Physics Program

Physics and Your Future

Whether you’re wanting to teach the next generation, go on to graduate school, or engage in theoretical or experimental work, Taylor will prepare you to excel in your goals. Taylor offers three degrees through the Physics program including Physics, Physics & Mathematics Education, and Physics Science Education. You’ll take in-depth physics courses along with advanced classes in mathematics. You will learn to analyze the complex aspects of the physical world such as quantum mechanics, electricity and magnetism, waves, optics, special relativity, thermodynamics, particle physics and more.

Through engaging lectures, hands-on labs, and research projects, students are able to apply the principles they learn in the classroom to a broad range of careers. Additionally, future physics and mathematics educators engage in student teaching and take education classes that prepare them for classroom management, lab safety, and making these subjects accessible to 5th-12th grade students.

Studying Physics at Taylor

Utilize your analytical and experimental skills through research projects and internships. Students pursuing a bachelor of science in physics are required to complete a practicum or directed research with a professor, and all physics students have the opportunity to do so. You'll have access to local internships, like analyzing satellite trajectories at NearSpace Launch here in Upland, or complete internships abroad at places like CERN, the European organization for nuclear research in Switzerland.

Physics students are also deeply engaged in research projects during their time at Taylor. In their junior or senior year, you'll take a capstone course and a research course to perform a semester-long research project where you'll collaborate with a faculty member to determine the project’s focus, design, and execution. Some students have even had the privilege of being published on projects with professors! Students and professors have published on the topics of statistical mechanics, chaos and electrical circuits, particle physics, and more.

Career Options after Taylor

Whether you hope to become a medical physicist, a data scientist, an astronomer, a high school physics and math teacher, or even a professor, the Physics program at Taylor will give you the building blocks to achieve your goals. Many students who graduate from the Physics program to go on to graduate school to get a masters and, at many times, a doctoral degree at schools like:

• Baylor University
• Indiana University
• Stony Brook University
• University of Chicago
• University of Michigan

Alumni have gone on to work with organizations like CERN, Twitter, and DESY, while others have become successful high school physics teachers or college professors.

How We Integrate Faith With Learning

As a Christian institution, the integration of faith and learning is at the heart of every classroom. In this Physics program, students are equipped to see creation through the lens of a physicist. This is because the unique discovery that can happen when a physicist comprehends the underpinnings of how creation works can lead to a sense of awe about our Creator who buried such detail into creation and gave us the mathematical tools to understand it.

Degree Options

Applied Physics

Physics

Physics Science Education

Physics and Mathematics Education