Why Compass?

The Compass Project, founded in 2006 at UC Berkeley, is a program that supports diversity in the physical sciences by bringing together a community of undergraduate and graduate students through exceptional teaching and learning experiences. For the undergraduates, the main focus of Compass is an immersive two-week summer program for incoming freshmen that extends into a semester-long physics problem solving and modeling course, as well as continued mentoring and support throughout their college careers. For the graduate students, Compass provides a unique opportunity to advance their teaching skills and a platform for discussing issues related to physics education and diversity.

So, how did Compass come to be? The founders of Compass are a group of physics graduate students who shared some common features, including enjoyment in and drive to improve their teaching (and a dissatisfaction with traditional teaching methods and attitudes, which they saw as ineffective) and a desire to do something to help improve the diversity of the physical sciences and the retention of potential majors who sometimes fell through the cracks. They all value collaboration in their classrooms and their work developing Compass, and they see building community as central to the success of this program.  Out of these commonalities (and Hal‘s broken collarbone—sometimes fate is strange) grew Compass.