We are to hire two new tenure track assistant professors starting in Fall 2017. Two rooms should be remodeled to create office space for the new faculty. In order to fully realize the new faculty teaching and research skills we should provide startup packages, orientation and mentoring. The annual review of progress towards tenure will be performed.

Over the past five years Physics major enrollments have essentially doubled but it is still a small number of students. The paucity of majors negatively impacts the faculty and students of the department. Low enrollment forces tutorial classes, which hurt student learning and diminish the college experience. Physics majors of a few dozen is a reasonable goal. We hope that new full time faculty can contribute to realize this goal.

Over the past several years the laboratories of the Physics Department have been partially improved but a modernization is still required especially with respect to the freshman laboratories. This needs the resources necessary to replace and improve the experiments and equipment. The upper level laboratories have been improved but there are still deficiencies. Old equipment needs to be replaced and some new items need to be procured.

The Physics Department is committed to student involvement in research. The institutional support for student research was significantly improved in recent years and our department has been able to provide research opportunities for most Physics majors. This responsibility has fallen largely on a few of the Physics faculty. The goal is to involve all Physics majors in research and expand participation of faculty members. New faculty will make a significant contribution to this work developing research programs in astrophysics and condensed matter. Also an extension of NSF grant in particle physics would help to expand students' opportunity in research and internships abroad.