On a typical Tuesday, especially in the Fall semester,  you might find about 20 to 40 people in the audience for the week's seminar, of which a few are undergraduate senior physics majors, and around 10 or more are first-year graduate students, while about 5 or 10 are graduate students or postdocs in the speaker's research group. There are sometimes one or two "civilians," people from the greater Austin community who want to know about the speaker's research and its applications, and also several physics faculty members directly interested in the speaker's research.  Beginning in the Fall of 2020, the Pizza Seminar was held via Zoom.   This semester, talks will be face-to-face, unless the speaker specifically requests Zoom. In that (now very rare) case, Zoom session information will be provided for each scheduled seminar, with the session hosted by the guest speaker.

Students registered CR/NC obviously must receive the equivalent of full attendance credit, in order to receive course credit.   Those students who are registered for a letter grade, in addition to required attendance credit,  have to do seminar-specific class work. For each faculty lecture, students registered for a letter grade must submit to Coker, via e-mail or in person, within TWO weeks of the lecture, a report on, and synopsis of, the content of the lecture. These reports are usually in the form of an e-mail attached pdf file. Almost always the speaker is willing to share a link to his PowerPoint slides, which students can consult in writing their reports.    BE CAREFUL! Nearly every semester typically at least one student thinks he or she is registered CR/NC when he or she is actually registered for a letter grade, and thus flunks the class!

If you register for the class Credit/No credit, your entire grade is based on attendance at every scheduled seminar.  If you miss even one pizza seminar during the semester, you could expect a grade of NC, if few seminars are held that semester, and you fail to check in with the instructor!

Each semester, faculty from many different research groups will talk about current research and what is involved in doing it, as well as immediate or near-future opportunities for students. Note well: It is current departmental policy that graduate students should have chosen a research area by the end of their first year. 

The atmosphere is informal. Graduate students relatively new to the department are especially encouraged to attend, but junior and senior physics majors will also find the presentations of great interest. In the past, advanced undergraduates have sometimes made up about 50% of the audience at the Pizza Seminars.

The Pizza Seminar tries to do several things simultaneously.

(1)  It provides a chance to hang around with cohorts and faculty outside of formal classes.

(2)  It alerts you to the existence of many active fields of ongoing research, one of which you may decide to choose to pursue in your own future career.

(3)  Even if you are already involved in graduate research, it informs you as to what else is going on within this department today --- and you may be surprised to find that current research done by some other group links up directly with, or has important relevance to, your own research.

(4) Some invited seminar speakers will discuss career opportunities outside academia, for students who have received a BS or BA degree in physics, and would like to find a career where his or her physics background is used.

For those of you who have yet to find a faculty research advisor for your thesis or dissertation, reflect that by far the most important decision facing you in graduate school is the choice of a specific research area. You're about to stop doing homework problems where the answer was obtained so long ago no one knows who to credit, and plunge into the bottomless depths of open-ended questions. Your entire future career as a physicist will be determined by a single decision... it's wise to seek information widely before making that decision.

Even if you already think you know what area you want to do graduate research in, you may find while listening to the Pizza Seminar lectures that

(1) there is something going on that interests you as much as, or even more than the topic you are currently leaning toward, or
(2) you would like to know more about a particular faculty member or group, or that
(3) someone else's research interests and experience are potentially of great relevance and benefit to your own area of research focus, so that collaboration or frequent consultation would benefit you both.