A unique feature of the department since 1954 has been undergraduate research. The number of undergraduate student co-authors of papers published in leading journals is among the highest in the nation. The physics alumni have received Ph.D.s not only in physics but in material science and electrical engineering. Five students have also received M.D. degrees. Those who go into industry generally are employed as engineers and high school teachers.
Alumni remain very active in department activities and scholarship committees.
The Physics Department plays a central role in the University's Mission of educating students to live in the increasingly technological highly complex society of the present. The department provides a range of excellent physics and engineering programs for its majors and high quality courses and laboratories for science majors from other departments and for non-science majors. All these courses are taken in the context of a liberal arts core so that the technical training provided by them is blended with the knowledge acquired from the study of humanities. The department also has a research mission. An important feature of this mission is that the students are actively engaged in research with faculty members on research projects which develop the students as independent, active learners and provide faculty members as role models.