The Student Council’s award went to Prof. Dr. Alexander Kappes this year, for the lecture series “Physics for Physician, Dentists, Pharmacists and Biologists” and “Neutrino Physics”, an introductory lecture and a master lecture from the section of Nuclear and Particle Physics.
Since there are a lot of excellent lecturers at our department, the decision wasn't easy. Prof. Kappes convinced especially with evaluation results that are outstanding for a number of years. Therefore this year, both a bachelor and a master lecture were awarded the prize.
Prof. Dr. Alexander Kappes is a scientist of the research group AG Kappes at the Institute of Nuclear Physics and is doing research on astroparticle physics. Among his fields of research is the development of optical sensors for the IceCube neutrino telescope and involvement in the Research Training Group “Strong and Weak Interactions - from Hadrons to Dark Matter”.
On the background: The Teaching Price has been awarded for the eigths time already. As every year, the award relies on the results of the course evaluation at the department. The Student Council has set criteria which a good lecture must satisfy. Among these are the lecturer’s ability to evoke the students’ interest and to convey the subject matter in a manner that is as inspiring and understandable as possible. Thus, it is important that the lecturer is well-prepared and appropriately responds to questions.
The comparison of lectures according to these criteria is done by the Teaching Prize committee, which consists of the Student Council’s chairman and two additional members: Michael te Vrugt, Tim Stellhorn and Janice Bode. However, only lectures with a minimum number of participants were considered in order to obtain a certain degree of comparability. With these criteria, almost all compulsory lectures and the introductory lectures for the specializations could be considered.
Further information on the Physics Student Council’s Teaching Prize