Last week I spent two days in Boulder, at the university, helping out with a site visit for the National Task Force for Excellence in Physics Teacher Education. (I was the non-Task-Force member of the site committee.) Boulder does all kinds of terrific stuff to turn out qualified physics teachers, and we went to learn all about how they do it. We interviewed everyone from undergraduates to chairs to deans to the Provost and the Chancellor, who, remarkably, knew all about the great physics education research that my colleagues there are doing. It was fascinating to get such a vertical slice of the university system. And it was entertaining to be treated like a visiting dignitary.
They kept us very busy, but we had time for a laugh in between meetings. Here I am with Monica Plisch of the American Physical Society (left), and my buddy Valerie Otero (right), who is faculty in the School of Education. It's her office we're in... see the mountains out the window? Boulder is staggering. If you can tear your eyes away from the mountains, you gaze out over the Great Plains, stretching out like an ocean as far as the eye can see.
