Making a Difference

Stimulating Physics: Overview

Stimulating Physics is an exciting new project set up by the Institute of Physics, following a £1.8m award from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) in March 2006.

The project aims to:

• increase participation in physics-based courses in higher education (HE)
• broaden the pool of entrants to physics-based courses in HE.

We will work with a number of partner organisations and Universities to achieve these aims through two main strands:

Access: working with universities to make physics-based courses more appealing and accessible. Click here for more information.

Demand: working with schools to increase the number of students showing an interest in taking physics-based courses. Click here for more information.

The pilot project will run for two years in three regions, and each aspect will be monitored and evaluated. After the pilot, we hope to extend Stimulating Physics into a 10-year national project to increase the number of students opting for physics-based HE courses.

Target groups

The target groups are:

• students who have not considered taking physics;
• pupils taught by non-specialist teachers;
• girls;
• students who do not have the traditional A-levels in physics and mathematics, for whatever reason;
• students who wish to live at or close to home but have no access to a local physics-based programme;
• students, particularly those from ethnic minority groups, who do not see the career potential of physics;
• students from the lower socio-economic groups.

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