Our mission is to provide students with a firm grounding in the disciplines of physics and/or engineering physics within the context of a traditional liberal arts education. We provide a curriculum that prepares physics and engineering physics majors for graduate study or professional life, supports the other science majors, and contributes to the liberal arts core through appropriate courses for non-science students. We encourage contributions to the body of knowledge of the physics discipline by faculty and students through a supportive work environment.

The Physics Department at John Carroll University offers BS degrees in Physics, Engineering Physics and Interdisciplinary Physics and a BA degree in Physics. We consistently graduate about six majors per year. Many of our graduates enter graduate programs in physics or engineering directly after graduation. The other students join the workforce, usually in some technical or engineering field. Some students pursue graduate studies after working for a few years.

The physics faculty are dedicated to effective pedagogy and many of our courses have been reorganized to incorporate the findings from Physics Education Research (PER). Faculty research is an integral part of our teaching. All of our majors are required to work on a research project with a faculty member during their senior year and many of our students work on research projects during the summer. By the time they graduate, most of our students have presented posters at a regional meeting and some are co-authors on faculty publications.

The department has a chapter of Sigma Pi Sigma, the physics honor society, and a Student Physics Society.

In addition to the physics major, the deparment offers many courses to serve the needs of the other science departments and the Liberal Education requirements of the University. These include a two semester sequence of introductory physics required for most chemistry majors and all students preparing for medical or dental school, an astronomy course, two earth science courses and a conceptual physics course. Several of these courses also serve education majors and the earth science sequence is part of the Environmental Studies Concentration.

The physics department has dedicated laboratory space for the introductory physics courses, the upper division physics courses, the electronics and engineering physics courses, an atomic force microscope and an x-ray diffractometer (which are shared with chemistry), and a dedicated classroom/computer laboratory where we teach all upper division physics and engineering physics courses. In addition, each faculty member has their own research laboratory. The physics department supervises the university machine shop which has lathes. The machine shop is staffed by a part-time machinist.

By following the links on the left you will find more detailed information about the department.