Nomination Letter for

Richard C. Smith,

Professor Emeritus from the University of West Florida for

The American Association of Physics Teachers'

DISTINGUISHED SERVICE CITATION

This letter nominates Dr. Richard C. (Dick) Smith for the AAPT Distinguished Service Citation for his long-term and pioneering efforts to electronically support the members and goals of the Association.

In 1987, Dick called for volunteers at the AAPT Summer Meeting in Bozeman, MT and established the AAPT-affiliated electronic mail list known as PHYS-L. One of the first and oldest lists on BITNET, PHYS-L has grown to an internationally known mailing list of approximately 650 physics educators and physics education afficianatos from over 31 countries. The list was originally formed to create an electronic support community for physics educators in isolated settings and small departments, which it does to this day. During the first year PHYS-L operated, Dick contributed daily and replied to virtually every posting made to the list, establishing a critical level of dialog and becoming a welcoming electronic colleague to all readers.

During his thirteen- year tenure managing PHYS-L until his retirement, Dick also found time to assist in the creation of the foremost chemistry educators' list (CHEMED-L), and other physics-related lists including the list for physics demonstration apparatus (TAP-L) and the physics education research list (PhysLrnR). Dick also has been instrumental in pioneering online instruction such as his distance education course on Relativity offered with Professor Ed Taylor, and in encouraging the use of educational technology for the purposes of teaching physics.

Professor Smith's efforts have resulted in the introduction of dozens of physics educators to the Association and presaged the Association's current online electronic efforts to support physics educators. His vision, persistence and years of hard work have earned him respect and friendship in the electronic community of physics educators that he established and nutured. Dick's efforts have earned our gratitude, and made him a deserving recipient of the AAPT's Distingushed Service Citation.

Dan MacIsaac

Richard Hake

Dewey Dykstra

Chris Deacon

Leigh Hunt Palmer

22Sep99 Version

Supplementary Letters:

I would definitely like to support the nomination of Dick Smith.

As an Australian, I am not a member of the AAPT, but I can comment on the value of phys-l, as set up by Dick, to those of us Physics educators outside the US. Obtaining funding to attend international physics education conferences in the northern hemisphere is almost impossible for us. We can read the papers from such conferences (eventually), but we miss the intellectual exchange at question time and coffee breaks which is often the major benefit of attending such conferences. I discovered phys-l while I was still in a physics dept. at another university which was positively antagonistic to education research or the use of computers in education, and I immediately felt that taking part was like 'lurking' in a conference's question time sessions.

Phys-l has provided me with lots of practical information and advice, but it has also been my 'support group': it is a wonderful way to counter the isolation one can feel when one is a half the world away from the main centre of the physics education community. There are both great and trivial contributions on phys-l (like any conference), but it has a great sense of community, due largely to Dick's efforts in setting it up. My experiences with phys-l was a major factor in encouraging me to get into using asynchronous communication as a central method of online teaching. I strongly support Dick's nomination.

Cheers Margaret Mazzolini --

Dr. Margaret Mazzolini

Astronomy Course Coordinator

Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing BSEE,

Mail Box 31, Swinburne University of Technology,

PO Box 214 Hawthorn VIC 3122 Australia

email: mmazzolini@swin.edu.au

phone: (+61) 3 9214 8084 fax: (+61) 3 9819 0856

Visit Swinburne Astronomy Online, online courses in astronomy: http://www.swin.edu.au/astronomy/