The North Carolina Section

of the

American Association of Physics Teachers

Minutes for the 8^th Annual Spring Meeting

NC A&T State University, Greensboro, NC

March 22, 2003

1. Roll Call:

C. Stone	B. Wider	B. Wessell	A. Kebede	A. Ahmidouch	F. James	T. Sandin
M. Dhanasov	S. Brusman	R. Chabay	J Heafner	M. Belloni	E. Lang	W. Brown
A. Titus	C. Bennett	B. Sherwood	R. Tiwari	T. Crider	S. Weatherford	T. Lauten
J. Hollandsworth	B. Schmidt	T. Brown	M.G. Shepherd	M. Ruiz	M. Creason

2. The Minutes of the Fall 2002 Meeting at UNC Asheville were amended. A&T was removed as recipient of a traveling van grant in Item 9e. They were then accepted with the corrections.
3. The Treasurer’s Report was accepted as presented.
4. Report from the High School Representative was not available from Terry McMurray (absent).
5. Report from the Four-Year Representative, Rajive Tiwari, was a prompt for members to participate as volunteer speakers throughout the state.
6. Report from Two Year College Representative, Chuck Stone.
1. Pat Allen of the National TYC group has a curriculum on “the physics of cats”
2. The National AAPT has $300-$500 fund for improving secondary education, which could mean assistance at bringing state science coordinators to Section meetings or for arranging sessions
7. Report from the Section Representative was not available from Hugh Haskell (absent).
8. Report from the Awards Committee was not available from Hugh Haskell (absent)
9. New Business
1. In an attempt to resolve staffing of AST courses by physicists, two approaches are being considered/pursued. Denise Wetli has sent a letter to Raleigh to have the courses reclassified as PHY. Bo Wessell is proposing to add new astronomy courses with the same content under a PHY listing.
2. Discussion of November 7-8 meeting (with SESAPS Nov 6-8) in Wilmington. Proposed croquet tournament with Physics Theme organized by Creason and others. For future programs, it was suggested the category of each presenter be indicated for purposes of voting for awards.
3. Elections were held for the open positions with the following results:

i. Vice President: M. Gordon Shepherd (Greensboro College)

ii. Section Representative: Mario Belloni (Davidson College)

iii. Four Year College/University Representative: Jose D’Arruda (UNC Pembroke)

4. Edith Lang talked about members getting involved in the North Carolina Infrastructure in Science Education. It is an inquiry based science curriculum containing four modules exploring specific topics in depth. There is a desperate need for physics materials and support. Support could come through supplying questions for investigation, content, up to classroom support. Members can choose their level of participation.
5. Chuck Stone and others are soliciting project ideas for the 2005 Year of Physics.
6. Scheduling of Spring Meeting 2004 was discussed with a proposal to send a web-based survey to members for a vote.
9. Drawing for door prizes. Many thanks to our sponsors: AAPT, NC State, NC A&T, Prentice-Hall, Spectrum Techniques, Thomson Learning, McGraw-Hill, John Wiley, Vernier Software, and TeachSpin.
10. Adjourn.

Submitted by Mary Creason for John Hubisz, Secretary-Treasurer, NCS-AAPT

Results of the voting for Best Papers: Undergraduate, Ji-Seon Park of Cape Fear high School for “Orbital Properties of Saturn’s Moons” and Pedagogical, Michael Paesler of North Carolina State University for “Anemochoric Palynomorphic Investigations of Paleoatmospheres: Using the physics of the movement of fossil spores in wind to study the history of the Earth’s atmosphere.”