New classrooms and lab rooms

Increasing university enrollments and greater interest in STEM majors presents a healthy problem for the Department of Physics. One of the limitations for the number of students we serve in the teaching of introductory physics is the availability of classrooms to hold weekly, small group discussion meetings. In these meetings, students work problems and ask questions to physics graduate teaching assistants. Recently, problem-solving activities were improved to focus on scaffolded instruction and emphasize collaborative group dynamics.

To address the increased demand for introductory courses, the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences funded the renovation to combine two office spaces into a discussion section classroom. Construction was completed last summer on a room that accommodates 45 students. It’s our first classroom designed with the goal of facilitating active student engagement. The student desks can be moved (and often are) so that students forming collaborative groups can face each other. The tabletops from multiple desks can pivot to create a larger surface for students to use for collaboration on group problem solving activities. The availability of this classroom allowed the department to offer 10 additional sections in Fall 2025 and add additional lecture periods to our largest introductory courses.

But that’s not all! Our introductory lab facilities needed to grow in turn to accommodate the increased demand for lab courses. Our lab space serves more students than the discussion section rooms due to the lab components of our Applied Physics courses yet have a smaller student cap size in each room, set at 18 students. One new lab room was equipped with computers and data acquisition equipment for Fall 2025, affording 15 additional lab sections and another room will become available starting Fall 2026. The additional discussion and lab space enhance not only the teaching mission of the department, but also the research mission. Additional lab sections increase department capacity to fund and admit graduate students.

These efforts position the department to rise to the challenge of serving Florida’s best and brightest as the university’s enrollment grows.