Physicist and Nobel Prize winner Carl Wieman from Stanford University will visit Cal State San Bernardino Wednesday, May 8, to present his lecture “Taking a scientific approach to science education (and most other subjects)” in the Jack H. Brown College of Business and Public Administration, room 102, 4-5:30 p.m. The discussion will be open to the public. Parking at CSUSB is $6. “The College of Natural Sciences at CSUSB is committed to student success and is a leader in bringing evidenced-based education methods to improve learning in our classrooms,” said Sastry Pantula, dean of the CSUSB College of Natural Sciences. “Through our NSF funded ISSUES-X grant and various learning communities, we are constantly working on improving what benefits our students and faculty. Dr. Wieman’s visit will be timely in taking science education, which at times remains largely medieval, to be effective for all students in the 21st century, and gives a boost to our dedicated faculty beyond the learning communities.” “Research on how people learn combined with classroom experiments is now revealing much more effective ways to teach and evaluate learning at the university level than what is in use in most science and engineering classes,” Wieman’s abstract reads. “As the underlying principles of learning are quite general, these superior research-based teaching methods are likely to be effective in all disciplines.” Wieman, professor of physics and of the Graduate School of Education, will review what research indicates are the learning principles and key features of their effective implementation in classrooms. He says this research is setting the stage for a new approach to teaching that can provide the relevant and effective science education for all students that is needed for the 21st century. It also provides a better way to evaluate teaching quality. Throughout the day, Wieman will also participate in meetings and discussions with CSUSB President Tomás D. Morales and the CSUSB academic council, have lunch with select students, and work with department chairs in the College of Natural Sciences to discuss how they can have an impact on student success.

Wieman earned a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001 for his extensive experimental research in atomic and optical physics. His experiments, which lowered the temperature of atoms to such extremes that they would “do weird quantum things,” was credited as a masterpiece of experimental science. The Nobel Prize recognized his research into a new form of matter that only exists at a few hundred billionths of a degree above absolute zero. Wieman was also honored as Carnegie U.S. University Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 2003. He earned his bachelor’s in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his doctorate in physics from Stanford University. Wieman joins other Nobel laureates who have spoken at Cal State San Bernardino including George Wald, 1967 Nobel Prize for Medicine; Toni Morrison, 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature; and Shirin Ebadi, 2003 Nobel Peace Prize. For questions or more information, contact Sastry Pantula, dean of the College of Natural Sciences, at (909) 537-5300 or Sastry.Pantula@csusb.edu. For more information on Cal State San Bernardino, contact the university’s Office of Strategic Communication at (909) 537-5007 and visit inside.csusb.edu.