November 17, 1998

Dear President:

The purpose of this letter is to ask your support for TYC21. TYC21 is an organization created by an NSF grant written by Mary Beth Monroe who teaches physics in Texas and Marv Nelson who teaches in Washington. Mary Beth first forwarded this idea at a national meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers. It was met with enthusiastic support by all two year college teachers because we share some common and severe problems. We spent two years at national meetings organizing this grant proposal. Two year college physics teachers are usually one person departments, are responsible for conducting their own labs and maintaining their own lab equipment, and because of a constant shortage of people with graduate degrees in physics, the majority of them are drafted from math or chemistry departments. Even though they do obtain the necessary eighteen graduate semester hours in physics, the lack of familiarity with the subject and isolation are serious detriments to their effectiveness as teachers. In spite of this desperation, it has been difficult to get people involved in regional meetings. I have been involved with ASAAPT for seven years and have hosted two of the Alabama Section of the American Association of Physics teachers (ASAAPT) meetings . Usually we only had six or eight people show up. The reason for this poor attendance was lack of organizational skills and lack of funding for good speakers and workshop leaders.

In this grant the country was divided into fifteen regions. The grant provided funding to train regional coordinators and three regional committee members. It also provided funds for Friday night dinners and speakers, and Saturday morning workshop leaders for two annual meetings for each region for two years, at which point the organization should be strong enough to operate under its own steam.

The program has been very successful. We have had at least twenty five people attend each of our four very productive meetings. It is now time for us to provide our own funding. Our needs are not immense. If we can get each two year college president in our region to pledge $100 a year to our organization, we can continue this very helpful and productive support for two year college physics teachers in Region 11. You can send your contribution to the TYC-21 Region 11 Coordinator, Ali Yazdi, whose address appears at the top of this page.

Thank you for your time,

K. W. Nicholson

Region 11 Committee Member