Department of Physics at Lehigh University

Fall 2014.  Students are back. In fact, they are back in big numbers, resulting in a record-breaking enrollment for our intro-level courses. Nevertheless, thanks to Gary DeLeo’s organizational skills and additional TA and adjunct funding from the Provost office, we got off to a smooth start. While our REU program was running smoothly during the summer, I had some time to work on department reports. While digging into numbers, I ran across some interesting statistics. Did you know that currently 25% of our undergraduate students, 40% of our graduate students, and 40% of our post-docs are female? These numbers are well above the national averages in Physics. Faculty productivity also went up. Comparing the time period of 2000-2005 for which NRC ranking data had been collected with 2008-2013, I found that the number of publications increased by 60% while the citations of these publications tripled during the same period (from 1,047 to 3,365). We are on our way up!! Finally, I would like to welcome our newest faculty member, Paola Cereghetti, who was appointed Professor of Practice starting this Fall. Paola earned a Ph.D in Physics from ETH in Switzerland, and also holds an M.A. in Chinese studies from University of Pennsylvania. She will mostly teach courses in our intro-level physics series (Phys 5, 10, and 13). Have a great semester!

Volkmar Dierolf