CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF PHYSICISTS

ASSOCIATION CANADIENNE DES PHYSICIENS ET PHYSICIENNES

Ottawa, March 10, 2003 - The Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP) is pleased to announce that the 2003 CAP Medal for Excellence in Teaching is awarded to Prof. Anthony Key, University of Toronto, for his great enthusiasm in promoting the excellent teaching of Physics as a paramount goal, which impacted on his students, his institution, and the entire Canadian Physics Community.

Professor Tony Key has been a full professor at the University of Toronto since 1990. Educated at the universities of Aberdeen and Oxford, and a founding member of the Institute of Particle Physics, he has pursued research in Experimental Particle Physics at CERN in Geneva, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Argonne National Laboratory, and Fermilab in the USA.

Over the last decade, Professor Key’s interests have concentrated on physics education at the university level, with emphasis on the human dimensions of teaching and communication. His recent research has focussed on quantifying successful strategies of teaching assistants, of whom he has supervised many hundreds during his career as a university teacher, and on investigating gender issues in the physics classroom.

In the last few years he has introduced several completely new courses that are now a part of the Department of Physics regular course offerings; a first-year course for non-science students, a laboratory course for physics and engineering undergraduate students, and a graduate course on effective oral and written communication. He regularly presents workshops and seminars on teaching methods, laboratory and tutorial teaching, problem solving, and learning difficulties to teachers within the university and at conferences and seminars around the world.

Professor Key was the institutional representative for the University of Toronto working with the Council of Ontario Universities on the validation of the new Grade 11/12 curricula proposed by the Ministry of Education and Training. In the 2002-2003 session, he has carried out a review of the undergraduate programme in physics at Trent University. In 2002, he was the recipient of an outstanding teaching award from the Faculty of Arts and Science at the University of Toronto.

The CAP's Medal for Excellence in Teaching Physics was introduced in 1996 and has been awarded annually since. Dr. Key will receive the 2003 Prize during the CAP's awards banquet to be held at the University of Prince Edward Island on June 10th, 2003.

The Canadian Association of Physicists, founded in 1945, is a professional association representing over 1600 individual physicists and physics students in Canada, the U.S. and overseas, as well as a number of Corporate and Departmental Members. In addition to its learned activities, the CAP also undertakes a number of activities intended to encourage students to pursue a career in physics.

For more information, please contact:

Canadian Association of Physicists
Tel: (613) 562-5614
Fax: (613) 562-5615
E-mail: cap@physics.uottawa.ca