Jason Stoke

Assistant Professor, Physics
B.S. Colorado State University
M.S. University of Toledo
Ph.D. Colorado School of Mines
Phone: 406.238.7265
Office: Tyler Hall 108
Email: jason.stoke@rocky.edu

Biography

I found my way to Montana on a very indirect path. I'm originally from the Northwest, but received by bachelor's degree from Colorado State University. While living in Fort Collins, I was introduced to snowboarding and loved it - so much so, that I spent two years after graduation being a snowboard bum. I thought I would apply my physics knowledge toward the study of frictional forces of frozen media; two dimensional kinematics; and very short time impulse interactions with immobile objects.

It was fun snowboarding, but I felt that my physics background should be put to better use, so I moved to Ohio and entered graduate school at the University of Toledo. My time spent on the North Coast was memorable for the good people I met and for what I learned there, but I missed the mountains and clear-running streams and rivers. After getting my master's from UT, I moved bask west to Golden, Colorado where I entered the Ph.D. program at the Colorado School of Mines. After defending my doctorate dissertation in 2012, I moved to Billings to start my first "real" job as a college professor. 

I have been interested in the development of renewable energy since my first undergraduate internship at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). I benefited greatly from this experience and would like to see the next generation of undergraduates have the same opportunity. As a graduate student I spent most of my time using spectroscopic ellipsometry to investigate optical and structural properties of thin film dielectric materials incorporated into solar cells. I hope to continue this line of research at RMC.