Fall Conference will be Nov 2 at Foothill College

Save the date! We are returning to Foothill in November. Our keynote speaker will be SJSU’s Cassandra Paul. Registration is now closed, the walk-up pricing is $25.

On Friday night we’ll meet for a social at one of the officers’ house in San Jose at 6.  He’s cooking up a mountain of food, so bring $10 to drop in the honor jar.  An RSVP link will be sent to folks who register for our meeting.  At around 8 we’ll finish up dinner, and will go to Foothill’s observatory for some star-gazing.

Here’s the planned lineup for Saturday:

8AM – Doors Open / Registration / Posters 
We’ll have breakfast snacks and coffee, along with a poster session.  Have a poster?  Bring it in and share!

8:50 – Welcome Announcements / Remembering Scott Chan 
We’ll officially start our day just before nine.  At this time we’ll have a moment of silence for long-time member Scott Chan, who lost his life in the Santa Cruz boat fire.

9:00 – An Intro to Step Up – Silja Paymer
Step Up is a national program designed to empower young women and encourage them to pursue physics in college.

10:00 – Keynote Speaker – Cassandra Paul 
“Equitable Grading Practices: Why we need to think carefully about grade-scales in introductory physics classes”
Dr. Paul will discuss how two common grading scales affect pass rates, and how these impacts fall differently upon student populations.

11:15 – Group Photo/Announcements 
It’s always good to have a photo, especially if your administrators want to know if you are doing PD.

11:30 – Lunch Tacos are back! 
And we’ve got a nice long social time built in so you can hang out with old friends and make new ones.  Our biggest strength is our membership.

1 PM – Physics on a Budget – Dean Baird and Bree Barnett-Dreyfuss
How to get money for classroom equipment, and some low-cost ideas to help you stretch your budget.

2:15 – Break 

2:30 – Member Showcase 
We are trying something new, we’ll have ten-minute slots for deeper topics.  Of course, you can always do a walk-up for our traditional five-minute Share&Tell.  Bring something that’s been working with your students and put it in front of 10,000+ more students!

4:30 – Close.

The AAPT has renewed funding for our Dependent Care grants. If family responsibilities make it hard for you to attend our meetings, go to http://ncnaapt.org/dependent-care-grants/ to apply. Please note that we will have a lactation room available.

A map to Foothill is below. We will be in room 5015, which is adjacent to Parking Lot 5. There will be plenty of signs on the perimeter road (your only choice). And yes, we have a car pool page: https://www.groupcarpool.com/t/08ru97.