Bulletin Board

RIT PER researchers, Sachmpazidi and Verostek, publish new article in the Physical Review Physics Education Research Journal on the psychometric evaluation of the culture around systemic change survey: A tool for assessing facets of departmental culture in physics.

Dr. Sachmpazidi delivered a Physics Colloquium at Cornell University about Data-Informed Departmental Change in Physics Education. She discussed findings from two of her projects on 1) physics graduate education and 2) effective team-based approaches for departmental change.

Karl Henrik Fredly, a graduate student at the University of Oslo, was co-supervised by Ben Zwickl and Tor Ole Odden on a project on how graduate students develop advanced computational literacy, published in Physical Review PER.

CASTLE Director Dina Newman leads the organizing committee for UGN. This year's conference was a big success, with over 400 registrants. Her session on the topic of teaching the genetics of human sex determination received rave reviews.

Reports on the categorization and profiles of 29 distinct quantum technology roles were released by Piña, Zwickl, and collaborators at CU-Boulder.

Shams El-Adawy, postdoc at CU-Boulder, led a co-authored paper with Piña and Zwickl on building the quantum information science and engineering education ecosystem. The work appeared in Physical Review PER.

The RIT PER group published 8 peer-reviewed papers in the Proceedings of the 2025 Physics Education Research Conference with numerous undergrad, graduate, and postdoc authors.

Sachmpazidi delivers an invited talk at Central Michigan University to discuss using research on departmental change to address emerging challenges in physics education.

Sachmpazidi's PER Lab, including Verostek, Coldren and two undergraduate researchers, Claar and Kunz, publishes four peer reviewed conference proceedings at the Physics Education Research Conference 2025.

The Fall 2025 RIT University Magazine featured "Manifesting Quantum", which highlights quantum education efforts at RIT being led by CASTLE members.

Charlie Lusignan, Aaron McGowan, and Ben Zwickl authored two book chapters on integrating computing into the upper-division physics laboratory curriculum. The book was edited by Marcos (Danny) Caballero and published by the Institute of Physics.

 Zwickl and former CASTLE member Dina Zohrabi Alaee received and NSF award 2500743 "Collaborative Research: Developing a Causal Map Assessment Tool for Undergraduate Career Interest Formation and Decision-Making"

Dina Newman published 3 articles in the August 2025 issue of the Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education. Two were with Kate Wright and Crystal Uminski on the topic of visual literacy, while the third was with external collaborators on the topic of instructional reform in biology.

All 4 postdocs from the CASTLE postdoc program have started faculty positions! Christian Cammarota is now a Lecturer at Yale University, Mike Foster is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Penn State, Alia Hamdan is a Teaching Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and Crystal Uminski is an Assistant Professor at Towson University!

Ben Zwickl, collaborating with researchers at Fisk University (Qingxia Li, Ololade Adetula) and John Hopkins University (Ebony McGee), published "Impacts of an Industrial Partnership with a Historically Black University on the Computing Career Decisions of Black Undergraduate Students" in ACM Transactions on Computing Education. The work built from an NSF BCSER project (PI: Qingxia Li) for which Zwickl was an advisor.

Dr. Sachmpazidi has published an article along with the Physics Education Research group at the Ohio State University led by Dr. Cochran in Physical Review - Physics Education Research titled "Understanding familial capital and its implications for physics graduate programs"