Faculty Update

11 Responses

Paul Wiita, on March 24, 2010 at 2:42 pm said:

Greetings to my future students and colleagues at TCNJ!

I very much look forward to joining you when I become chair of the Physics Department in Fall 2010.

Here’s a brief introduction:
I’ve been teaching Physics and Astronomy at Georgia State University since 1986 and I’ve been a Professor there since 1993. My undergraduate work was done at The Cooper Union in NYC and I earned my PhD in Physics at Princeton University in 1976. I did postdoctoral work at the University of Chicago and Cambridge University before beginning my teaching career at the University of Pennsylvania.

My research in astrophysics concentrates on quasars, radio galaxies, blazars and other types of active galaxies. I do theoretical and computational research in these areas and collaborate on a range of observational projects. Undergraduates are more than welcome to join me in research projects on these topics. I will also be setting up a fluid dynamics lab and certainly hope some students will join me in that experimental work.

I’ll be happy to hear suggestions from everyone about how we can make the Department work even better for our students.

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Dr. Ron Gleeson, on December 10, 2009 at 3:19 pm said:

Merry Christmas to my present and past students that celebrate the Christmas holiday, and happy holidays to those that do not.

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DD, on June 10, 2009 at 11:22 pm said:

I’ve been working on biophysics problems, such as protein structure-function relationships. I’ll be going to Italy this summer to present a research paper at an international conference.

The number of our students in the Biomedical Physics track has been nicely increasing in the past several years.

I teach Modern Physics, General I and II, Biomedical Physics, Physical, Earth and Space Sciences, and occasionally something else.

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Neil Aaronson, on April 30, 2009 at 10:22 am said:

I remember clearly Dr. Pfeiffer’s frequent references to his years of training Jedi while taking his E&M II class. I also remember he insisted that our final exam would be to build a working light saber from a pile of parts we would find under our desks, and if it didn’t cut through a four-inch thick steel door, we would fail. Good times, good times… Needless to say, I totally kicked butt when I took E&M in grad school. No joke.

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RO, on April 13, 2009 at 11:22 pm said:

RJP’s photo is followed by Dr. O. and one of his independent research students (actually photo from the Phi Beta Kappa induction ceremony-courtesy of Chaz Ruggieri)

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RO, on April 13, 2009 at 10:58 pm said:

RJP has contributed a photo taken with a previous independent research student…it is at the top of the page…but which is RJP???

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RO, on February 25, 2009 at 3:47 pm said:

Since other faculty are not contributing I’ll add more stuff.
1. I thought students were getting younger (of course relative to my old age…) but it turns out I have two fifteen year old students in my general physics II class…impressive.
2. There are rumors about grade inflation so data for the mind: this year the upper third of TCNJ students have an average 3.83 GPA, physics majors upper third 3.79; to be in the upper third you need at least a 3.63 overall GPA, to be in the upper third as a physics senior you need 3.57…

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- Anthony Noonan, on March 27, 2014 at 4:46 pm said:
  
  Not only was he 15 (and my lab partner), but double majoring in physics and engineering. I don’t know how he did it.
  
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RO, on December 2, 2008 at 4:08 pm said:

A brief history of faculty changes (as best I can recall) that you can observe from some of the photos in the Alumni-Where are… page:
Drs. Moses, Fink, and Pregger retired around 1990. Dr Bradshaw joined TSC in 1991 but left in 1994. Dr. Ochoa joined TSC in 1992. Dr. Dalafave joined the faculty in 1995. Drs. Wickramasinghe and Becker came to TSC (or was it TCNJ already?) in 1997. Drs. Goldstein and Hiack retired in 2003 and 2004, respectively. Dr. Becker left TCNJ in 2006. In the 2004 – 2007 period Drs. Hoffmeister, Beesley, and Parizek had stays of two years or less. Our newest faculty members Drs. Benoit and Magee joined us in 2007.

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RO, on October 31, 2008 at 11:17 pm said:

I continue working in optical spectroscopy experiments, computer simulations, and development of physics education experiments. This semester 6 students are working in various experiments.
I’m currently interested in developing experiments that use the accelerometers of the Wii-mote, although I enjoy its usefulness in video games (PES 2008, Zelda, Super Mario Galaxy, World of Goo…)
I continue to teach mechanics, electronics, condensed matter, and general physics.
Dr. R.O.

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- RO, on January 24, 2011 at 12:53 pm said:
  
  So we got a publication out of our serious Wiimote research. “Using the Wiimote in Introductory Physics Experiments,” by Romulo Ochoa, Frank Rooney, and William Somers, The Physics Teacher, Vol. 49, 16-18 (2011) got published in the January edition. The manuscript was submitted in October 2009, accepted in February of 2010. Frank and Will are TCNJ physics alum!!
  
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