Are you looking for lab-tested experiments for your intermediate and advanced laboratories? Not finding just what you need from the Advanced Lab section of Compadre? Then the Conference on Laboratory Instruction Beyond the First Year (BFY) is tailor-made for you. The BFY Conference will be held at the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University, July 25-27, 2012. This will be an unusual and excellent opportunity for hands-on exposure to a broad selection of contemporary instructional labs appropriate to Modern Physics, Electronics, Optics, and Advanced Lab courses, as well as to key instructional labs in Statistical Physics, Condensed Matter and Materials Physics, Quantum Mechanics, etc. Conference participants will share their laboratory expertise and materials in a variety of venues, including structured opportunities to discuss specific laboratory topics and curricular models that are effective at different types of institutions. Commercial vendors of advanced laboratory equipment will be present to provide working demonstrations of their products. More information can be found at http://www.advlab.org/.

A similar conference, the 2009 Topical Conference on Advanced Laboratories, sold out and received terrific reviews. Excellent invited speakers focused attention on different advanced topics, and a high degree of interaction between participants was facilitated through poster sessions, breakout sessions, and experiment workshops (where participants were guided through experiments of their choice, actually using the apparatus). The archives of this conference are available at http://www.compadre.org/advlabs/events/event.cfm?ID=2. Although these archives are very helpful, actual attendance at the conference helps participants to make contacts with fellow lab instructors with similar interests and complementary skills that can facilitate your development of experiments at your home institution. It is anticipated that the 2012 BFY Conference will sell out, so please register early! Please note that the Summer Meeting of the AAPT (July 28 – August 1, 2012) immediately follows the BFY Conference, and will feature additional workshops and sessions of interest to intermediate and advanced laboratory instructors.

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Disclaimer- The articles and opinion pieces found in this issue of the APS Forum on Education Newsletter are not peer refereed and represent solely the views of the authors and not necessarily the views of the APS.