Malcolm Correll assumed the headship of the physics department after O.H. Smith retired in 1952. Correll held a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and had taught physical science there during the war years. From 1948 to 1951 he was professor of physics and chairman of physical sciences at Oklahoma A & M. When named to the DePauw post, Correll was back at the University of Chicago serving as visiting lecturer in the natural sciences.

Correll came to DePauw at a time when the university enrollment was on the upswing and many departments, including physics, were on their way to doubling, or nearly doubling, in size. The number of full-time Ph.D.s on the physics staff went from two in 1952 to four in 1960; these staff additions followed in the wake of increasing department enrollments, which reached their highest level (relative to the total campus population) since the early 1930s.

The introductory courses attracted approximately 100 students per semester, and a total enrollment of 50-55 students in the upper-level courses was not unusual. During the Correll years, 1952-61, 41 students graduated from DePauw with a major in physics, with many of them going on to graduate work at schools such as Berkeley, Brown, Yale, and Wisconsin. Two of the best known majors from this period are Carl Poppe (1957), division leader of the Experimental Physics Division of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, and former US. shuttle astronaut Joseph Allen (1959).

The first changes in staffing during Correll's tenure occurred in 1955. That summer, Ammerman resigned and left for the West Coast, where he took up employment with the North American Aviation Company, a national defense contractor. At the same time, Sprague began a year- long sabbatical leave to work with the Cosmic Ray Research Group at the University of Chicago. In order to fill these vacancies, Richard Murphy (B.A., DePauw, 1953) was hired as a sabbatical replacement for Sprague and Francis Worrell, a Ph.D from the University of Pittsburgh, was given a tenure-track appointment at the rank of associate professor. Worrell had previous teaching experience at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and, like so many others associated with the DePauw physics program, had done war-related research at the MIT Radiation Laboratory.

A number of course changes were put into effect after Sprague returned from sabbatical in the fall of 1956. The General Physics course was split into two sections, a calculus-based section for science and mathematics majors and a non-calculus section which became known as "pre-med" physics. Many of the course catalog numbers were adjusted, some course names were changed, and several courses were deleted, including the Optics and Thermodynamics course.

From the fall of 1956 to the spring of 1958, the department's teaching duties were handled by the three-man staff of Correll, Worrell and Sprague. Each was responsible for one introductory course as well as one or two advanced classes. Correll and Sprague were also actively involved in research throughout this period, doing most of their work in the summer months. Sprague was, for many years, a member of the team studying charged particle tracks in nuclear emulsions in collaboration with the Cosmic Ray Group; Correll was equally busy doing solar research at the High Altitude Observatory (HAO) in Colorado. Both men were funded by National Science Foundation grants and both published their research findings in highly respected physics journals. Correll also contributed several pedagogically- oriented articles to the American Journal of Physics, the monthly journal of the AAPT.

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