My name is Paul Cottle, and I have been on the faculty of the Florida State University Department of Physics since 1986. I grew up in Connecticut and earned my Ph.D. in physics at Yale the same year I joined the FSU faculty.
But more importantly, I care about the future of the young people who are growing up in my adopted state, Florida. I want as many of them as possible to have the opportunity to enter the 21st century’s most robust careers – those in engineering, science and computing.
Unfortunately, Florida has not traditionally been strong in preparing its students in the math and science skills they need to be prepared for college majors in engineering, science and computing. This is particularly the case for physics. Students in public high schools in Florida enroll in physics at about half the national rate, and the number of students enrolled in physics classes is declining. During the 2021-22 school year there were 55 public high schools with 1,000 or more students that didn’t teach physics.
But there are islands of math and science excellence in Florida. Seminole County has been Florida’s math and science superpower for years, and if some giant hand took the county and dropped it into Massachusetts (the nation’s educational superpower) Seminole County students would be able to hold their own. (But they would need new winter coats)
Furthermore, there are local efforts to improve that are working. Orange County’s Calculus Project is doing an incredible job at coaxing a diverse group of rising 7th graders into Algebra 1 so that they have the opportunity to complete two years of calculus in high school and have a running start into college majors in engineering, physics and computer science.
In Bridge to Tomorrow, I try to tell the success stories and point out the state’s weaknesses using anecdotes from my own experiences and data from sources like the exemplary web site for the Florida Department of Education – about the best I can do as a hobbyist blogger. I am in awe of Florida’s best education journalists. In return, several have encouraged me since I started this blog in 2009. I also receive encouragement from other unexpected directions. If you ever meet me in person, ask me about this and I’ll share some of these stories.
Occasionally, this hobby spills over into the real media. I am occasionally quoted in a newspaper or other outlet, and I have published many op-eds over the years – most recently in the Tampa Bay Times and the Orlando Sentinel.
I am engaged in efforts to improve access to engineering, science and computing careers in several ways. The one that is part of my day job is FSU’s Studio Physics Program, in which almost a decade ago a small group of physics faculty adopted the SCALE-UP classroom architecture and pedagogy developed at North Carolina State University for students at FSU. On some topics, our students learn about twice what students in traditional lecture classes do (we measure student learning gains every semester). The Studio Physics program now serves about 250 students each semester, and nearly every STEM major at FSU takes a physics course that incorporates some elements of our studio program.
Most of my activism for K-12 math and science began in 2007 when I was appointed (against my will, by the way – another nice story I can share in person) to a committee writing new science standards for Florida’s K-12 schools. My specific work was on the physical science standards for middle school (which are still mostly in place). But I was coaxed into the controversy over evolution education, which as a person of faith I found to be a particularly vexing conflict. I wrote about my experiences in that controversy in a September 2008 issue of Jesuit magazine America. It is easily the most important thing I’ve ever published.
I was chair of the Committee on Education of the American Physical Society (the national professional society for physicists) in 2013-14. The highlight of that experience was having the opportunity to meet some of the nation’s leading scholars in physics education research and physics teacher preparation. I am not an expert in these fields – only an adopter. But at least I know who some of the experts are.
I hope you find some useful information or even inspiration in this blog.
Bridge to Tomorrow 