Hi, I am currently finishing up my freshman year at a state university. I'm majoring in Physics and Math right now, but I am concerned about the quality of my education. The Math seems good, but the Physics department is very small here. As a matter of fact, there are only 4-ish physics professors (one of them are solely a lab instructor) and right now only 5-6 other physics majors besides me (only two are upperclassmen).
I've talked to the upperclassmen and they complained that two of the three lecturers are not really that good at teaching and as a result they had to mostly self study from their textbooks. This was for upper level classes like Mechanics or Modern Physics.
However, there is one really fantastic Professor who teaches very well and is obviously passionate about the subject. I was extremely fortunate enough to actually be invited by him to work on research in an optics lab at the beginning of my Freshman year (I assume because there were so little physics majors). I have enjoyed the research experience and I even presented a poster over it recently.
My goal is to get a PhD in Physics and eventually get into academia, but I am very concerned of the quality of my education as I fear I may miss very important topics because of the two less-than-ideal professors.
Should I consider transferring to another school with a better physics department? Is the risk of no longer being in the research group I'm in too high? (As I assume it wouldn't be until my Junior year until I got into another Research group with a bigger school)
I may also not be able to double major in Physics and Mathematics since cost and higher rigor from a more fleshed out university.
What do you guys recommend?