Dr. Bruce Callen, Chair
Professor of Physics

Dr. Brant Hinrichs
Associate Professor of Physics

Dr. Greg Ojakangas
Associate Professor of Physics

Dr. Don Weber
Professor of Physics

Bruce Callen, Ph.D.

Professor of Physics

Office: Trustee Science Center, Room 212
Phone: (417) 873-7473
Fax: (417) 873-7856
E-mail: bcallen@drury.edu

Dr. Bruce Callen is chair of the physics department, and also serves as director of the Dual Degree (or 3-2) Engineering Program. He came to Drury in 1991, after three years of post-doctoral research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, applying physics to the verification of international agreements limiting the underground testing of nuclear weapons. During his doctoral work, he studied high-energy collisions of light nuclei, looking for possible signs of the formation of a quark-gluon plasma. His teaching responsibilities include all undergraduate physics courses, Science & Inquiry, Undergraduate Research and Alpha Seminar. He has been a co-investigator on both of Drury's curriculum reform grants from the National Science Foundation, and is currently working on strengthening the connection between the science and the humanities. His research interests include digital astronomy, and reform in math and science and education.

Education
B.A., Carleton College, 1981
Ph.D., Physics, University of Pennsylvania, 1988

Brant Hinrichs, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Physics

Office: Trustee Science Center, Room 213
Phone: (417) 873-6976
Fax: (417) 873-7856
E-mail: bhinrichs@drury.edu

Dr. Brant Hinrichs spent several summers working on high-energy physics experiments at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where the asymmetrical scattering of polarized beam protons on a polarized proton target was investigated. Then, in 1987 it was on to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for Ph.D. studies in physics. His doctoral research used time series analysis on the signals recorded from the brain of an awake performing pigeon.
He spent two years in Tokyo, Japan as a research postdoc, returning to the states in 1997 to begin a teaching career. He got hooked on investigating how his students learned and didn't learn, and now, when time permits, does work in Physics Education Research, comparing how students learn and understand microscopic and macroscopic models of physics phenomena. He collaborates on this work with his colleague Dr. Beth Ann Thacker at Texas Tech. He currently is an Associate Professor at Drury, where he teaches the gamut from General Physics to senior-level quantum mechanics.

Education
B.S.E.E., University of Michigan, 1986
Ph.D., Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1994

Greg Ojakangas, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Physics

Office: Trustee Science Center, Room 209
Phone: (417) 873-7846
Fax: (417) 873-7856
E-mail: gojakang@drury.edu

Dr. Ojakangas' research has involved the orbital and volcanic histories of the moons of the solar system, the formation of the solar system, planetary ring dynamics, computer modeling of the human-made population of debris in orbit about the earth, and the rotational and orbital history of the earth-moon system as recorded in the geologic record. He was a finalist in NASA’s astronaut selection program, he is an asteroid discoverer, and an inventor in the field of robotics. His current research involves computational neuroscience and brain-machine interfaces, and he is a consultant for NASA's orbital debris program. He also continues to lead groups of students in experiments aboard NASA's reduced gravity "Weightless Wonder" aircraft.

Education
B.S., Physics and Geology, University of Minnesota-Duluth, 1982
M.S., Geophysics, California Institute of Technology, 1985
Ph.D., Planetary Science, California Institute of Technology, 1988

Donald Weber, Ph.D.

Professor of Physics

Office: Trustee Science Center, Room 214
Phone: (417) 873-7234
Fax: (417) 873-7856
E-mail: dweber@drury.edu

Dr. Donald E. Weber came to the physics department at Drury College in the fall of 1970. His undergraduate degree is from Case Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. is from Northwestern University in electron microscopy. His present interest is in developing physics displays for the Discovery Center, Springfield's science museum.

Education
B.S., Case Institute of Technology, 1963
M.S., Northwestern University, 1965
Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1970