Pacific Physics Professor Juliet Brosing is 2012 Oregon Professor of the Year
Pacific University physics professor Juliet Brosing has been named the 2012 Oregon Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and CASE, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. Brosing is the first faculty member from Pacific to be selected and is among just 300 nominees throughout the country nominated for state and national honors this year.
She began her tenure at Pacific in 1987 and is the senior member of the university’s Physics Department. She is one of the original proponents of the department’s project-based approach to teaching physics, which has resulted in the development of a curriculum that is almost devoid of lectures and that relies, instead, on labs and realistic simulations that help put physics in a real-world setting.
As a teacher, Brosing finds herself advocating women in the sciences. In the 1990s, she was involved with a Department of Energy grant to support a summer science camp for middle school girls.
More recently, she and Dr. Shereen Khoja, in Pacific’s Math and Computer Science Department received an NSF grant to conduct a similar camp focused on computer science for middle school girls.
Brosing’s research at Pacific, conducted with undergraduate students, has mostly been related to nuclear physics, often characterizing nuclear properties at the Reed nuclear reactor. Her Ph.D. research centered on the biological impact of radiation, including work around measuring the impact of oxygen in the process of treating cancerous tumors with radiation.
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and CASE have partnered in offering the U.S. Professors of the Year Awards program since 1981, and the program is recognized as one of the most prestigious awards honoring undergraduate teaching.