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Goals of the Physics Department

Provide all students with a broad and fundamental knowledge of physical principles which can be useful to them in their careers whatever their major at Harvey Mudd.
- Encourage students to become broadly educated in the humanities and socical sciences as well as in the natural sciences, mathematics, and technology.
- Encourage the use of physical thinking and provide a foundation in physics upon which other majors can build.
- Teach all students some of our best current understanding of what the world is like, and not only the way it was understood hundreds of years ago.
- Help students explore how mathematics is used in solving problems in the natural world and strengthen all students in the application of mathematics.
- Help students develop their powers of observation and the application of physical principles by providing an extensive laboratory program.
- Emphasize the connections between physics and other disciplines; encourage interdisciplinary activities and an understanding of the impact of physics upon society.
Provide a rigorous, challenging, and stimulating education for our majors.
- Teach excellent lecture/discussion courses and laboratories for physics majors and students in other majors as well. lnvolve students in some measure of creative activity in all our courses.
- Teach students how to learn from a variety of sources, including books, journals, experiments, colleagues, modeling, and simulations. Encourage independent investigation.
- Maintain a flexible program that provides the best possible foundation in physics for both graduate work and applications, while affording students a wide range of course choices and degree options. Creative research or projects should be the high point of every student's program of study.
- Provide close personal contact and guidance for our students.
- Assess how our graduates are doing, how they are using physics, and how graduates in other majors are using the physics they learned at Harvey Mudd.