Focus On...Critical Mass: Recruitment & Retention in Physics

When students drop out, everyone loses: the department, the college, and the student. While the college or university is most responsible for attracting undergraduate students to UC, the departments themselves are the most influential at keeping them. Important to the success of our students is that they feel a sense of community and that their individual educational needs are being met. The physics department has increasingly moved in this direction, and we are experiencing a surge in enrollment and greater retention because of it.

First, we found out where our majors go after graduation. They do amazingly diverse and fascinating things. Since not all our majors were preparing for graduate school in physics, we pared down our core requirements to allow for more flexibility to better meet their needs.

Second, we now require faculty advising before winter and spring registration so that we can review students’ interests and goals, performance, and future plans. We also meet all incoming physics majors when they come for freshman orientation during the summer. We give them questionnaires which allow us to get to know students faster, to get contact information on them, and most important, to alert us to their educational goals early. This questionnaire is administered to all transfer students or new majors, and updated regularly. We call or e-mail students that aren’t properly registered or turn up missing.

Third, we actively integrate our majors into departmental activities at all levels. This past year, we had two undergraduates make research presentations at the department’s annual retreat. In addition, more than half of our post-freshman majors are employed in the department as tutors, computer technicians, or research assistants. This is more than a job, as tutoring has been shown to develop conceptual skills in fundamental physics.

It has taken several years to bring all these changes and policies together, but we are now seeing our reward. We recently had nine physics majors volunteer to talk with prospective students attending the Cincinnatus competition, and they were spectacular salespersons for our program. They spoke of the individual attention, the wonderful teaching, and the great opportunities for jobs within the department. There is little doubt that the prospective students we met that day will be here in the fall. We've achieved a critical number of engaged students by creating a supportive community, and our retention and recruitment will continue to increase.