. The second-year lab is designed to mirror the way that research in physics is actually done with students designing experiments, writing proposals giving conference-style talks and submitting papers in journal format. The physics major culminates in a required senior thesis. We have the necessary lab equipment to support the first and second year programs. However, due to a severe lack of working equipment, we do not have a viable experimental program to incorporate with 3rd- and 4th-year theoretical course work. We are proposing to create several main centers of study (e.g., atomic, nuclear, optical, low temperature solid state, etc.) all based on the LabView system. These centers will provide the back bone of our upper-level curriculum in modern physics . Within each of these centers, we will offer a substantial number of modules from which the students will select those that interest them. To complement these experiments, students will study the associated theoretical material either as part of an upper-level course or as a portfolio development course.
