Randy Knight, California Polytechnic State University

The Excellence in Physics Education Award is the American Physical Society’s highest recognition of outstanding contributions to physics education. The award, established in 2007, recognizes and honors a team or group of individuals (or, on exceptional occasions, a single individual) who have shown sustained commitment to excellence in physics education. The award consists of a $5,000 monetary award, a travel allowance to the April APS Meeting where the award is presented, and a certificate citing the achievements of the winners.

The initial fundraising effort, ten years ago, was sufficient to establish the award but not to fully endow it; the FEd has been subsidizing the award out of its yearly operating budget. In 2016, the FEd Executive Committee appointed Wendy Adams, Andrew Heckler, and Randy Knight as a fund-raising committee charged with increasing the endowment from $135,000 to $200,000, the level needed for full endowment.

We succeeded! Approximately 20 donors made contributions following an appeal in Spring 2017, capped by exceptionally generous gifts from Carl Wieman and Sarah Gilbert and from the Sciences Education Foundation of General Atomics (former FEd chair Lawrence Woolf is President of the foundation).

Our heartfelt thanks to the many donors — both in the initial fund-raising phase and in this final push — who have helped to ensure that APS will continue honoring outstanding contributions to physics education for many years to come.

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.