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 is to nominate Dr. Richard C. (Dick) Smith for the AAPT 
Distinguished Service Citation for his long-term 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 support physics educators in isolated setting and small 
departments by establishing an electronic support community for 
physics educators, which it does to this day.  During the first year
PHYS-L operated, Dick contributed daily to the list and replied to 
virtually every posting made to the list, becoming a colleague to all members and establishing a critical level of dialog.

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 many other physics-related lists including the 
list for physics demonstration apparatus (TAP-L), the physics 
education research list (PhysLrnR) and others.  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 Internet and world wide web efforts to support 
physics educators electronically.  His vision, persistence and years 
of hard work have earned him respect and gratitude in the electronic 
community of physics educators that he established and nutured.  
Dick's efforts have earned him our gratitude, and made him a 
deserving recipient of the AAPT's Distingushed Service Citation.

Dan MacIsaac
Richard Hake
Dewey Dykstra
Chris Deacon


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:
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