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Guide Overview
Departmental Culture and Climate

Guide To Departmental Culture and Climate

Version 2021.1

Description
Benefits
Effective Practices
Assessments
Resources
Evidence

Departmental culture includes the shared norms and values of a department. Departmental climate involves how people experience and feel about the departmental culture. This section provides guidance on how to create a departmental culture and climate in which all department members feel valued, respected, included, and supported. Department members include faculty, staff, undergraduate and graduate students, and postdocs. This section provides guidance on both how to actively create a positive culture and climate for all department members and how to prevent a negative culture and climate. It provides best practices for fostering inclusivity and proactively identifying and addressing problems with your departmental climate. For guidance on practices that support

in physics, see the section on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. For guidance on creating a departmental culture and climate that is likely to retain students, see the section on Retention of Undergraduate Physics Majors.

This section provides guidance on improving your departmental climate through a cyclic process in which you (1) engage the whole department in a review of your climate; (2) establish and communicate a collective vision for a healthy culture and climate; (3) create, nurture, and expect a culture in which everyone is welcome, included, and supported; (4) value and support healthy relationships among all members and groups within the department; and (5) create and nurture programs, processes, and policies that support continuous improvement. Parts 1 and 2 describe how to lay the groundwork to ensure that your efforts are effective, and parts 3–5 describe specific strategies improving your departmental culture and climate.

Benefits

The practices in this section can support your department in creating and maintaining a collaborative, friendly, empowering, fulfilling, and joyful environment for all department members. A department that takes care of its faculty, staff, students, and postdocs and helps them succeed (through tenure, success in courses, success in their careers, and professional development) will have more satisfied department members, which enhances recruiting and retention of students, faculty, staff, and postdocs. Members of departments with positive cultures and climates are more productive in research, teaching, and learning, and such departments will have positive relationships with graduates. Departments with inclusive and supportive cultures are able to function productively and make plans and decisions even when there are disagreements about directions or style.

The Cycle of Reflection and Action

Where are you and what are you trying to accomplish?

Who should be involved?

What will you do?

How did it go and what comes next?

To be intentional about change, a department must have a clear understanding of its present situation and a vision for what it would like to become. Our cycle of self-reflection questions will help your department start conversations and structure thinking about how to get from where you are to where you want to be.

The Cycle of Reflection and Action will help you put the EP3 Guide to work for your department.

Learn more about the Cycle of Reflection and Action and how it can help your department.

Effective Practices

Engage the whole department in a review of your climate
1. Seek departmental consensus on the importance of reviewing the climate for recruiting, retention, and positive outcomes for all department members. Set the framework for discussions of departmental culture and climate in advance, emphasizing that these discussions may be difficult and uncomfortable but that they are valuable.
  Educate all department members about how different individuals and groups experience climate differently, and ensure that everyone commits to listening to and taking seriously all perspectives, especially those of your most vulnerable department members.
  Determine appropriate frequencies for regular departmental climate review activities. Balance the need to collect data and reevaluate strategies frequently enough to get a good picture of each cohort and identify patterns and changes against the need to provide enough time between activities to allow real change to happen and avoid fatigue.
  Dedicate departmental resources for your climate review. These could include faculty and staff time for engaging in the work and/or funding for external consultants. Communicate to your administration that you are working to improve departmental culture and climate. Ask for their help in finding and promoting existing institutional and external resources.
  Assemble a diverse and representative team of department members to lead this effort. Include department members who are, e.g., pre-tenure faculty, tenured faculty, non-tenure-track
  , other staff, students, postdocs and/or members of
  . At the same time, avoid overburdening new faculty or people from marginalized groups. Establish desired outcomes for the team’s work and its norms for discussions, e.g., the STEP-UP Guidelines for Conduct During Discussions.
  Identify institutional partners who can support this work, e.g., in your human resources office, campus climate office, or office of equity and inclusion.
  Ensure that your plan makes clear who is responsible for presenting the results of your climate review, to whom the results should be presented, and who is responsible for developing and moving forward with actions to be taken in response. See 1.E below for details on sharing results and 2.E on developing an action plan.
2. Build trust with all department members by treating them with equal respect, taking their concerns seriously, and working collaboratively to solve problems they face.
  Meet regularly with different groups of department members (e.g., pre-tenure faculty, tenured faculty, non-tenure-track
  , other staff, students, postdocs, different research groups, and people from
  ) to learn about new issues as they arise.
  Consistently practice active listening (i.e., give your full attention, show engagement, and repeat or clarify points to be sure you understand them) to ensure you hear people’s concerns and commit to working to address their needs.
  Conduct exit interviews with people who are leaving your department, e.g., students who are graduating or dropping out of your program, and faculty and staff who are leaving. Ask about their reason(s) for leaving and request their feedback on advisors, mentors, instructors, supervisors, etc.; on the climate experienced by people from
  ; and on the department as a whole. Ensure that results from these interviews are documented and analyzed regularly for trends in a way that protects the anonymity of those who provide feedback.
  Pay particular attention to the climate for members of
  . See the section on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for guidance on how to analyze the current state of affairs for marginalized groups in your department.
  Listen carefully to the perspectives of staff, recognizing that students in crisis often go to staff first and that they may have insights into departmental climate that other department members miss. Be sensitive to power dynamics and their impact on people's willingness to discuss issues involving members of the department who are more powerful than them.
  Ask counseling centers and other support centers on campus if they can provide appropriately anonymized feedback on the kinds of issues they hear about from students in your department. Invite representatives from these centers to a faculty meeting to discuss these issues.
  Ask relevant members of your administration (e.g., the dean or provost) about issues they see with regard to your department’s climate.
3. See the section on How to Select and Use Various Assessment Methods in Your Program for guidance on how to use student feedback forms for formative assessment and how to use surveys, interviews, and focus groups to learn about your students.
  Partner with experts outside your department, such as the leaders of relevant campus offices (e.g., your office of institutional research, campus climate office, office of equity and inclusion, or human resources office) or an external consulting firm, to develop, administer, and analyze surveys, focus groups, and interviews. Recognize that trained outside experts are likely to be more effective than department members at gaining respondents’ trust, ensuring safety and anonymity, and collecting useful feedback while avoiding the potential for retaliation or other negative consequences. However, recognize that non-physicists may need guidance on understanding and exploring physics-department-specific issues or challenges.
  See Programmatic Assessments below for details on what to include in a survey of departmental climate. See Resources below for examples of surveys.
  Include all people in or served by your department (e.g., majors, students from service courses, faculty, staff, graduate students, postdocs, and anyone who has recently left or graduated from your department) in your climate surveys, focus groups, and interviews.
  Respect the confidentiality of survey respondents and focus group and interview participants, e.g., by making responses available only to specific people who can anonymize the results before distributing them more widely. Recognize that anonymity will be particularly challenging for members of groups that are not well represented in your department, so extra care must be taken to ensure that they feel safe participating.
  Recognize that if your department has very few members of
  , focus groups and interviews may be more useful than climate surveys for understanding issues that members of those groups face. Survey results may be skewed, finding high satisfaction for
  and masking serious problems that only marginalized groups see. Recognize that focus groups and interviews may generate a fuller picture of your department’s climate but will be more time consuming than climate surveys. Run focus groups before doing surveys, to reveal previously unrecognized issues. Use focus groups results to guide survey content and wording.
4. Recognize that culture can be difficult to see from the inside. To identify deep cultural issues that impact your departmental climate, you may need to bring in outside experts with experience and expertise in identifying such issues.
  If you are undertaking an external departmental review, ensure that it addresses issues of culture and climate, e.g., by vetting reviewers for experience in understanding and improving departmental climate. See the section on How to Undertake an Undergraduate Program Review for details.
  Seek funding from your administration for external consultants and/or site visits to provide perspectives from people who are not invested in departmental politics and to illuminate issues that are difficult to see from the inside.
  Consider hiring external consultants to evaluate your department’s climate. Identify consultants with deep knowledge of higher education in general, and of physics departments in particular.
  If you have a large department, consider arranging an external climate site visit, e.g., through the
  Committee on Minorities and Committee on the Status of Women in Physics joint site visit program, to elicit independent and candid feedback.
  Get an external read on your department’s climate when speaking to visitors (e.g., colloquium speakers or research collaborators) by asking open-ended questions about what they observe about your department and ensuring speakers have time reserved to talk with undergraduate and graduate students, junior faculty, and other groups. Pay particular attention to the perspectives of visitors in early career stages or from
  . However, avoid burdening such visitors with extensive, uncompensated conversations about your department and requests for advice, rather than focusing conversations on the topic they came to talk about.
  Be willing to listen to external feedback and advice and to make changes based on recommendations.
5. Interpret all data and communicate emerging themes to students, faculty, staff, postdocs, and others in your department. Ensure that there are regular opportunities for everyone to engage with the data and provide input on how to use them.
  Work to develop a reputation as a department that faces and addresses problems rather than one that covers them up, by talking openly about problems identified by your analysis and how you will address them.
  Find an appropriate balance between sharing enough information to assure everyone that you have understood their concerns and are working to address them, and protecting privacy so that everyone feels safe bringing concerns forward. Consult with your external experts, your institution’s administration and counsel, the previous department chair, and people who reported bad experiences to determine what can and can’t be shared and how to share sensitive information.
  Ensure that details that cannot be shared publicly are still preserved in internal documentation with enough specificity for departmental and institutional leadership to understand specific problems and how to address them.
  Share your data and analysis, to the extent possible while respecting anonymity and informed consent, with appropriate stakeholders (e.g., the provost, dean, alumni, and donors) to communicate successes and argue for resources to implement strategies to address problems or pursue opportunities. See the section on How to Be an Effective Chair for guidance on how to manage and advocate for resources.
Establish and communicate a collective vision for a healthy culture and climate
1. Discuss how a welcoming and mutually supportive environment benefits everyone.
  Talk to colleagues in the social sciences, your office of equity and inclusion, your human resources office, and/or your counseling center to learn about training and get advice on how to create and maintain inclusive environments where all department members feel welcome.
  Facilitate opportunities for all department members (faculty, staff, students, postdocs, etc.) to receive training on promoting an inclusive environment.
  See the section on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for guidance on how to educate yourself and your department about equity, diversity, and inclusion.
  Ensure that the responsibility for developing an inclusive culture and climate does not rest solely on the shoulders of faculty members from
  , but ensure that the concerns of such faculty are listened to and taken into consideration.
2. Identify, discuss, and document shared professional values that guide departmental actions. Such values may include respect, excellence in research and student learning, equity, transparency, care for and success of students and colleagues, and ethics. See 3, 4, and 5 below for examples of professional values that are important in a physics department.
  Ensure that everyone has a voice in discussions of professional values. For example, hold department-wide town halls and/or solicit ideas through surveys. In smaller departments, devote a portion of your departmental meeting to the topic and invite students to attend.
  Align your departmental values with external and internal norms, professional ethics, equitable practices, and your institution’s mission and vision. See the section on How to Create and Use Foundational Documents for details.
  Ensure that these values include attention to equity, diversity, and inclusion and to ethics.
  Discuss departmental values with people at all levels of your administration and get their feedback.
  Revisit these values periodically (e.g., every 5 to 10 years) to ensure they reflect a current understanding of shared principles.
3. Support departmental values with policies (on, e.g., teaching, service, research, mentoring expectations, tenure and promotion requirements) that reflect them.
  Refer to departmental values when making difficult decisions, making teaching assignments, formulating strategic plans, making hiring plans and decisions, allocating resources, planning curricular and co-curricular activities, making award nominations, and addressing problems.
4. Learn about your institution’s code of conduct and/or establish or revisit a code of conduct for your department. Ensure that your department’s code is aligned with your institution’s code, values, and policies. A code of conduct could also be framed as a set of
  or norms of professional behavior.
  Ensure that your code of conduct addresses professional behavior and respectful treatment of others within the department, including at social events, and outside the department, such as at professional meetings, community engagement events, and other off-campus work-related events. Address faculty, student, and staff behavior, both positive behavior (e.g., respect and inclusion in the classroom and beyond, recognizing diversity as an asset, and ethical conduct of research) and negative behavior (e.g., bullying, discrimination, sexual harassment, cheating, and plagiarism).
  Engage all members of the department in developing the code of conduct, and provide opportunities to revisit and update it periodically.
  Share your code of conduct widely, post it in public spaces, and discuss it in classes, departmental meetings, and events. Ensure that everyone knows what is expected of them and that violations of the code result in clear and well-understood consequences, such as notification of your human resources office and the dean.
  Ensure that your hiring process identifies whether potential faculty and staff will follow the departmental code of conduct and contribute positively to the departmental culture and climate, by, e.g., explicitly addressing culture and climate and the code of conduct in the interview questions and selection criteria.
  See Resources in the section on Ethics for ethics guidelines that could be included in your code of conduct.
5. Assemble a diverse and representative group of department members to develop an action plan. Review the membership of the group that led the climate review (if applicable) and fill in needed holes in expertise or experience, recognizing that developing an action plan requires different skills than identifying and documenting the state of your departmental climate. Ensure that this group has resources and the support of departmental leadership to enact change.
  Find ways to give those who are students, postdocs, new faculty, and/or members of
  powerful roles in developing and implementing the action plan, without overburdening them with excessive committee work. For example, assign specific areas of responsibility to various group members.
  Involve all members of your department in providing input, feedback, and support for the plan.
  Ensure that your plan has clear timelines, identified primary priorities, and indicators of success. For example, consider using a
  framework. Ensure that the plan lays out who has responsibility and authority to carry out the plan.
  Devote sufficient time to address major issues with your departmental climate, e.g., at an annual departmental retreat, when you can set aside a whole day in a separate location. Create an agenda and distribute it ahead of time to give people time to think about the questions posed.
  Consider either formalizing your action plan into a strategic plan or incorporating it into an existing departmental strategic plan. See the section on How to Create and Use a Strategic Plan for guidance.
  Regularly review the plan’s effect on your departmental climate, perhaps in partnership with your office of institutional research or another office with the resources to collate and store longitudinal data and use them to identify trends.
  Communicate findings and recommendations to your department clearly and often.
Create, nurture, and expect a culture in which everyone is welcome, included, and supported
1. Create a welcoming environment for working and learning by inviting everyone to share in the excitement of learning and doing physics.
  Encourage all department members to show an interest in and acknowledge the importance of aspects of each others’ lives that extend beyond the department, e.g., family, hobbies, community engagement, and holidays that department members observe.
  Communicate that your department is welcoming and inclusive, by, for example, using
  and publicizing conduct expectations and policies against harassment of any kind through postings in public spaces, year-opening emails, and syllabus statements.
  Work toward ensuring that your classes and department support the success of all students and faculty by setting realistic and achievable goals and providing support mechanisms and frequent assessments to help students and faculty understand their progress. Explicitly counteract any push toward a “weed-out” or “gatekeeper” culture focused on eliminating students or pre-tenure faculty who “can’t cut it.”
  Be flexible in accommodating family and personal needs by, e.g., providing faculty and staff time to take children to appointments and accommodating students’ outside work and/or family obligations. See Create and/or advocate for broadly inclusive family-friendly policies below.
  See the section on How to Be an Effective Chair for guidance on how to hire strong and diverse faculty and staff who will support a welcoming and inclusive departmental climate.
  Integrate new department members and long-term visitors through an orientation process that includes discussion of the departmental culture and climate, new members’ and visitors’ roles in culture and climate, and the code of conduct. Make it clear to everyone visiting or joining the department that they should both feel welcome and behave in a welcoming way toward others. Introduce newcomers to others with shared interests.
  See the section on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusi on for guidance on how to support members of
  in your department.
2. Promote a culture in which all department members (faculty, staff, students, and postdocs) work together to promote each others' success. Ensure that everyone is invested in the success of the most vulnerable members of your department, e.g., those in contingent positions, those from marginalized groups, and those facing other challenges.
  Conduct department-wide discussions to establish shared goals for student learning and success, recruiting and retention, and research directions.
  Regularly talk about your department as a community whose members support each other and/or as a team that works together. Articulate this vision often and ensure that your departmental vision statement reflects it.
  Ensure that your department’s leadership treats all groups equitably, by, e.g., inviting staff members to participate in departmental meetings or serve on committees and including student voices in committees.
  Make decisions collaboratively when appropriate, involving as many voices as possible. For example, include student representatives on committees, as appropriate; establish a mechanism for student leaders to meet regularly with the department chair to establish a sense of shared governance; and construct a transparent hiring process with opportunities for all stakeholders, including staff, to provide input on the process itself and on hiring decisions.
  Promote the idea that courses, spaces, and equipment purchased with department funds belong to your department and not to individual faculty or staff members. Have regular, transparent discussions around shared departmental resources, e.g., space and department funding.
  Strive for strong faculty participation in extra-departmental committees and collaborate with other departments on shared courses, spaces, and equipment, to establish a sense of belonging to the larger institutional community.
  Fairly distribute department committee assignments and other work assignments through transparent discussions, policies, and decisions.
3. Establish departmental traditions that include all department members and alumni. Ensure that these traditions are inclusive of people from diverse backgrounds.
  See the section on Retention of Undergraduate Physics Majors for guidance on how to recognize, develop, and celebrate distinctive features of your program.
  See the section on The Physical Environment: Encouraging Collaboration and Learning for guidance on how to use current and future spaces to exhibit departmental culture, community, and accomplishments.
4. Have a robust seminar or colloquium series that offers presentations by prominent outside visitors, faculty members, and advanced students. Feature alumni as speakers, and include speakers from emerging areas of physics and from outside academia, including at least one high school physics teacher per year.
  Encourage faculty, students (both undergraduate and graduate), and postdocs to attend colloquia, and ensure that they feel welcome. Ensure that at least one presentation per term is appealing and accessible to beginning undergraduate students, and that all talks for the whole department be understandable at the junior undergraduate level for at least the first 30 minutes.
  Ensure that all department seminars and colloquia have a collegial and respectful environment in which students and postdocs are encouraged to ask questions. Consider appointing a moderator who can ensure that more junior department members have a chance to ask questions and who can intervene if questions get too aggressive or if a few people dominate discussions.
5. Have regular events that everyone in your department (including staff and undergraduate students) attends. These can include coffee hours, movie nights, game nights, picnics, departmental luncheons and dinners, and annual awards ceremonies. Use these events as opportunities to, for example, promote teacher education, publicly recognize achievements of all department members, and reinforce the department’s intolerance of harassment of any kind.
  Encourage regular informal gatherings for lunch, coffee, or breaks in common spaces. Ensure that there are ample opportunities for everyone to participate and that these events do not exclude some department members from informal discussions of departmental business.
  Ensure that department social activities are inclusive and welcoming to all department members. Select times and foods that are inclusive and respectful of all participants’ needs and constraints. Avoid scheduling major events during important holidays for a diversity of traditions. (Consider local context and demographics, and consult, for example, the New York City school calendar for holidays that might be important for a diversity of traditions.) Reflect on whether and how your social events might cast a dominant culture as the default and exclude those who aren’t part of that culture. For example, Christmas parties may not feel welcoming to those who don’t celebrate this holiday. Ensure that events are accessible with respect to disability, e.g., in a physically accessible location, and not too loud or crowded to avoid sensory overloading. Watch for signs that some groups of students (e.g., first-year students, international students, and students from
  ) might not feel included or welcome to participate in department events.
  Ensure that department social activities provide students with opportunities to network with peers, role models, mentors, and potential allies.
  Broadly advertise department social activities in multiple forms, such as email, social media, physical posts, and announcements in classes.
  Make sure that people who can both model appropriate behaviors and who know how to respond to inappropriate behaviors are present at events.
  Consider whether serving or allowing alcohol makes sense or is necessary. Recognize that events that include alcohol may exclude some people, and that the use of alcohol may invite or be used as an excuse for problematic behaviors. Do not allow alcohol or other intoxicants at events involving undergraduates.
  Ensure that people can get home safely after social events.
6. Create a culture of reflection, innovation, and improvement of teaching across all ranks. Support
  in discussing and improving their teaching. See the section on Supporting Research-Based Teaching in Your Department for details.
  Create physics student communities early in undergraduate programs. Promote a communal rather than competitive environment. Set the expectation that students will learn together and support each other, so that no student is left out or left behind.
  Establish and maintain explicit expectations and standards of professional and respectful behavior by all in the classroom, including during whole-class, small-group, and online discussions. Include statements about expected classroom behavior in verbal introductions at the beginning of the term; course syllabi; and posters in classrooms, labs, and other departmental spaces.
  Encourage
  to establish a friendly environment before and after class and around campus by expressing openness to informal interactions that are not simply about course material.
  Encourage
  to refer to students by name as much as possible, and to learn students’ names and pronouns—and how to pronounce names correctly.
  Establish a culture in which
  assume the best of students and try to understand and respond to students’ challenges, rather than characterize students as lazy, stupid, or likely to be cheating or lying. For example, encourage instructional staff, when a student performs poorly or doesn't engage in appropriate learning behaviors, to ask the student how they can help, rather than criticize; and, when a student asks for extra time or an accommodation because something happened in their life, to believe the student and offer support, rather than ask for proof.
  Use your climate survey results and focus group input to understand and educate
  about the challenges your students face in their lives outside of class that might affect their engagement in class. Pay particular attention to students from
  .
  Provide periodic opportunities for all students to provide (possibly anonymous) feedback on courses during the term. See the section on How to Select and Use Various Assessment Methods in Your Program for guidance on how to use student feedback forms for formative assessment.
  Ensure that there are mechanisms for students and/or
  to provide feedback to
  on student interactions, and that instructional staff and instructional support staff know how to intervene appropriately in cases of ineffective group dynamics and/or problematic behavior. Ensure that instructional staff and instructional support staff communicate expectations for interactions and use active intervention to help students understand which behaviors are problematic and to discourage such behaviors.
7. Recognize the role that departmental policies play in supporting
  , rather than placing the responsibility solely on individuals to create balance through self care.
  Follow the recommendations in the American Council on Education’s “Equity-Minded Faculty Workloads” report to ensure that faculty workloads are equitable and reasonable. For example, clearly define faculty work activities and expectations; provide transparency around distribution of activities; and provide credit, accountability, and flexibility regarding these activities.
  Create a culture in which department members are not generally expected to work during evenings and weekends, while allowing flexibility for those who need or prefer nonstandard schedules. Ensure that assignments to activities that require exceptions to this rule, such as evening and weekend classes for students who need them, are made fairly and equitably.
  If possible and when appropriate, allow hybrid in-person/remote work arrangements.
  Ensure that
  understand the importance of sleep for students' health and learning. Advocate the use of frequent small assessments of learning rather than a few high-stakes cumulative assessments to encourage students to study at a steady rate rather than cram.
  Have faculty conversations about balancing work with personal life and commitments in the context of a demanding professional career.
  Value and acknowledge the communities, relationships, and activities outside the department that support department members.
  Understand and publicize your institution’s policies on personal, dependent-care, and medical leave. Encourage all faculty and staff to take advantage of leave. If available leave time is not adequate, advocate to increase it.
  Establish structures to delegate faculty and staff responsibility to others while they are on leave (and to ensure that those others are adequately recognized and compensated for this responsibility), rather than create a culture in which even those who are on leave need to work part-time from home.
  When faculty and staff need to take leave, especially for a major life event or illness, encourage them to take the entire leave available to them if needed.
8. See the section on How to Be an Effective Chair for guidance on how to support faculty and staff in achieving excellence.
  Recognize the value of faculty and other
  . Identify, publicize, and reward their contributions, including those related to outreach, mentoring, and engaging student communities.
  Support
  in learning to become effective mentors and educators for a diverse student population. See the sections on Advising and Mentoring of Students and Implementing Research-Based Teaching in Your Classroom for details.
  Provide and encourage professional development opportunities for faculty and staff around career advancement, leadership, teaching, and mentoring.
  Recognize and acknowledge that the professional expectations of faculty have grown increasingly complex, and support faculty in meeting these increased expectations. For example, keep these expectations in mind when requesting service or when evaluating teaching or research accomplishments.
  Pay particular attention to the needs of adjunct faculty and staff, whose contributions are often overlooked, resulting in low morale and high turnover rates. Ensure that they are treated and compensated well, that their jobs are clearly defined and reasonable, that they understand their opportunities for advancement, and that they are not regularly asked to perform tasks outside of their job descriptions.
  Have consistent and fair policies for assigning teaching loads, teaching schedules, and pay rates for
  .
  Support faculty and staff in achieving their career objectives within the constraints of individual circumstances, recognizing that someone’s objectives and circumstances may change over time. For example, faculty may want to change research fields or change the balance of research and teaching.
9. Create a culture of supporting all students who come to learn physics, regardless of their prior preparation or career goals. For example, see the section on Retention of Undergraduate Physics Majors for guidance on how to offer degree programs or tracks that are flexible and relevant for students with a wide variety of backgrounds, interests, and career aspirations and the sections on Introductory Courses of Life Sciences Majors and Courses for Non-STEM Majors for guidance on supporting students in service courses.
  See the section on Retention of Undergraduate Physics Majors for guidance on how to nurture a community atmosphere and a departmental identity, culture, and climate of respect and student advocacy.
  Formalize study groups to ensure that all students are included, e.g., by scheduling groups to meet at published times and inviting all students to participate, and by rotating the scheduled times to allow those with work or family obligations to participate.
  Establish shared spaces where physics majors can work and learn together and where interaction with faculty members is available. See the section on The Physical Environment: Encouraging Collaboration and Learning for guidance on how to provide and manage inclusive and welcoming spaces where students can gather and collaborate.
  Encourage faculty to make time for students, by, e.g., scheduling regular office hours (sometimes called “student hours” or “free help sessions”) at times that are accessible for students and having regular meetings with students doing research and independent studies.
  Expect faculty to demonstrate respect for all aspects of students’ identities, e.g., culture, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, languages, religion, socioeconomic background, and first-generation status.
  Take note of which students participate in department curricular activities (e.g., research and instruction) and co-curricular activities (e.g., student organizations, use of departmental social spaces, social events, awards, and other recognition programs). Address situations in which certain groups are systematically excluded and/or reach out to those who are disengaged.
  Ensure that students receive effective advising and mentoring. See the section on Advising and Mentoring of Students for details on developing strong advising and mentoring programs; supporting students and protecting them from harm; providing training for advisors, mentors, and mentees; and assessing your advising and mentoring programs.
  Ensure that faculty and students know about and share academic and career resources, e.g., academic advising centers, career counseling, quantitative skills centers, supplemental instruction, and tutoring services.
  Ensure that faculty and students know about and share non-academic support resources, e.g., emergency financial support, food pantries, crisis hotlines, counseling centers, support groups, organizations for students from
  , safety escort or other transportation services, and the campus ombudsperson or other institutional advocates for students.
10. Ensure that all work that supports the department, especially the informal work that contributes to the culture and climate—which is often disproportionately done by members of
  —has tangible rewards. For example, measure contributions to departmental climate, equity, diversity, and inclusion; measure formal and informal mentoring work; use salary increases and/or course releases to compensate such work; incorporate such work into tenure and promotion criteria; create awards with financial components for student-led initiatives and service that contribute to the department; and ensure that such work is distributed equitably.
  Recognize and celebrate contributions and achievements of all department members through, e.g., celebration events, newsletter highlights, awards, website profiles, messages to admissions and fundraising offices, and “good news” or “kudos” announcements to current department members and alumni. Include celebrations of small and large contributions and achievements, e.g., thanks for taking on a committee assignment or congratulations for getting a big grant, getting into a PhD program, or getting a scholarship.
  Inform upper-level administration of department successes, e.g., papers published, grant proposals submitted, awards received, and student goals achieved.
  Celebrate graduating majors going into careers or graduate school.
  Recognize and promote the accomplishments and leadership of committees.
Value and support healthy relationships within and beyond your department
1. Expect an atmosphere in which
  recognize and promote student achievements rather than complain about students’ perceived lack of intelligence or work ethic.
  Respect colleagues and do not speak ill of them.
2. Encourage research collaborations among faculty. Provide course releases to encourage faculty to develop research proposals that build on departmental strengths.
  Encourage teaching collaborations among
  , e.g., co-teaching, collaboratively designing courses, and peer observations.
3. See the section on How to Be an Effective Chair for details.
4. Find ways to support those with little power. For example, establish departmental policies that protect staff, adjunct faculty, postdocs, and others with less secure positions from exploitation; prioritize the needs of early-career faculty in your department spending plan; and see 3.I and 3.J above.
  Recognize department leaders’ responsibility to provide role models, support, and care for more junior members, e.g., undergraduate students and untenured faculty.
  Recognize that power imbalances influence relationships in which one person is evaluating another, e.g., through grading, performance evaluations, voting on promotion and tenure, and/or writing letters of recommendation.
  Ensure that all department members keep in mind liability issues with respect to, e.g., underage drinking at social events and dating, and everyone is aware of relevant institutional policies, federal laws, etc.
  Recognize that there are multiple axes of power that need to be addressed and that people who hold one kind of power may not hold other kinds of power. For example, a female faculty member may be sexually harassed by a male student; a teaching assistant with a strong accent may receive student evaluations questioning their ability to speak English; or a department chair of color may have their decisions questioned by faculty members who would not question similar decisions made by a white department chair.
  Ensure that supervisors, advisors, and mentors recognize that they hold more power than those they are supporting, and that they therefore have a responsibility to model appropriate behavior and take steps to avoid abusing their power, e.g., by recognizing the potential influence of
  in making judgments and consciously counteracting this influence.
  Ensure that faculty maintain professional relationships with students and treat them with the respect they would give any colleague.
5. See the section on How to Be an Effective Chair for guidance on how to manage interpersonal conflicts.
6. Encourage interdepartmental committees and collaborations.
  Encourage and support student, faculty, and staff service to the local community, through, e.g., outreach, after-school, or summer programs. See the section on Community Engagement and Outreach for details.
  Establish connections to alumni and local physicists by inviting them to give research and career talks and participate in department-wide events, outreach events, and annual award ceremonies. Encourage alumni to interact with students by giving talks, attending informal gatherings, and providing workplace tours, internships, and mentoring.
  Promote membership and engagement in professional communities and societies. Encourage and fund students and faculty to attend and present at local, regional, and national meetings.
  Talk about important issues and events in the world during departmental discussions and classes.
Create and nurture programs, processes, and policies that support continuous improvement of departmental culture and climate
1. See the section on Advising and Mentoring of Students for guidance on mentoring of undergraduate students, and the section on How to Be an Effective Chair for guidance on how to coordinate mentoring experiences for faculty and staff.
2. See the section on How to Be an Effective Chair for guidance on how to address inappropriate or non-collaborative behavior.
  See the section on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for guidance on how to use departmental and institutional policies and procedures to address bias, microaggressions, and harassment.
3. Schedule department colloquia, seminars, and meetings during standard working hours so that everyone can participate. For example, schedule departmental colloquia to allow parents ample time to pick up their children.
  Work to create a culture in which pauses in progression toward tenure, promotion, and graduate and undergraduate degrees are seen as normal rather than exceptional. For example, provide tenure-clock extensions for leaves and encourage all eligible faculty to take them.
  Understand and publicize your institution’s policy on parental and family leaves. Encourage all faculty and staff, regardless of gender, to take leave. If available leave time is not adequate, advocate to increase it. Advocate to ensure that family leave policies include graduate students and postdocs.
  Know about and publicize external sources of funding that can support department members during pauses and challenges, e.g., supplemental funding on federal grants for paid family leave for grant-funded staff, so that leave doesn't negatively impact the grant; and organizations that provide funds for graduate and undergraduate students facing financial difficulties. Communicate to your upper-level administration about issues that impact department members and advocate for institutional support.
  When developing or advocating for family-friendly policies, be mindful of non-traditional families. For example, explicitly include adoption in parental-leave policies, domestic partners in family-leave policies,
  couples in dual-career policies, and care for dependents other than children in dependent-care policies.
  Understand your institution’s existing dual-career hiring policies and/or work with administrators to develop or expand a transparent couple-friendly dual-career hiring policy. Highlight openness to dual-career hiring in job announcements, recruitment materials, and institutional websites. Implement the practices for dual-career hiring recommended by the Stanford report on Dual-Career Academic Couples. See Resources below.
  Work with your institution and/or neighboring departments to create a lactation room with privacy and suitable refrigeration in or near your department.
  Have clear policies for when caregivers can bring children to campus. Ensure that such policies provide both flexibility and a safe environment that is conducive to working and learning.
  Recognize that issues that disproportionately impact members of
  can also impact others. For example, while a lack of childcare disproportionately impacts women, and a lack of domestic partner benefits disproportionately impacts
  people, addressing these problems can benefit everyone.
4. Fund and support department co-curricular activities, e.g., events featuring a variety of speakers, workshops for developing professional skills, and field trips to physics-related sites.
  Develop and actively support student organizations and governance.
  Value and provide opportunities for students to develop skills needed for a wide range of careers, including those outside physics. See the section on Career Preparation for details.
  Establish specialized tracks, concentrations, and programs around applied and engineering physics, entrepreneurship, teaching, and joint department programs. See the sections on Degree Tracks, Dual-Degree Programs, Internships, and High School Physics Teacher Preparation for details.

Programmatic Assessments

Identify which of the above Effective Practices you are implementing and track the results of implementing them.
Evaluate current departmental practices and policies to determine the extent to which they foster a welcoming and inclusive culture and climate.
Conduct an inventory of policies that reward activities related to fostering an inclusive culture and climate such as student advising, mentoring of students and junior faculty, and work that supports equity and climate. See the section on How to Select and Use Various Assessment Methods in Your Program for guidance on how to conduct inventories.
Conduct an inventory of professional development opportunities for faculty, staff, and students, and the degree to which department members know about and take advantage of these opportunities.
Meet with ombudspersons, human resources representatives, and counseling program leaders to find out what they have learned about how people perceive your department’s climate.
Partner with experts outside your department, such as the leaders of relevant campus offices (e.g., your office of institutional research, campus climate office, office of equity and inclusion, or human resources office) or an external consulting firm, to develop, administer, and analyze surveys, focus groups, and interviews. Recognize that trained outside experts are likely to be more effective than department members at gaining respondents’ trust, ensuring safety and anonymity, and collecting useful feedback while avoiding the potential for retaliation or other negative consequences. However, recognize that non-physicists may need guidance on understanding and exploring physics-department-specific issues or challenges. See the section on How to Select and Use Various Assessment Methods in Your Program for guidance on how to use student feedback forms for formative assessment and how to use surveys, interviews, and focus groups to learn about your students.
Give climate surveys to all department members at an appropriate frequency (see Effective Practices 1.A.iii above). Include questions about the quality of interpersonal relationships, the quality of teaching and student learning, the quality of leadership and professional relations, connections with larger institutional and societal issues, equity, inclusivity, personal safety, and experiences of people from
. Disaggregate the results by demographics to identify inequities. Compare results over time to measure changes in climate. See Resources below for examples of existing surveys.
If your institution conducts a campus-wide climate survey, request findings for respondents from your department or, if your department is small, a summary of findings that is appropriately anonymized.
Compare departmental data with institutional and national data, where available.
Meet regularly with student groups to learn about experiences that may not be reflected in survey, interview, or focus group results.
See Programmatic Assessments in the section on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for additional measures of the departmental culture and climate for members of
.
See Programmatic Assessments in the section on Retention of Undergraduate Physics Majors for additional measures of the departmental culture and climate for undergraduate students.
Evaluate the extent to which you are meeting the goals for departmental culture and climate outlined in your action or strategic plan, and the extent to which you are adhering to your expected timeline, based on the assessments in your plan.
Consider hiring a consultant or team from outside the department to provide an analysis of your climate. See Get perspectives and feedback from outside your department and institution above for details.

Resources

E. Bertschinger, “What I learned as a department head,” MIT Faculty Newsletter 28(5), 4–7 (2016).
E. Fine and J. Sheridan, Enhancing Department Climate: A Guide for Department Chairs, Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute (WISELI) (2015).
Committee on Minorities and APS Committee on the Status of Women in Physics joint site visit program.
L. Schiebinger, A. R. Davies, S. K. Gilmartin, “Dual-Career Academic Couples: What Universities Need to Know,” The Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Stanford University (2008).
K. O'Meara, D. Culpepper, J. Misra, and A. Jaeger, “Equity-Minded Faculty Workloads: What We Can and Should Do Now,” American Council on Education (2021).
C. A. Wooten and M. A. Condis, “Collegiality as a Dirty Word? Implementing Collegiality Policies in Institutions of Higher Education,” Academic Labor: Research and Artistry 2, 3 (2018).
See Resources for the section on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for further resources on improving departmental culture and climate for members of
.

Examples of climate surveys

S. White and R. Ivie, “Climate in Physics Departments,” The Physics Teacher 59(10), 10-14 (2021). Describes the content and results of a climate survey developed by the AIP Statistical Research Center and administered to physics departments throughout the U.S.
L. Poffenberger, “Climate Check: Assessing the Environment in the Physics Workplace,” APS News 27(6) (2018). Describes the results of a climate survey given by
to physicists as part of the STEM Inclusion Study.
University of Chicago Physics Climate Survey Report, 2017.
T. J. Atherton, R. S. Barthelemy, W. Deconinck, M. L. Falk, S. Garmon, E. Long, M. Plisch, E. H. Simmons, K. Reeves, “LGBT Climate in Physics: Building an Inclusive Community,” American Physical Society (2016). Includes a detailed climate survey.
American Association of Universities Campus Climate Survey, 2019.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Department Climate Survey, 2013–2018.
John Hopkins and American Association of Universities (AAU) Campus Climate Survey, 2019.