The physics department honored some outstanding students April 25 at the annual spring honors day celebration. Professor and Head Soren Sorensen directed the day’s festivities, which included the induction of students into Sigma Pi Sigma, presentation of student awards, recognition of laboratory contributions and the first-ever teacher of the year award. Among the department’s guests were Dr. Lorayne Lester (Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences), Dr. Lynn Champion (The College’s Director of Outreach), Mrs. Barbara Lide, Mrs. Jane Ann Nielsen and Mrs. Audrey Stelson. Dr. T. J. Paulus of PerkinElmer Instruments delivered the honors day address. The awards began with the induction of students into Sigma Pi Sigma, the physics honor society. Dr. Jim Parks, Sigma Pi Sigma Advisor, gave some background on the society and its prestige. Membership recognizes distinctive achievement and scholarship in physics. The department inducted 12 students into Sigma Pi Sigma this year, including Robert Mahurin, Erin McMahon, Gerald Ragghianti and Stephen Wilson (undergraduates); Martin Djongolov, Suzanne Parete-Koon, Oscar Restrepo, Malachi Schram, Rodney Sullivan, Nick Tantawy, James Wicker and Omar Zeidan (graduate students). They signed the original register as signed by former department head Alvin Nielsen. Outstanding First Year Physics Student This award recognizes a student who has demonstrated exceptional academic achievement and scholarly potential during his or her first year of physics study, as determined by the faculty. The 2001 winner was George Noid, who had the top grades in honors physics. George is also a member of UT’s nationally-ranked lacrosse team. Douglas V. Roseberry Award The Roseberry Award goes to a student who shares the attributes of the late Douglas Roseberry, an undergraduate physics major at UT in the late 1950s. Douglas was known for his insatiable enthusiasm both for physics and for the physics department community. He had planned to pursue graduate study at Princeton University when an aneurysm claimed his life in October 1959. Each year, the department selects an undergraduate of like qualities to receive an award honoring his memory. This year’s recipient was Robert Mahurin, a senior who spent a summer at Harvard College on a high school scholarship before he started UT. He spent the summer of 2000 working at ORNL with Dr. Witek Nazarewicz on a Science Alliance Fellowship. Robert, who graduated in May, demonstrated a broad range of interests during his undergraduate career, working for two years on Phoenix, UT’s literary magazine, four years for Habitat for Humanity, and spending three years in the fencing club. Outstanding GTA Award Physics graduate students often get their first dose of teaching in the undergraduate physics labs. To recognize the hard work and dedication of this job, the department presents the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award to a deserving candidate each year. This year’s recipient was Noel Black, a veteran of the teaching labs who has also taught the Physics 221 course. This year Noel had the highest student evaluations of any physics GTA. Robert W. Lide Citations Dr. Robert Lide served on the physics faculty from 1957 until his retirement in 1992. Even then he remained a fixture in the undergraduate physics labs, faithfully coming in every week to help with experiment set-up. His spirit of service was the motivation behind the Robert W. Lide Citations, which honor students who have contributed to the laboratories in a similarly special way. This year the department awarded four Lide Citations: For Leadership and Development: Graduate Student Suzanne Parete-Koon was recognized for the development and implementation of the online astronomy program. She was the lead TA on this project and took responsibility for a considerable amount of the day-to-day administration of both the online course and online laboratories. She participated in the newsgroup and scheduled the proctoring for online quizzes. She also developed the initial versions of the new online astronomy syllabus, in which she did much of the programming. Suzanne managed all this while completing a master’s thesis in computational astrophysics. For Development: A second Lide Citation went to Erin McMahon, an undergraduate student who, like Suzanne, worked with the online astronomy project. She helped out with the programming for the interactive labs and also with the online course. For Development: Graduate student Eric Lingerfelt was the third student recognized for hard work on the online astronony project. He worked on programming the online syllabus and also helped acclimate students to the online environment. For Development: The fourth Lide Citation went to Wesley Robertson, a graduating senior who helped develop the experimental methods lab for the Physics 506 course. He built the time-of-flight mass spectrometer, put the scanning tunneling microscope into operation and built a laser-induced breakdown system. He also installed three major laser systems in this lab. Paul H. Stelson Fellowship in Physics Dr. Paul Stelson was noted for his love of physics and his enthusiasm for imparting it to colleagues and students alike. He joined ORNL in 1953 and became director of the physics division in 1973. During his tenure, the Holifield Heavy Ion Research Facility was funded, built and became operational. He was also an adjunct professor of physics at UT from 1967 until 1992, serving as a mentor to many young scientists. His family established the Stelson Fellowship as a means of helping aspiring physicists complete their graduate education and continuing the strong historical relationship between ORNL and UT. The 2001 Stelson Fellow is Omar Zeidan, a Ph.D. student who has already given four talks at APS meetings and posters at several conferences. He is co-author of seven refereed publications and is finishing a paper on his own research as first author. Omar has used accelerators and detector arrays at Argonne National Lab, ORNL and Yale University and has carried out the very complicated data analysis of his experiments. Fowler-Marion Outstanding Graduate Student Award Nuclear physicist Joseph Fowler, former head of ORNL’s Physics Division, co-authored the book Fast Neutron Physics with Dr. Jerry Marion. They donated the book royalties to the physics department. The funds were used in part to recognize outstanding achievement by a graduate student. This year’s award went to John Pierce, a Ph.D. student working in experimental condensed matter physics. During his time at UT, John has achieved a 3.95 grade point average, served on two important departmental committees and contributed to published research. SPS Teacher of the Year Award The Society of Physics Students decided to add its own award to the presentation list. As a way of giving something back to the department, SPS president Thomas Gadfort said the group decided to honor an outstanding instructor. Undergraduate physics majors nominated faculty candidates and held a final vote. The first-ever SPS Teacher of the Year Award went to Dr. Jim Thompson, who received a trophy fashioned by the department’s machine shop. Physics in the Real World Once the awards had been presented, Dr. T. J. Paulus, a UT graduate, spoke on “Physicists at ORTEC: Their Industrial Experience.” Dr. Paulus has spent 28 years with ORTEC (now PerkinElmer Instruments) in various technical, marketing and tech transfer capacities. He surveyed physicists at his company to ask how they would advise students. He presented their wisdom in various “gems,” including “Where you start isn’t where you’ll go. There are lots of changes.” Cross Sections, Spring/Summer 2001 Issue, Contents Page UT Physics News & Notes Page UT Physics Home Page This page was last updated on June 22, 2001. Please send comments to cal@utk.edu.