A little more than a year ago, I became chairman of the Physics Department. During that time, many nice things have happened primarily because we have an excellent and hard working faculty and a fine support staff.

Dr. Vaia Papadimitriou, doing research in particle physics, was granted tenure and promotion to Associate Professor. Professor Kelvin Cheng was granted a faculty development leave (sabbatical) for the fall semester of 1999 and Professor Charles Myles received a development leave for the spring semester of 2000.

This fall we have welcomed two new faculty members: Dr. Juyang Huang, a new Associate Professor in biophysics, and Dr. Beth Ann Thacker, a new Assistant Professor in physics education research, a relatively new area for physics departments.

As an example of how good the department staff is, note that our Director of Electronic and Mechanical Services, Kim Zinsmeyer, was awarded a 1999 TTU Quality Service Award, a well-deserved honor that surprised no one in this department.

We were sad to say goodbye to Melissa Grace, our excellent secretary, when her husband graduated and got a job, but we congratulate them and wish Melissa a happy life with time to spend enjoying her children. We said hello to Pam Taylor, our new secretary who already seems like family.

On a sad note, Bob Burch, who was a great technician for many years, and Bill Sandlin, who was a faculty member for about 40 years, both passed away this year.

We have made changes, like Physics Departments all over the nation, to accommodate the changing enrollment patterns in science and engineering. Our department has instituted new courses for non-physics majors and new programs like the Applied Physics MS degree with Internship for students who do not wish to pursue the PhD. We continue to support many undergraduate students with department scholarships, which are possible because of the generous donors who established them. The donors can be proud of the results demonstrated by the accomplishments of our graduates, some of which are presented elsewhere in this newsletter. A new scholarship fund is being developed to honor the late Dr. Bill Marshall who was a distinguished member of the faculty and trained many excellent students.

Last year, the department honored Dr. C. Rinn Cleavelin as a Distinguished Alumnus and this year Dr. Alfred R. Smith was selected. They both addressed the faculty and students at the department banquet and encouraged the present-day students to do even greater things in their careers. As you can read elsewhere in this newsletter, our department graduates are highly motivated and very successful. Two of our students received ARCS scholarships this year.

Texas Tech University has established an Honors College, and we have an Honors section of Principles of Physics I. This fall semester 18 students are enrolled in that section and two are Physics majors. The Honors College tells us that the numbers will grow as the word gets around about how much fun Physics can be.

If you have a chance to visit Lubbock, drop by the Department for a tour of the research labs and, especially the new Maddox lab, where state-of-the-art semiconductor research is done. If you can't visit, please write and tell us what you are doing so others can enjoy hearing of the success of their fellow graduates.

This page was last modified on December 21, 1999