February 2019: Randy Knight

About Randy

I have been an AAPT member for close to 30 years. I was inspired by Leonard Jossem and Lillian McDermott and other early PER researchers – all avid AAPT members – to shift my career focus toward education and teaching, and AAPT was a community of like-minded individuals. I owe an immense debt of gratitude to the meetings, the journals, and the many friends and acquaintances I’ve made through AAPT.

My primary effort for the past 20 years has been writing textbooks inspired by and based on PER. What was once considered a “fringe” effort has become fairly mainstream. Active learning and flipped classrooms are now common from community colleges to premier research universities. AAPT deserves much of the credit for inspiring and promoting and enabling these great leaps forward in physics education.

Over the years I’ve served on the Committee on Research in Physics Education, the editorial advisory board for The Physics Teacher, and the search committee for the editor of AJP. I also served four years in the chair line (vice chair through past chair) of the APS Forum on Education, and in that role I had many opportunities to work with the AAPT leadership. I was very honored to be named an AAPT Fellow in 2018.

I’ve retired from classroom teaching, but not from writing. I foresee AAPT being in my future for many years to come. Thanks AAPT!