Prize Recipient

Linda S. Barton
Rochester Institute of Technology, School of Physics and Astronomy

"For dedicated and sustained development of the college junior year physics laboratory course sequence, for notable contributions to pedagogical approaches and materials in support of advanced labs in the physics curriculum, and for instilling a passion for experimental physics in students."

Linda S. Barton received her BS in physics from MIT in 1978, where she worked for several years at the Francis Bitter National Magnet Lab. She completed her PhD in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1984, with an experimental thesis on critical phenomena of dilute ferromagnets. Following graduate school, went to the research labs of Eastman Kodak, where she worked on development of magnetic materials for magnetic recording. In 1996 she joined the faculty at Rochester Institute of Technology in the School of Physics and Astronomy. At RIT, she focused her teaching efforts on several curricular initiatives. The largest effort has been the ongoing development and delivery of a year long junior-level laboratory sequence for undergraduate physics majors. She was also heavily involved in the generation of curricular materials for hands-on workshop based instruction for introductory electrodynamics, and in the implementation of a mandatory senior capstone research program for all physics majors. She maintained a small experimental research effort in novel magnetic materials, staffed solely with undergraduates. Prior to her retirement in late 2019, she was a member of AAPT, IEEE, the IEEE Magnetics Society, and the APS.

John Essick (Chair), Lowell McCann (Vice-Chair), Enrique (Kiko) Galvez (‘20 Recipient), Sara Callori, Brad Conrad, Ashley Carter, Jeremiah Williams