Walerian Majewski
Professor of Physics
Northern Virginia Community College
Dr. Walerian Majewski has been a Professor of Physics at Northern Virginia Community College for 25 years. Over the years this versatile teacher has taught at NVCC and GMU the full range of 25 different physics courses, including lectures and laboratories from Conceptual Physics to graduate Quantum Mechanics. Since 1982 he has taught physics to 3,800 NVCC students, 1,000 students at George Mason University, and 1,200 summer students from all of Virginia.
Before coming to NVCC, Dr. Majewski devoted years of research to theoretical elementary particle physics. He produced research publications in refereed journals and pursued research at some of the foremost laboratories of the world.
Dr. Majewski is a VCCS pioneer in Web-based distance physics education, having developed seven online physics courses that immediately became very popular, attracting students even from far-away corners of Virginia. Dr. Majewski has also established an NVCC Undergraduate Physics Research Program to expose community college students to the research opportunities common at four-year institutions. He has designed a number of innovative and ambitious experiments, and his students have presented their results at meetings of the American Association of Physics Teachers and of the American Physical Society.
Since 1990, Dr. Majewski has led the NVCC Student Physics Seminar. He is very proud that several of the recent seminar speakers have been his own former students, now Ph.D.. physicists. Also in 1990, Dr. Majewski established the NVCC Chapter of the Society of Physics Students (SPS). Under his guidance, members won five Outstanding Chapter awards from the national organization. In 2002, the SPS presented Dr. Majewski with its highest national honor, the Outstanding Advisor Award.
In 1992 and again in 2005, Dr. Majewski was honored as VCCS Chancellor’s Commonwealth Professor. He was selected three times as the Faculty of the Year by the NVCC Alumni Federation. In 2000, the NVCC Educational Foundation recognized him with its Outstanding Service to the College Award.
Maurice Piller, now of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, writes, “Dr. Majewski has had a great impact on my career path; he is a very special teacher who puts his gifts of passion, energy, enthusiasm, and ability to work for the benefit of us all.”
Dr. Majewski received his M.S. in Physics from the University of Warsaw, Poland, and his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from the Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland. He came to the U.S. in 1979.
