OAPT AAPT Winter Meeting 2006 AAPT

Section Reps Meeting

Sunday, Jan 22, 2006 6:30 - 8:00 PM

The meeting was called to order by Randy Peterson. Delegates and visitors were asked to stand, introduce themselves, and identify their sections. AAPT officers were introduced. A sign-in sheet was circulated. The minutes of the Summer 2005 meeting in Salt Lake City were adopted. Delegates were reminded that travel funds reimbursements were taken from a fixed pot. If not enough is available to meet claim forms, each will be prorated as a percentage. AAPT will reimburse airline tickets, transfer fees up to $20, two nights in the conference hotel, and three days of meals up to $35 per day. AAPT will not reimburse the conference registration fee of $225.

Section reps are required to send in a list of section officers, including their terms of office, and section news, at least once each year. Pictures are invited, but must be high-quality JPGs or better. Send to aapt-pubs@aapt.org. Section reps were invited to consider volunteering for one of the many committees formed by the AAPT. A list of such committees is available on the web site www.aapt.org.

A Handbook for Local Sections of the AAPT was distributed.

Free high school resources for teaching physics are available at www.compadre.org.

AAPT provides mini-grants of $500 for running teacher preparation sessions. See the hand-out for details.

Section reps can send meeting information for posting on the web site. The AAPT web site will host a section LISTSERV for free. See the handbook for details.

There are lots of World Year of Physics items left over. Watch the web site for announcements of special sales.

2007 has been designated the Year of Cold. PBS will air a special on absolute zero. Visit www.pbs.org for details.

Warren Hein presented a report on the AAPT outreach initiative to 2-year and 4-year colleges. One example is a session on teaching general relativity to undergraduates to be offered at the Summer 2006 meeting in Syracuse, NY. Another outreach initiative seeks to reach graduate students and TAs in physics. A third is aimed at bringing together universities that have made large scale changes in their undergraduate physics programs, such as the University of Illinois.

Information sheets on the Physics Bowl and the US Physics Team were distributed. Elections were held for various positions. Results: Secretary: Ann Brandon National Nominating Committee Reps: David Wright, John Fitzgibbons Membership: Doug Lombardi, John Zwart Section Nominating Committee: Paul Robinson, Eric Peterson, David Donnelly A photo directory of section reps was distributed. The next summer meeting will be in Syracuse, NY. Note: dormitory rooms are not air-conditioned. The Winter 2007 meeting will be in Seattle, WA. The Winter 2008 meeting will be in Baltimore, MD. Note: AAPT loses money on both summer and winter meetings. Some suggestions for improving meetings are: -increase the number of poster sessions, and decrease the number of contributed papers -provide more free time for delegates to connect A proposal for meeting changes was handed out. The meeting was adjourned.