The Physics Teacher Education Coalition (PhysTEC) recently honored the Virginia Tech Department of Physics as one of the newest inductees into “The 5+ Club”, a group of institutions that have graduated five or more physics teachers in a given year. “Graduating five or more physics teachers a year is a significant achievement, helping to address the severe national shortage of high school physics teachers,” PhysTEC said in a statement. “Most colleges and universities graduate fewer than two trained physics teachers a year, and the most common number of graduates is zero. In their 2014 report, the American Association for Employment in Education found that the teacher shortage in physics is number one among 59 education fields.”

Virginia Tech was joined by Brigham Young University, Rutgers University, the University of Kentucky, and The College of New Jersey in the 2017-18 class.

According to PhysTEC, a flagship education program of the American Physical Society and the American Association of Physics Teachers, the United States has a deep, long-term shortage of qualified physics teachers. “In 2013 the National Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics reported, the need for qualified teachers is greater now than at any previous time in history.’ Of the approximately 1,400 new teachers who are hired to teach physics each year, only 35 percent have a degree in physics or physics education,” the group said. 

Rachel Holloway, vice provost for undergraduate academic affairs, offered her “congratulations and thanks to (the) faculty for (their) exceptional contribution to physics education” to department head Mark Pitt.