PhysTEC Announces New Members of The 5+ Club

The Physics Teacher Education Coalition (PhysTEC) has announced the newest members of "The 5+ Club"—institutions that graduated 5 or more well-prepared high school physics teachers. PhysTEC is a project of APS and the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) to address the severe national shortage of K-12 physics teachers. Every year the coalition recognizes those institutions that were especially high performers.

Few colleges and universities graduate more than two physics teachers each year, and most commonly that number is zero. Since 2001, PhysTEC has funded universities to transform their physics teacher education programs into national models. The project is supported by the National Science Foundation, and the APS 21st Century Campaign, and by direct and in-kind support from each of its partner institutions.

PhysTEC first awarded The 5+ Club honors to six institutions during the 2011-2012 academic year. This year’s awardees include nine universities that graduated a total of 53 highly qualified teachers for the 2016–2017 academic year. To put this number in perspective, if U.S. colleges and universities collectively graduated about 800 new physics teachers per year, the national shortage would be largely addressed.

The new members of The 5+ Club (and numbers graduated) are Rutgers University (8), Brigham Young University (7), Rowan University (6), Stony Brook University (6), The University of Texas at Austin (6), City College of New York (5), Georgia State University (5), Illinois State University (5), University of Wisconsin – River Falls (5).

For every complete application that documents five or more physics teacher graduates in a single academic year, the PhysTEC project will

• send a letter of commendation cosigned by APS and AAPT presidents to the university president (and cc'd to other relevant administrators)
• award a certificate, presented at the PhysTEC conference
• publicize awardees to APS and AAPT members
• provide a press release on the award.

For more information on PhysTEC and The 5+ Club, visit the PhysTEC website.