Carol Strong

I graduated from Pensacola Junior College and the University of West Florida with a double major in Physics and Mathematics. I worked as a grocery clerk and taught math at the junior college and high school at a one-room private school to put myself through school. Northrop Corporation in Anaheim, CA, hired me as an engineer to work on their defense and search/rescue infrared and visual sensor systems until I chose to go back to school at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 1986.

As a TA at UAH, I again taught high school physics at Butler High School for a year, then worked with Dr. Roy Torbert on a Faraday Rotation Ammeter to measure current in Auroral Plasmas. I finished my PhD. Dissertation during my first year as a lecturer at UAH in 1993 and have continued as a lecturer here ever since.

I have enjoyed learning about and then teaching over half of the undergraduate courses in the physics curriculum, heading the physics curriculum committee and advising the physics undergraduate students. I helped design the undergraduate curriculum that has increased our physics student numbers from under 10 to approximately 80 or more, graduating as many as 12 in a year. I also am part of the movement within the College of Science to include more interactive teaching methods in our classrooms at the undergraduate level in order to increase learning and student retention.