Acclaimed Harvard physicist to speak at SU

Prof Eric Mazur

On Monday, 28 May, the Physics department at Stellenbosch University will have the pleasure of hosting acclaimed physicist, Prof Eric Mazur, from Harvard University. Besides winning various awards for his work in Physics, Prof Mazur has a keen interest in teaching and is a world leader in the area of teaching innovation.

“I thought I was a good teacher until I discovered my students were just memorising information rather than learning to understand the material. Who was to blame? The students? The material? I will explain how I came to the agonising conclusion that the culprit was neither of these. It was my teaching that caused students to fail! I will show how I have adjusted my approach to teaching and how it has improved my students’ performance significantly,” Prof Mazur says.

The presentation takes place on Monday, 28 May at STIAS from 09:00 – 11:00. Due to limited space, only registered participants will be accommodated.

• Please register with Farrel Kleinsmith (fksmith@sun.ac.za) before 7 May 2012.

More about Prof Mazur:

He is Area Dean of Applied Physics and the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University, where he leads a research program in optical physics and supervises one of the largest research groups in the Physics Department at Harvard University. Mazur obtained his PhD degree in experimental physics at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in 1981, and came to Harvard University in 1982. In 1984 he joined the faculty and obtained tenure six years later. In 1988 he was awarded a Presidential Young Investigator Award. He is Fellow of the Optical Society of America and Fellow of the American Physical Society, and has been named APS Centennial Lecturer during the Society’s centennial year. In 2007 Mazur was appointed Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar; and in 2008 he received the Esther Hoffman Beller award from the Optical Society of America and the Millikan Medal from the American Association of Physics Teachers. Prof. Mazur is interested in the field of education. In 1990 he began developing Peer Instruction, a method for teaching large lecture classes interactively, and in 1997 he published Peer Instruction: A User’s Manual (Prentice Hall). In 2006 he helped produce the award‐winning DVD Interactive Teaching. Prof Mazur is author or co‐author of 219 scientific publications and 12 patents.