Green Light for Wyoming Grads

Paul Johnson got word in mid-October that he could start recruiting graduate students for fall 2002, thereby ending a suspension of the only graduate physics program in Wyoming (see June 1999, page 53 ). One condition for reinstating the University of Wyoming program was to increase undergraduate physics enrollments. From a low of about 17 four years ago, the number of declared physics majors has swelled to 50, says Johnson, the department chair.

“When prospective students visit the university, we roll out the red carpet. We give them as much time as they will give us,” Johnson says. “We’ve had a huge success rate.” A new bachelor’s degree combining meteorology with physics has also proved attractive, he adds. Next in line are similar “physics plus” degrees with communications and business emphases.

Things are looking up for physics at Wyoming in other respects, too. The physics faculty, which was shrinking alarmingly in 1999, is rebounding, with two new hires this year and two more expected next fall. And the department’s planetarium reopened in 2000 after floods had closed it four years earlier.

A plan is in the works to make the Wyoming Infrared Observatory financially stable, another condition for restarting the physics graduate program. Johnson expects a decision soon to either keep WIRO where it is, some 30 miles from the Laramie campus, or else move it to Pike’s Peak, Colorado. Either way, the telescope will be run by a consortium, rather than having the university continue to go it alone.