Wisconsin Section, American Association of Physics Teachers

Minutes of the Annual Business Meeting

October 27, 2001, at UW-Stevens Point, Stevens Point

At approximately 55 minutes and 17 ± 3 seconds after the hour of high noon central daylight time, the slightly gravelly but nevertheless stentorian tones of President Earl Blodgett broke through the murmur of conversation and resonated throughout the back room of Michele’s as he called to order the 60th meeting of the longest established, permanent, floating physics teachers’ organization in the great state of Wisconsin. The WAPT business meeting had begun.

The following agenda items were scheduled for discussion:

Minutes of the last meeting
Treasurer’s report: Bob Lind - UW-Platteville
Section Representative’s report: Jim Mallmann - MSOE
High School Representative’s report: Judy Schmidt - Oak Creek H. S.
Two-year College Representative’s report: Theo Koupelis - UW- Marathon
Committee reports: Awards Committee, Workshops Committee, Publications Committee
Old business from the floor
Sites for future meetings
9. New business from the floor
Election of:
- College representative to the Awards Committee
- Vice President, Program Chair and Workshop Committee for 2002
- President
- Secretary/Treasurer
- High School Representative
- Two-Year College Representative
- Section Representative
Closing remarks

1. Minutes of the last meeting

The minutes were apparently OK, since nobody else could remember much about it either, on a motion by Jim Mallmann, seconded by the entire SouthWest table.

2. Treasurer’s report: Bob Lind - UW-Platteville

This was similarly accepted on a motion by Jim again, seconded by J. Erik Hendrickson, with many noticing and noting vocally that under Earl’s Stirling (or is it Carnot?) leadership a meeting for the first time ever actually lost money!

3. Section Representative’s report: Jim Mallmann, MSOE

Section representative Jim Mallmann gave us the low-down on his section report, that is, he only mentioned some non-obvious stuff from the yellow sheet.

The AAPT web site http://www.aapt.org will in fact give everything you want to know about goings-on at the national organization. It might give you more than you want to know and possibly more than the AAPT itself actually knows about these goings-on.
Also, check out the newly launched The Physics Teacher Homepage at http://www.aapt.org/tpt.
The intermittent griping about meeting locations continues; get into the act and let Jim know what you think and Jim will forward it to Frank Petterson, whoever he is.
Ditto any interest in serving on one of the many committees. They need people to do this stuff!!
The 124th future meeting will be in Philadelphia, PA, January 19-23, 2002, at the Marriott, the 125th meeting will be in Boise, ID, August 3-7, 2002 at Boise State University, the 126th meeting will be in Austin, TX, January 11-15, 2003 at the Renaissance Austin Hotel and get this: the 127th Annual Meeting will be in Madison, WI, August 2-6, 2003 and the Monona Terrace and at UW-Madison for workshops!

4. High School Representative’s report: Judy Schmidt - Oak Creek H. S.

High School Representative Judy Schmidt presented highlights of her report on the first meeting of the Temporary Area Committee on Teacher Preparation which was held at the AAPT summer (that would have been the 123th ) meeting in Rochester. Discussion topics included but were not limited to preparation and support of K-12 teachers, PhysTEC (a collaborative effort of APS, AAPT, and AIP to encourage collaboration between physics departments and colleges of education (lots of luck on that one!)), programs in Arizona and other states, the National Task Force on Undergraduate Education, the role of the 2 year colleges, the needs of high school PTRA, “Physics First ”, state requirements, social status and salaries of teachers, local school boards and principals, etc.
The committee is planning a Crackerbarrel Session in Philadelphia and an Invited Session at Boise. It looks like this committee will become permanent. With all those issues, it certainly should!

5. Two-year College Representative’s report: Theo Koupelis - UW- Marathon

Theo’s entire report is included on the back of this sheet.

6. Committee reports

Awards Committee

Lifetime Achievement Award: Fred Domann

Service to and/or Excellence in the Teaching of Physics at the Secondary School Level: Marian Schraufnagel, Cory Militzer

The rules and past award winners are in the Rules/Awards folder.

Publications committee

This very active committee has maintained its perfect record of still not only not meeting, but not even having any members. Needless to say they also had no report, but if they had it would be that Wisphys is now online. Spread the word.

Workshops Committee

David reported that there were 7 workshops, including one commercial one put on by Pasco, and all went well.
This was accomplished using the Ken Mendelson Method.

7. Old Business From the Floor

Nothing worth mentioning here.

8. Sites for future meetings

As you may recall, last year’s minutes contained the announcement: “John Norbury then moved that UW-Milwaukee be the site for the 2002 meeting and this too w as seconded and approved before John even finished his motion.” Perhaps we should have waited a few seconds longer. Then we might have heard the other shoe drop. As the realization that we may have no place to go next Halloween began to slowly seep into our collective consciousness J. Erik Hendricks on came to the rescue and volunteered both UW-Eau Claire and Matt Evans. This was passed before Matt could utter a word with the agreement that we really should try to line up meeting sites for two years in advance. That way program assistants (who do most if not all of the real work) could attend the year before they are on to get all the details of how it all comes together. It would also be better for student participants to know in advance.

A call for a volunteer for the 2003 meeting site was met with complete silence except for the old clock on the wall.

9. New business from the floor

The lively discussion that started during the presentation by Shelley Lee from DPI on PI34, the new licensure rules w hich will affect everyone who gets certified after August 2004, now continued with animated contributions from just about everyone. This ended with a motion by Jim Madson and Roy Knipsel to urge changing the wording in PI34 to read “chemistry and/or physics” for physical science certification. This passed unanimously. (NOTE ADDED JANUARY 18, 2002: The change was made!)

10. The annual R4 section: The results follow:

Two-year college representative to the Awards committee: Marilyn Neiss

President: David Tamres

Vice President: Matt Evans

Secretary/Treasurer: Bob Lind

High School Representative: Judy Schmidt

Two-Year College Representative: Theo Koupelis

Section Representative: Jim Mallmann

11. Closing remarks

Earl led the cheers for David and everyone else involved with this year’s very successful and enjoyable meeting.

12. Adjournment

Led by all at 1:52:07 PM!

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