Since January 2002, Dr. Matthew E. Edwards has been a Professor of Physics at Alabama A&M University (AAMU) and served as the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences from 2007 to 2011. Prior to 2002, academic positions he held included associate professorships at Spelman College and Fayetteville State University, and a visiting associate professorship and adjunct faculty position at the University of Pittsburgh, and an assistant professorship at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. He has held several summer-faculty-research positions at Government Labs: the ROME Air Force Research Lab, NASA Langley Research Lab, and the Naval Research Lab. Dr. Edwards is a Condensed Matter physicist with expertise in (1) Density Functional Theory/Solitons Wave Theory, (2) the materials of electrooptics, (3) pyroelectric, resistivity, and dielectric properties of crystals and nano-particles doped organic thin films, and (4) STEM Education. Dr. Edwards has more than 48-refereed papers and journal proceedings and has made at least 60 professional and administrative presentations. He has guided six students to advanced degrees: four to the Ph.D., and two to the Master's degree, has served on more than 20 dissertation and thesis committees, and has peer-reviewed numerous research manuscripts. Currently, he is guiding two Ph.D. degree students and has obtained many grants, honors and awards. Dr. Edwards received the Ph.D. and Master's degrees in condensed matter physics from Howard University, Washington, D.C., and the B.S. Degree in engineering physics from North Carolina A&T State University. He is the founding Director of IHSEAR: Institute of Higher Science Education Advancements and Research. Moreover, in 2015, he was a guest editor for the American Journal of Materials Science. Additionally, he sits on the Board of Directors of three science journals and one science education journal, and served on the executive committee of the Alabama Academy of Science from 2012 - 2018.
In academia, critical thinking occurs effortlessly for a large number of students. Yet, it develops slowly, if at all, for many other students. To a great extent, a student’s success in a given subject is linked directly to critical thinking and his/her ability to compartmentalize ongoing activities—a behavior that we call activity compartmentalization. Previously, we have concluded that the onset of cognitive thinking begins with simple memorizing, recording, valuing, comparing, and contrasting events and knowledge that can be implemented from one or more of five educational utilities that are given as: the contextualization of information, Bloom’s taxonomy usage, Jean Piaget’s and Karl Popper’s constructivism, Lev Vygotsky’s cognitive development adaptation, and individualized mental mind structures, all discussed under the umbrella of mental capacity. In the physical sciences, once contextualization of a concept occurs and the components of Bloom’s taxonomy are added, the higher achieving student, using constructivism or cognitive development adaption with mental structures, develops critical thinking while other students remain languishing in ineffective mental understanding. Additionally, higher achieving students can sustain academic success if their ongoing activities are compartmentalized in a manageable fashion. In this regard, we have developed the important relationship between critical thinking and sustained academic success in the physical sciences. With the advent and integration of the aforementioned five utilities, we give evidence of their usage and how both critical thinking and sustained success are achieved. Finally, all students who desire critical thinking ability and sustained success, including the higher achieving ones and the lesser adept ones, can benefit from these techniques and strategies.
