Applied Physics Program Overview

The economies of the Pacific Northwest and the U.S. as a whole are increasingly driven by new technology. In Oregon for example, industries such as semiconductor manufacturing, optical and electronic instrumentation, and software have become the dominant employers, replacing lumbering, fishing and other traditional resource-based industries. In addition to these producers of new technology, many other industries are major consumers of new technologies that have fundamentally altered their businesses. Consider, for example, the impact of cellular technology on the telephone industry, or of new imaging techniques on internal medicine. The result is a dynamic economy characterized by the emergence of new companies, rapid growth, frequent reorganizations, mergers, acquisitions, and sometimes failure. Employees in this dynamic environment have to be ‘light on their feet’, able to adapt to rapidly changing business and technological conditions. Such people are not likely to be narrow specialists. Rather, they are generalists with a solid understanding of fundamental scientific principles and a portable "skill set" that can be applied to new problems in an ever-changing technological environment. For their part, leaders of business and industry recognize the need for such people, people with fundamental knowledge and skills that retain their value despite dramatic new technical developments.

The Professional Science M.S. Program in Applied Physics is designed to build on the breadth of the physics undergraduate education and produce a new type of M.S. physicist, one whose graduate training specifically addresses the challenges of a rapidly evolving, technologically based economy. The Professional Science M.S. Program in Applied Physics has been shaped with the help of a Board of Professional Affiliates who are leaders in industries dependent on applications of physics either to produce or to exploit contemporary technologies. The technical curriculum is based on a core of graduate courses in the fundamental subjects of physics and a set of "hands on" courses in computational physics and electronics. Electives can be used to enrich the program in a particular area if desired. Professional training in communications, business and ethics prepare the Professional Science M.S. graduate to collaborate effectively between disciplines and across the interface between the technical and non-technical worlds of business and industry. The capstone of the program is an internship providing job experience in a technology-rich environment.

A recent report from the American Institute of Physics called “Programs That Match Every Interest – Master's Degrees in Physics ” discusses differences between professional master's programs and traditional academic master's programs.