Extended Analytical Physics
The underrepresentation of women, African Americans and Latinos is well known in engineering and other science-based fields. It is due in part to the fact that many students from these groups enter college with a lower level of mathematics preparation than the mainstream students do. The Extended Physics program at Rutgers University is designed to improve the performance of underprepared and otherwise at-risk students. The program is now in its second decade. These courses (part of the University's Gateway Program) offer an alternative to and run parallel to the mainstream first-year introductory physics courses. Students enrolled in these courses have significantly lower Math SAT scores, but at the end achieve the levels of conceptual understanding and problem solving similar to the mainstream students.
The Extended Analytical Physics courses for engineering majors are comprised of a two-semester freshman course and Extended recitation sections of the mainstream two-semester sophomore analytical physics course. These courses have resulted in a high success rate of at-risk students in the physics sequence, particularly women, African American and Latinos.