The 2018 Spring Meeting of the AAPT New England Section will be held on March 16 & 17 at Nashua Community College, Amherst Street, Nashua, NH.

Theme:  Increasing Diversity in Physics

Keynote speaker: Dr. Beth Cunningham, Executive Officer of AAPT.

Working Schedule:

Friday, March 16, 2018
4:00 pm Registration
5:00 pm Poster Session & Vendors
6:30 pm Buffet Dinner
7:30 pm Keynote Speaker

Saturday, March 17, 2018 
7:30 am Continental Breakfast & Late Registration, Posters & Vendors
8:45 am Contributed Talks**
10:15 am Coffee Break
10:30 am Panel Session & Discussion
12:30 pm Buffet Lunch. Posters & Vendors
1:30 pm – 4:30 pm Workshops (1.5 hour and/or 3 hour sessions)4:30 pm – 5:00 pm Pick up Professional Development certificates.

Workshops Run Concurrently:
Choose Track A or either / both of the Track B offerings.

Track A

A: 1:30 – 4:30 pm  PTRA TIPERs Workshop by Steve Henning of PTRA —
PTRA TIPERS (Tasks Inspired by Physics Education Research) are tasks inspired by Physics Education Research to provide alternative learning formats. TIPERS provide students with tasks that address physical ideas and principles in a variety of ways. Some of these are Ranking Tasks, Bar Chart Tasks, Linked Multiple Choice Tasks, Working Backwards Tasks, Predict and Explain Tasks and many others. These are designed to help students learn the important concepts and principles of physics while providing a conceptual base upon which students can solve physics problems with understanding. Participants will be receiving two free books: the latest TIPERS Manual and the Ranking Tasks manual.

Track B

B1: 1:30 – 3:00 pm  Integrating Computation into STEM Courses by Jay Wang, UMass Dartmouth — Integration of computation into STEM education is increasingly being recognized nationally as an important component to increasing students’ computational thinking skills. In this workshop, a learning-by-doing framework will be described that integrates computation into the physics classes at every level from introductory physics classes to graduate courses. It enables students to actively do, rather than just think, physics.

B2: 3:00 – 4:30 pm  Getting Started in Physics Education Research by Andria Schwortz, Quinsigamond CC.  — Do you have burning questions about how your students are learning?  Why can they answer a question if phrased one way but not another?  What can you do to improve your teaching?  Skeptical of new teaching styles and want to test if they’re effective in your classroom?  This workshop will give you some basics on how to perform education research, including styles of research, when and how to get approval from an Institutional Review Board, what to do with your results, and publishing.  Group time will include discussing your own questions and how you can investigate them.

** The call for contributed papers/posters is at

We are encouraging contributions in these 3 tracks:

1. Increasing Diversity in Physics
2. General Physics Pedagogy: ideas related to effective high school and post-secondary physics teaching
3. Assessment: how & what do we measure so that we know our teaching is effective.

There is a block of 24 rooms reserved for Friday night for $99.00 at the Hampton Inn Nashua, 407 Amherst St, Nashua, NH 03063. Reservations: 844-262-2822. You will need to request the Nashua Community College rate. Register by 2/16 for the discount.