In this series of interviews, we put a spotlight on physicists who teach in high school and at universities. The past year of covid-19 lockdowns has changed regular routines and challenged everyone to come up with new approaches to teaching at every level. These women have taken on that challenge and come up with creative new ways to interact with their students. Read along as they share how they have handled the situation and what they have learned along the way.

Thank you to all the amazing women who have contributed to these interviews!

Marianne Vestergaard, Professor and educator at The Niels Bohr Institute, the physics department at University of Copenhagen.

Marianne Vestergaard teaches first year physics – Introductory Mechanics and Special Relativity. This is a course that has both laboratory work, lectures, and recitation sections.
Each fall semester, she – along with 3 other senior instructors – is responsible for the educational progress of 130 first year students. In particular, with a fellow professor she is in charge of lectures and recitation sections in this course.
During the past year, 25% of all impact time (lectures, recitation sections, lab hours) have been fully online. However all in-class lectures have been streamed and recording since semester start.

Anja Skaar Jacobsen is an educator at Copenhagen Adult Education Centre (KVUC), with the educational responsibility for 70 students per semester within the fields of Physics and Chemistry. She also teaches Philosophy of science at the Niels Bohr Institute. During the last year, 80% of her teaching has been online.

Anja Skaar Jacobsen, educator at Copenhagen Adult Education Centre
Lærke Bang Jacobsen, educator at Borupgaard Gymnasium

Lærke Bang Jacobsen is an educator at Borupgaard Gymnasium in Ballerup, a large stx high school 15 km from Copenhagen.
During the period of Covid-19, she has been teaching physics at C level in the school year 2020/2021, and the second year of physics at B level in the school year 2019/2020.
She is responsible for 31 students in the C-level class and 23 students in the B-level class last school year plus a large number of math students.

Jill Miwa teaches electrodynamics at the department of Physics & Astronomy at Aarhus University. She is responsible for approximately 70 students and 100% of the course has been taught online this year due to COVID-19.

Jill Miwa, Associate professor and educator at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus