Submitted by Prof. Richard Palmer, Director of Graduate Studies
Degrees and Exams Each student must pass their Preliminary Exam as a candidate for the Ph.D. degree, usually in their 3rd year. From September 2009 to April 2011, Preliminary Exams were passed by: Kristine Callan, Ben Cerio, Abe Clark, Seth Cohen, Chris Coleman-Smith, Ethan Elliott, Somayeh Farhadi, Sam Gong, Hannah Guilbert, Min Huang, Georgios Laskaris, Baolei Li, Willie Ong, Joshua Powell, Jie Ren, Yu Song, Mengyang Sun, Shangying Wang, Taritree Wongjirad, Yang Yang, Qiujian Ye, Huaixiu Zheng, and Rena Zhu. Also Ravi Shekhar was awarded the M.S. degree in 2009.
New Curriculum After much discussion, a new Graduate Curriculum was adopted by the faculty in October 2009. The new requirements were applied to students entering the PhD program in Fall 2010. The most important changes were: now only six core courses are required (and two electives), and the Qualifier Exams was eliminated. One advantage of this change is the first year students may only take 5 core classes their 1st year and just one core class their 2nd year, which among other benefits, the students were allowed earlier access to research. Also generally, the course syllabi have changed to a more modern presentation and a substantially revised schedule. The Qualifier Exams will no longer be given. In place of the Qualifier, students will be evaluated on the basis of their grades in the core courses. These must be at the level of B or better for continuation at the end of first year. It is essential for all faculty teaching core courses to have rigorous grading, therefore these instructors are evaluating each student and meeting every month to discuss their findings. At the end of the first year, all students are evaluated by the full faculty, much as is done currently in the context of the Qualifier. A new addition to the new curriculum are the Mini courses. These courses cover various topics and are becoming quite popular with the older students as the classes are only 4 or 5 week, leaving graduates much more time during the semester to work on their research projects. In the first year (2010-11) there were 4 mini-courses: Experimental Uncertainties; Nonlinear Wave Methods; Introduction to Quantum Communication; Networks. We are expecting to add more of these courses in the next year. Admissions The Graduate Admission Committee reviews the applicants, makes recommendations for offers (by the Dean), and some of these students will accept admission to Duke. After making the offers, we held Open Houses (twice in 2010) for the prospective students. The met with many faculty members and graduate students who showcase our Physics department and their ongoing research. Of course, some students could not attend at the time, therefore they visit at other times. We had 194 applicants for admission in Fall 2010, and 209 in Fall 2011. We made 54 offers in 2010, and 47 in 2011. In the end, there was 16 students accepted to Duke in 2010, and 16 students in the Fall 2011. The incoming class hail from Armenia (1), China (3), Cyprus (1), Germany (1), Taiwan (1) and of course USA (9). Also we will have two exchange students, one from France, and one from Germany. There will be 6 female students and 12 male students. In this Fall 2011, we should have 86 students, more than any years before. It is interested that in 2011 our acceptance rates were larger than expected for national students and smaller for international students, but in 2010 were the other way! We do not know why. Perhaps part of it, the Graduate Student Organization (GSO) were very involved this year and organized some special social events for the visiting prospective students. In any case, our acceptance rate is increasing when adding the international and national students. Orientation In a few weeks, the new incoming students will come to Duke University for a number of “orientations”, which include the International Orientation, the Physics Orientation, and the Graduate School Orientation. The students will be exhausted, but at least there will be free food! The main Physics Orientation are mandatory. There are many responsibilities, including taking assessment exams, meeting one-to-one with the DGS (Director of Graduate Studies) and the ACT (Associate Chair of Teaching), training of the TAs, and much more. At the end, there will be the Annual Department Picnic, which will be hosted by our second year graduate students. Change in Command On June 30, 2011, I will step down as the DGS and Prof. Shailesh Chandrasekharanwill be the new DGS. Over the last four years, I loved to try to help all of the graduate students, from their admission to their degree. I will miss them.
Department of Physics
