Advanced Labs in the Small Liberal Arts College Environment

The Advanced Lab course is critical for teaching many important skills to physics majors, regardless of their career trajectory. At a small liberal arts college, this course may be run with few pre-requisites, no dedicated funds, limited equipment, no support staff, and as one of many classes a single professor is teaching. While this necessitates certain changes from how the course might be structured at a large research university, the course is nonetheless an invaluable experience for students. I will present my strategies for maintaining an Advanced Lab course at my college, where our department serves a diverse student population and graduates about 6 majors (including Astrophysics) a year. My experiences shows that it is key to focus on learning outcomes and leverage the resources in the broader advanced lab instructor community.