• Does the department encourage faculty members to integrate the curriculum of lower and upper division courses?

Providing academic advising and career planning:

• Does the department view academic and career advising as central to its mission?

• Does the department encourage faculty members to become more effective academic and career advisors and provide the necessary resources and time for the purpose?

• Does the department encourage undergraduate students to undertake real-world work and academic experiences through summer and academic-year internships?

• Does the department bring people to campus for presentations to students about career options and opportunities?

Emphasizing the role and importance of teaching laboratories:

• Have members of the department collectively established criteria for assessing the role and nature of teaching laboratories in the department’s curriculum? For example, is there general agreement on whether laboratory exercises should parallel coursework, provide students with learning experiences not directly related to work in classrooms, or some combination of the two?

• Does the department encourage faculty to develop inquiry-based laboratory exercises that encourage students to develop their own hypotheses, design original experiments, and analyze data?

• Have members of the department discussed the criteria for assessing students’ work in laboratories?

• Is the department familiar with the use of virtual laboratories and the current status of research comparing real and simulated approaches to laboratory teaching and learning?

Encouraging students to engage in independent research:

• Does the department encourage faculty to oversee and support students who wish to engage in independent, original research either on campus or off site (e.g., cooperative arrangements with other universities, private and government research establishments, or industry)? Does the department take advantage of undergraduate research as a way for its graduate students to grow