arXiv subjects

Mike Verostek

Publications and source records attributed to Mike Verostek.

11 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Student Perspectives on Traditional Pedagogy Used in Graduate Physics Coursework

Graduate programs in STEM disciplines are central to preparing future researchers and professors. Program requirements for students often include taking several graduate-level courses. Anecdotal evidence suggests that graduate coursework in physics in particular features outdated and ineffective pedagogical methods, with high emphasis on mathematical rigor in place of conceptual learning or connections made with authentic research. Prior physics education research indicates that students can leave graduate courses with shortcomings in conceptual understanding of covered topics. This pilot study is designed to document student perspectives on their graduate coursework in a single U.S. R1 physics Ph.D. program. A total of 14 semi-structured interviews were conducted with students enrolled in the program, and thematic analysis was conducted on five of these interviews for this paper. The resulting themes are discussed, including the prevalence of traditional passive lecture pedagogy and students placing high value on course content relevant to research.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2026

CURE-like, not cure-all: Varying broad relevance in experimentation labs produces similar student outcomes

Physics labs that engage students in practices authentic to experimental physics (experimentation-based labs) are being implemented to modernize the undergraduate physics curriculum and broaden participation in physics. Accordingly, prior research has positioned Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) as a means to extend the benefits of authentic undergraduate research experiences to more students. However, CUREs are resource-intensive and difficult to implement; a continuous stream of novel research projects adaptable for undergraduate courses is rare. Further, little is known about which specific components of a CURE are crucial to improving student outcomes and which components could be scaled back to improve feasibility for a wider range of class settings. In this study, we aim to isolate the component of broad relevance by running two experimentation-based labs in parallel: one "CURE-like" that increases broad relevance through the use of muon detectors, and one that uses equipment typical to an introductory physics lab and not relevant beyond the classroom. We measure student outcomes for both experimental critical thinking skills and attitudes towards physics labs. We use hierarchical linear modeling to compare student outcomes between the two labs. We find that both experimentation-based labs produce similar student outcomes. Our results suggest that increased levels of broad relevance may not inherently improve gains in student learning or attitudes. Future work should further investigate which components of different experimentation-based lab formats are associated with gains in student outcomes. Although this study did not implement a full CURE, our findings align with a growing body of evidence challenging the idea that CUREs are uniquely positioned to achieve superior student outcomes over other well-designed experimentation-based labs.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2025

Psychometric Evaluation of the Culture around Systemic Change Survey: A tool for Assessing Departmental Culture in Physics

Physics programs are continually evolving to better support student learning and meet the diverse needs of their populations. Achieving many of these goals requires not only structural adjustments but also fundamental shifts in departmental culture. Recognizing this, disciplinary organizations in physics have placed systemic change and equity at the center of reform efforts, identifying them as essential pillars of meaningful and sustainable change. Yet tools for assessing departmental culture around educational change remain limited. In this study, we introduce the Culture around Systemic Change Survey (CSCS), a new instrument designed to measure faculty and staff perceptions of their department's "current" and "ideal" states. Using responses from the "current" scale only (N=111 participants across 33 departments), we conducted a psychometric evaluation of the CSCS. Exploratory factor analysis supported a five-factor structure, including Open-Mindedness (OM), Student Involvement (SI), Collective Interpretation of Evidence (CE), Sustainability (S), and Disruption of Systemic Injustices (DI). As survey development is an iterative process, future work will focus on refinement and confirmatory analysis. This work sets the foundation for conducting population studies that assess the state of progress of the physics community along an equitable and systemic culture to pursuing educational change.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2025

Investigating Opportunities for Growth and Increased Diversity in Quantum Information Science and Engineering Education in the U.S. based on an Analysis of the Current Educational Landscape

Quantum Information Science and Engineering (QISE) is rapidly gaining interest across a wide range of disciplines. As QISE continues to evolve, engineering will play an increasingly critical role in advancing quantum technologies. While efforts to characterize introductory QISE courses are underway, a comprehensive understanding of QISE education across the United States remains lacking. Developing a broad understanding of the QISE education landscape is crucial for addressing the needs of the growing quantum industry and ensuring equitable access for a diverse range of participants. This paper presents part of an ongoing effort to characterize the current landscape of QISE courses and degree programs in higher education in the US. To achieve this, we used publicly available information from university and college websites to capture information on over 8000 courses that address quantum in some way and nearly 90 QISE specific programs (e.g., degrees, minors, certificates). The majority of these programs are interdisciplinary and include engineering; 14 of them are housed exclusively in engineering departments. We find most programs are offered at research intensive institutions. Our results showcase an opportunity for program developers at non-research intensive institutions to justify the creation of QISE programs, which would also address calls from different stakeholders in QISE education for a more diverse QISE workforce. We suggest strategies based on the findings of this study such as integrating QISE into existing engineering courses, investing in the development of QISE courses and programs at non-PhD-granting institutions, and making courses with QISE content accessible to students from a variety of majors.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2025

Landscape of Quantum Information Science and Engineering Education: From Physics Foundations to Interdisciplinary Frontiers

Quantum Information Science and Engineering (QISE) is rapidly gaining interest from those within many disciplines and higher education needs to adapt to the changing landscape. Although QISE education still has a strong presence and roots in physics, the field is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary. There is a need to understand the presence of QISE instruction and quantum-related instruction across all disciplines in order to figure out where QISE education is already happening and where it could be expanded. Although there is recent work that characterizes introductory QISE courses, there is no holistic picture of the landscape of QISE and quantum-related education in the United States. We analyzed course catalogs from 1,456 U.S. institutions. We found 61 institutions offering QISE degree programs, mostly at PhD-granting schools, with physics, electrical and computer engineering (ECE), and computer science(CS) as their primary contributors . Across all institutions, we identified over 8,000 courses mentioning 'quantum,' but about one-third of institutions in our study had none. We also found over 500 dedicated QISE courses, concentrated in PhD-granting institutions, primarily in physics, ECE, and CS. Physics leads in offering both general quantum-related ($\sim$4,700) and QISE-specific ($\sim$200) courses. Across multiple disciplines, we see that QISE topics are being introduced in courses not fully dedicated to QISE, which may be a productive strategy for increasing access to QISE education. Our dataset and analysis provide the most comprehensive overview to date of quantum education across US higher education. To ensure broad access, all data are publicly available and downloadable at quantumlandscape.streamlit.app. We hope these findings will support and guide future efforts in curriculum design, workforce development, and education policy across the quantum ecosystem.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2024

Modeling when and how physics PhD students search for a research group: the role of interests and prior research experiences in timely group integration

Studying the factors that influence the quality of physics PhD students' doctoral experiences, especially those that motivate them to stay or leave their programs, is critical for providing them with more holistic and equitable support. Prior literature on doctoral attrition has found that students with clear research interests who establish an advisor-advisee relationship early in their graduate careers are most likely to persist. However, these trends have not been investigated in the context of physics, and the underlying reasons for why these characteristics are associated with leaving remain unstudied. Using semi-structured interviews with 40 first and second year physics PhD students, we construct a model describing the characteristic pathways that physics PhD students take while evaluating interest congruence of prospective research groups. We show how access to undergraduate research and other formative experiences helped some students narrow their interests and look for research groups before arriving to graduate school. In turn, these students reported fewer difficulties finding a group than students whose search for an advisor took place during the first year of their PhD. Lastly, we identify two characteristic types of students at a higher risk of leaving their programs: students who enter graduate school with broad interests and struggle to find a group, and students who join a research group early based on research interest alone and subsequently encounter issues with a negative mentoring relationship. This work serves as a major step toward creating a comprehensive model of how PhD students find a research group, and opens the door for future work to investigate how factors such as group culture and working environment impact the search process.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2023

Physics PhD student perspectives on the importance and difficulty of finding a research group

Joining a research group is one of the most important events on a graduate student's path to becoming an independent physics researcher and earning a PhD. However, graduate students' perspectives on the experience of finding a research group are not well-documented in the literature. Understanding these perspectives is crucial for evaluating whether departments are providing students with adequate support while they search for a research group, and how difficulties during this process contribute to attrition. Semi-structured interviews with N=20 first and second year physics PhD students reveal that incoming graduate students see joining a research group as a significant decision, and recognize that it may impact whether they will be able to complete the program. We found that students who struggled to find a group felt isolated and worried about falling behind their peers, whereas students who were able to immerse themselves in a positive group environment reported increased sense of belonging in their programs. The process of finding a research group often held differential importance for students identifying as women and non-binary, who at times reported having to deprioritize their preferred research topic in order to be part of a more inclusive working environment. Although incoming graduate students characterized joining a research group as a significant decision, they often felt unprepared to make it. Moreover, they perceived an overall lack of guidance and structure from their departments, and characterized coursework as a barrier to searching for a group. Our findings suggest that providing students with better support during their group search process could help improve retention, particularly for traditionally underrepresented students, and improve students' overall satisfaction in their graduate programs.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2023

Inequities and misaligned expectations in PhD students' search for a research group

Joining a research group is one of the most important events on a graduate student's path to earning a PhD, but the ways students go about searching for a group remain largely unstudied. It is therefore crucial to investigate whether departments are equitably supporting students as they look for an advisor, especially as students today enter graduate school with more diverse backgrounds than ever before. To better understand the phenomenon of finding a research group, we use a comparative case study approach to contrast important aspects of two physics PhD students' experiences. Semi-structured interviews with the students chronicled their interactions with departments, faculty, and the graduate student community, and described the resources they found most and least helpful. Our results reveal significant disparities in students' perceptions of how to find an advisor, as well as inequities in resources that negatively influenced one student's search. We also uncover substantial variation regarding when in their academic careers the students began searching for a graduate advisor, indicating the importance of providing students with consistent advising throughout their undergraduate and graduate experiences.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2023

Beyond The Big Bang Theory: Revealing the everyday research lives of theoretical physics faculty

"So what do you do? I mean, what do you actually do?" This is one of the most common questions one theoretical physicist receives from her students, and is representative of a common curiosity among aspiring physicists. Students often misunderstand what different types of physicists actually do. For many, the term "theoretical physicist" likely conjures mental images of Einstein, Feynman, or Sheldon Cooper discerning the underlying operating principles of the universe, armed with only pencil and paper. Such imagery is representative of the "lone genius" stereotype many students ascribe to physicists. However, this common perception of physicists is known to discourage students, particularly underrepresented gender and racial groups, from pursuing it as a career. Moreover, students of all demographic backgrounds may avoid physics if they feel they do not understand what different kinds of physicists do on a daily basis. Therefore, providing students with an accurate depiction of the skills, practices, motivations, and daily routines in different types physics careers is essential for helping them make decisions about their future. In this article, we offer students a glimpse into what a career in theoretical physics is like. Through interviews with 11 practicing theoretical physics faculty, we reveal a variety of misconceptions theorists believe students hold about their work. Addressing these misconceptions will provide students with important details to consider as they navigate their career decision process.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2022

Making expert processes visible: how and why theorists use assumptions and analogies in their research

Understanding how physicists solve problems can guide the development of methods that help students learn and improve at solving complex problems. Leveraging the framework of cognitive task analysis, we conducted semi-structured interviews with theoretical physicists (N=11) to gain insight into the cognitive processes and skills that they use in their professional research. Among numerous activities that theorists described, here we elucidate two activities that theorists commonly characterized as being integral to their work: making assumptions and using analogies. Theorists described making assumptions throughout their research process, especially while setting their project's direction and goals, establishing their model's interaction with mathematics, and revising their model while troubleshooting. They described how assumptions about their model informed their mathematical decision making, as well as instances where mathematical steps fed back into their model's applicability. We found that theorists used analogies to generate new project ideas as well as overcome conceptual challenges. Theorists deliberately sought out or constructed analogies, indicating this is a skill students can practice. When mapping knowledge from one system to another, theorists used systems that shared a high degree of mathematical similarity; however, these systems did not always share similar surface features. We conclude by discussing connections between the ways theorists use assumption and analogy and offering potential new avenues of research regarding applications to instruction.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2021

Analyzing admissions metrics as predictors of graduate GPA and whether graduate GPA mediates PhD completion

An analysis of 1,955 physics graduate students from 19 PhD programs shows that undergraduate grade point average predicts graduate grades and PhD completion more effectively than GRE scores. Students' undergraduate GPA (UGPA) and GRE Physics (GRE-P) scores are small but statistically significant predictors of graduate course grades, while GRE quantitative and GRE verbal scores are not. We also find that males and females score equally well in their graduate coursework despite a statistically significant 18 percentile point gap in median GRE-P scores between genders. A counterfactual mediation analysis demonstrates that among admission metrics tested only UGPA is a significant predictor of overall PhD completion, and that UGPA predicts PhD completion indirectly through graduate grades. Thus UGPA measures traits linked to graduate course grades, which in turn predict graduate completion. Although GRE-P scores are not significantly associated with PhD completion, our results suggest that any predictive effect they may have are also linked indirectly through graduate GPA. Overall our results indicate that among commonly used quantitative admissions metrics, UGPA offers the most insight into two important measures of graduate school success, while posing fewer concerns for equitable admissions practices.

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