Rate My Professor William Miner

Dr. William H. Miner is a Professor III in the Physics department at Palm Beach State College, serving on the Boca Raton campus. He holds a B.A. in Physics from Rollins College and a Ph.D. in Computational Plasma Physics from The University of Texas at Austin. Miner teaches a broad spectrum of undergraduate physics courses, including General Physics with Calculus I (PHY 2048) and II (PHY 2049), General Physics I (PHY 2053) and II (PHY 2054), their associated laboratories (PHY 2048L and PHY 2049L), and Physical Science for Today's World (PSC 1341). His classes are offered both in-person at the Boca Raton campus facilities, such as CA 0110 and CB 0105, and online through Canvas. Actively engaged in institutional service, he participates in the College Affordability committee. Miner is a member of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

With a robust research portfolio in plasma physics and fusion energy, Dr. Miner has authored or co-authored 49 publications, accumulating 759 citations. His scholarly contributions focus on computational modeling of plasma behavior, tokamak experiments, stellarator configurations, and free-electron lasers. Key publications include "Transport with pellet fuelling in the Texas Experimental Tokamak" (2011), "Electron thermal confinement studies with applied resonant fields on TEXT" (2011), "Current diffusion in TEXT" (2011), "Efficiency and Spectrum Enhancement in a Tapered Free-Electron Laser Amplifier" (2009), "Efficiency enhancement in seeded and self-amplified spontaneous emission free-electron lasers by means of a tapered wiggler" (2009), "Physics basis for high-beta, low-aspect-ratio stellarator experiments" (2000), "Use of a genetic algorithm for compact stellarator coil design" (2001), "Physics issues of compact drift optimized stellarators" (2001), "Physics Design of a High beta Quasi-Axisymmetric Stellarator" (1999), and "Plasma Configuration Control in NCSX" (1999). In 2023, Miner earned the ACUE credential in Effective Online Teaching Practices, a nationally recognized honor for implementing evidence-based strategies to boost student success in virtual learning environments. This achievement was part of an initiative honoring 115 Palm Beach State College faculty members at a pinning ceremony.