Effective Practices
Educate yourself and your department members (faculty, students, staff, and postdocs) about equity, diversity, and inclusion
- Understand the differences between equity, diversity, and inclusion. Ensure that your initiatives address all of them, prioritizing equity above inclusion and inclusion above diversity, as discussed above.
- Learn about , , , , , , privilege, and marginalization. Hover over any underlined term in this section to see its definition, and see Evidence below for details. Recognize your personal role, and the role of your departmental policies, in perpetuating or mitigating the effects of each of these phenomena on members of your department.
- Learn about how underrepresentation, bias, and negative experiences of people from manifest themselves within physics. See Resources and Evidence below.
- Recognize that physics culture’s emphasis on excellence and intelligence usually hides an against groups or people who appear to lack the “natural ability” to do physics because they are underprepared due to historical inequities and marginalization and/or because their skills are not recognized due to cultural differences. Recognize the ways in which physics culture rewards those who have already excelled due to privilege. Learn about and the , and how they play out in physics culture.
- Learn about specific practices for creating an equitable, diverse, and inclusive environment in physics and astronomy departments. See 4 and 5 and Resources below.
- Seek support and advice from experts in equity, diversity, and inclusion (e.g., through campus offices or groups, or external consultants) to leverage institutional resources and programs and/or to generate a study curriculum for everyone in your department to learn about the above topics.
- Review and share historical documents for your department and institution, e.g., strategic plans and reports from program reviews and past initiatives. Learn about the legacies of historical racism, misogyny, and other discriminatory practices at your institution.
- Ask faculty who have been in your department for a long time about its history around issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion.
- Document what you learn and ensure that there is a mechanism for maintaining records, information, and passing on institutional memory about equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts.
- Identify and partner with campus offices and student groups that are working to support students from and to improve equity, diversity, and inclusion. Include regular two-way communications between your department and these offices and groups.
- See the section on Advising and Mentoring of Students for guidance on learning about and sharing resources for students, including resources for general support and those for specialized support related to students’ social identities. Take advantage of resources, programs, and training offered by professional societies, e.g., APS departmental climate site visits, APS-IDEA, AIP TEAM-UP, and STEP UP, to bolster your departmental equity, diversity, and inclusion strategy. See Resources below.
- Encourage and support travel of faculty, students, postdocs, and staff to regional and national meetings of organizations for , e.g., , , , , , and .
- Encourage and support travel of faculty, students, postdocs, and staff to workshops and conferences that highlight equity, diversity, and inclusion, e.g., conferences affiliated with the and the .
- Discuss these topics in department meetings, departmental retreats, and town halls.
- Assemble a small group of department members to promote knowledge and awareness of, and support improvement of, equity, diversity, and inclusion. Task the group with identifying problems that need to be addressed and implementing solutions, e.g., tracking student demographics and retention, addressing diversity in faculty searches and recruiting of students, and addressing climate issues. Ensure that this group has the resources and support from departmental leadership needed to enact change.
- Implement lessons in introductory courses on representation and diversity in physics, using, e.g., the Underrepresentation Curriculum, the STEP UP curriculum, or the Teaching Guides and Educational Games on the History of the Physical Sciences (see Resources below).
- Highlight the work of a diverse range of physicists, including historical figures and people you know, to help students recognize the diversity of people who contribute to and belong in physics.
- Use examples, illustrations, figures, metaphors, and figures of speech that include a rich variety of assumed participant and cultural perspectives (e.g., draw examples from a wide range of disciplines; introduce any necessary context; use names from a variety of cultures and genders in examples), being careful not to introduce any stereotypes or .
- Ensure that course materials and examples are accessible to (see Support disabled people below for details) and do not rely on knowledge of or interest in specific cultural practices (e.g., questions that focus on sports, car repair, or war) so that they are accessible to students from diverse backgrounds.
- Ensure that course materials and examples do not use offensive or discriminatory language. For example, avoid comparing Coulombic attraction to romantic attraction, which assumes heterosexual attraction; use “leader and follower” or “first and second” instead of “master and slave” to describe control relations between components in clocks, flip-flop circuits, computer drives, radio transmitters, and other systems.
- If the physics textbooks used in your classes contain racial and gender bias (many do), consider switching textbooks and let textbook representatives know why. If switching textbooks is not possible, discuss this bias explicitly with students.
- Recognize that students from may not interpret course practices and structures in the same way that students from do, and you may need to modify or reframe these practices and structures to be more inclusive. For example, consider avoiding or reframing the practice of asking students to “argue for” or “defend” their answer, which may cause discomfort for students from cultures that value consensus building over confrontation. See Support first-generation and low-income college students below for more examples.
- Hire that reflect the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of your students, e.g., by recruiting students who have taken your courses to serve as undergraduate instructional assistants, regardless of whether they are physics majors.
- Recognize and explicitly address bias, , and harassment perpetrated by , , or other students in classes. Have a clear mechanism for reporting issues with classroom behavior to instructional staff, departmental leadership, and institutional offices, as appropriate. See below for guidance on how to use departmental and institutional policies and procedures to address bias, microaggressions, and harassment.
- Provide students the opportunity to share their names and pronouns at the beginning of a term (e.g., by having name cards on desks, encouraging students to write their name and pronouns on the corners of shared whiteboards, and/or enabling students to change their names and add pronouns in online platforms used for classes), without requiring that they do so in front of other students. Use the names and pronouns that students specify. Encourage instructors to introduce themselves to the class with their names and pronouns.
- Avoid commenting on personal characteristics of students such as appearance, attire, gender identity, accent, or national background.
- See below for guidance on how to support disabled people.
- See the section on Implementing Research-Based Instructional Practices for guidance on how to understand and implement practices that support the diversity of students in your classes.
- See the section on Departmental Culture and Climate for guidance on how to ensure that your classes and curriculum create an inclusive and student-centered environment for all.
- Work with campus offices and programs to provide faculty, researchers, teaching assistants, postdocs, adjuncts, and lecturers with training on inclusive practices, , , and reducing , and with bystander or “ally” training.
- Offer training for all faculty, staff, undergraduate and graduate students, and postdocs. Provide incentives to support those who choose to engage in such training (e.g., see 3.B.ii below), but recognize that training is unlikely to be effective if it is not embedded within broader efforts in your department and/or is done only to satisfy legal requirements. Instead, make training voluntary and ensure that its structure enables participants to practice behaviors that increase contact with and empathy for people who are different from themselves, along with the other recommendations in this section. See Evidence below for details about what makes diversity training effective or not.
- Regularly communicate to faculty the importance and implications of mandatory anti-bias training (e.g., Title IX training) and encourage them to use it as a resource.
- Invite experts in these topics to give departmental colloquia and seminars, lead workshops, and discuss them in classes. Provide equitable compensation for this work, recognizing that not doing so promulgates the marginalization of this work and the people who do it.
- Invite equity leaders in your administration (e.g., in your office of student affairs or equity, diversity, and inclusion) to speak to your department.
- Identify successful champions of equity, diversity, and inclusion in your and other departments and ask them about their experiences, successes, and failures.
Analyze the current state of affairs for marginalized groups in your department
- Ensure that departmental leaders, especially those from , work to build trust and relationships with people from and include them as partners and leaders in the work of understanding the current state of affairs and developing and enacting plans for change. Recognize that this is an important first step for department leaders to learn about the experiences, needs, and interests of members of marginalized groups.
- Encourage all department members, especially those from , to recognize how their social norms may be different from those of other groups and to learn about and respect others’ norms. For example, department members might learn about (but shouldn’t expect members of to educate them about) beauty practices and their cultural importance, queer bars and dating in queer communities, forms of care work beyond childcare that department members may be engaged in outside of work or school, and different communication means used by people with disabilities (e.g., interpreters, chat, and text-to-speech assistive technology).
- Have regular listening sessions to hear people’s concerns and learn about new issues as they arise. Use active listening and commit to making meaningful change in response to what you learn. Offer a variety of formats, including town halls, focus groups, drop-in chats, and asynchronous and/or anonymous opportunities to provide feedback.
- Meet with ombudspersons, human resources representatives, and counseling program leaders to find out what they have learned about the extent to which members of perceive your department as being friendly or hostile.
- Partner with experts outside your department, such as the leaders of relevant offices (e.g., your office of institutional research, office of equity and inclusion, or human resources office) or an external consulting firm, to gather and analyze data, provide perspectives from outside of departmental politics, and illuminate issues that are difficult to see from the inside.
- Seek funding from your administration and/or other funding sources for external consultants and/or site visits to support equity work.
- Consider hiring consultants to evaluate and support improvement of equity and inclusion in your department. Identify consultants who have both scholarly expertise in equity, diversity, and inclusion and lived experiences as members of .
- 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.
- Be willing to listen to external feedback and advice and make changes based on recommendations.
- Work with experts to gather and use relevant data on an ongoing basis, rather than in response to isolated situations or required reports, to establish a culture of reflective improvement.
- Recognize the limitations of quantitative data, especially if your department is small and/or has small numbers of people from . Value and use qualitative data on the subjective experiences of your department members.
- Track how responsibilities, opportunities, and outcomes are distributed across demographics, look for inequities, and use these data to open discussions within your department on equity. See Programmatic Assessments 3 below for examples of measures to track.
- Engage faculty in discussions using comparisons of your department’s data with those of peer and aspirational institutions and with national data (e.g., data from the AIP Statistical Research Center, the web page How Does Your Institution Compare? (this site is currently unavailable), or the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System).
- Ensure that demographic and climate data are transparently available to all, to the extent possible without compromising anonymity, either by using institutional data-sharing tools or by broadly and regularly sharing departmental data.
- Engage faculty and students (where appropriate) in discussions of how data support departmental values and identify areas of concern. For example, determine whether the demographics of your majors match those of your institution and/or gateway courses or whether your (aggregated over time and/or multiple courses) vary across demographic groups.
- Carefully consider the utility of standardized measures of student preparation (e.g., Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate coursework, placement exams, and GRE scores) as indicators of students’ ability or potential or as primary predictors of success in physics. Recognize that these measures are strongly correlated with socioeconomic and cultural factors.
- See the section on Departmental Culture and Climate for guidance on how to enlist experts to conduct climate surveys, focus groups, and interviews. Recognize that trained outside experts will be more effective than department members for gaining respondents’ trust, ensuring their 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.
- Balance the need to collect sufficient data to understand the experiences of and to develop and assess plans to improve them with the need to take action and implement changes. Avoid expending excessive resources on collecting data when problems and their solutions are already clear.
- 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.
Create, publicize, implement, and assess an action plan for equity, diversity, and inclusion
- Draft the statement in partnership with a diverse group of faculty, postdocs, staff, and students spanning a range of social identities, backgrounds, and perspectives.
- Hold department-wide town halls to discuss and improve the statement.
- Highlight the statement to each new cohort of incoming students and all new postdocs, staff, and faculty.
- Revisit the statement periodically (e.g., every five years) to ensure it reflects current best practices and context of your department.
- See the section on How to Create and Use Foundational Documents for details.
- Get broad participation and departmental and institutional support in equity efforts rather than relying on isolated champions who volunteer with little support from others.
- Establish a culture in which work to support equity, diversity, and inclusion is seen as part of the normal work of your department, rather than “extra” work people do on top of their regular workload. Add contributions to such work to faculty and staff annual performance reviews, promotion and tenure reviews, and other evaluation processes. Celebrate such work by supporting merit raise requests and award nominations based on the work.
- Devote adequate time, attention, and money to implementing the recommendations in this section.
- Expect discomfort to arise when working to address equity, diversity, and inclusion. Recognize that experiencing and working through discomfort is a necessary step toward improving conditions in your department.
- Address problems with equity and inclusion before attempting to increase the diversity of your department. Otherwise, diversity initiatives are likely to be unsuccessful and may cause harm to people from who are recruited into a hostile environment.
- Recognize that change is difficult when power is concentrated among the people who have benefited from the current system. Provide people from with resources and power to lead change.
- Recognize that faculty from often provide a disproportionate amount of informal service, such as informal mentoring and support of students, education of colleagues about equity issues, and work to create a welcoming environment for all. Formally recognize such service as counting towards service requirements, and work to distribute this service load more evenly among faculty members.
- Ensure that membership of this group is diverse and representative while not overburdening new faculty or faculty from .
- Include students and postdocs in this group and incorporate their perspectives, while not overburdening them with excessive committee work.
- Consider implementing a shared leadership model.
- Establish desired outcomes for the group’s work and its norms for discussions, e.g., the STEP-UP Guidelines for Conduct During Discussions.
- Recognize that an action plan will be ineffective if it’s not backed by broad agreement about the need for and nature of change. Be prepared to invest a significant amount of time in and provide multiple venues for discussion and sharing of views. Particularly in the areas of equity, diversity, and inclusion, differences in underlying values and norms may make it difficult for department members to agree. See the section on How to Create and Sustain Effective Change for details on how to address such barriers to change before developing concrete strategies.
- Develop achievable but ambitious short-, mid-, and long-term goals for equity, diversity, and inclusion in your department.
- Create an action plan with strategies for achieving your goals. See 4 and 5 below for examples of specific strategies to consider including in your plan.
- Involve all members of your department in providing input, feedback, and support for the action plan at regular intervals as the plan is developed. This builds awareness and agreement about the contents of the plan and identifies points of contention and possible resolutions before the final plan is presented.
- Ensure that your plan has clear timelines, identified priorities, and indicators of success.
- Ensure that strategies are assessable, and have a plan for how to know whether they are working.
- Consider 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.
- Communicate the plan to the entire department, elicit feedback, and present progress reports at regular intervals.
- Assign responsibilities in the plan to faculty leaders throughout your department.
- Create and maintain structures to support the continuity and sustainability of your equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives, so they do not rely on one person to keep them going.
- Commit to a culture of continuous improvement and assessment.
- Regularly review progress on the plan using existing department review processes so that equity, diversity, and inclusion become part of standard practice.
Pay separate attention to the particular needs and concerns of different groups and individuals
- Use precise and specific language where possible and applicable. For example, don’t refer to “people of color” when you mean to discuss the particular experiences of people, and don’t refer to people when you mean to discuss the unique experiences of trans people.
- Learn and use the terms that people prefer to be referred to by, recognizing that different individuals within the same may prefer different terms.
- Avoid making assumptions about individuals’ experiences, interests, or competence based on their identities or your perception of their identities.
- Learn about the ways in which the intersection of identities can shape the forms of discrimination and bias that people experience within physics. For example, misogyny may manifest itself in different ways against Black women and white women, and racism may manifest itself in different ways against Asian women and Asian men. See Resources below to learn more about intersectionality.
- Recognize that people of color are diverse, and that different groups and individuals experience racism differently and need different kinds of support. Recognize that people who have the same races or ethnicities often have different countries of origin, backgrounds, experiences, and needs. Take these differences into account when working to support people of color in your department.
- Read and implement the findings and recommendations in the TEAM-UP report for increasing the number of students in physics. See Resources below.
- Read and implement the findings and recommendations from the Report on the Conference for Enhancing Undergraduate Physics Programs at Hispanic-Serving Institutions. See Resources below.
- Make it an explicit goal for your department to increase the number of physics degrees completed by , , students, and other students of color who are underrepresented in your program. Develop a to support this goal. See the section on How to Create and Sustain Effective Change for guidance.
- Build relationships with groups for physicists and students of color, such as the National Society of Black Physicists (), the National Society of Hispanic Physicists (), and the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (). Reach out to local tribes and to science educators at
- Advertise to all department members opportunities available for physicists of color (e.g., the and the ). Communicate about these opportunities in ways that do not assume you know a department member’s racial or ethnic background or whether they will be interested in such opportunities.
- Recognize that students and faculty of color are facing the impacts of racism in addition to the usual challenges of physics and may need additional support from empathetic, trained, and helpful faculty in positions of power.
- Recognize that Asians and Asian Americans can have many different ethnicities, national identities, and experiences. Recognize that while some Asian and Asian American groups are equitably or even overrepresented in physics, this is not necessarily the case for all groups or at all levels, and even overrepresented group members can face ethnic discrimination and violence.
- Understand how interactions with law enforcement impact , , and members of your department. Learn about your institution’s policies and budget for campus safety and security, where to call for help on campus, and who responds when you call. Recognize that calling armed security or law enforcement officials to address a problem in your department may create a situation that escalates rather than defuses the issue, consider whether this kind of intervention is necessary, and find alternatives when possible, e.g., mental health services, crisis hotlines, or safety escort services run by student volunteers. When calling armed security or law enforcement officials is necessary, be aware of potential consequences and prepare for them. For example, explain the situation when you call, including describing victims and bystanders present in enough detail to avoid a situation in which victims and bystanders of color are assumed to be perpetrators due to their race; stay on the scene and talk to responding officials. Work with campus offices, organizations, and other groups to advocate for proactive race-conscious security policies.
- Work to identify and change racist policies and practices in your department and institution. Learn about how racism includes , which can lead to policies and practices that appear neutral but create inequitable outcomes for people of color without any individual implementing such policies being intentionally racist. Recognize that cultural norms can make racism difficult to see and that identifying it will require conscious effort and outside feedback. For example, if your department is predominantly white, choosing colloquium speakers from among people your department members already know may reproduce existing inequities.
- Recognize that women are diverse, and ensure that initiatives to support women address issues faced by women of color as well as those faced primarily by white women.
- Educate yourself and your department about the difference between sex at birth and gender and avoid assuming a by, e.g., including only two options for gender on demographic questions or separating groups by gender for classroom activities.
- Ensure that initiatives to support women (e.g., groups for women in physics), are broadly inclusive of all who do not identify as men and may thus be experiencing misogyny, including trans and people. Recognize that trans women are women.
- Advertise to all department members opportunities available for women in physics (e.g., , groups for women in physics, and ). Communicate about these opportunities in ways that do not assume you know a department member’s gender or whether they will be interested in such opportunities.
- Recognize that women and students and faculty are likely to face sexual harassment, violence (see Evidence below), and/or more subtle forms of misogyny in addition to the usual challenges of physics, and may need additional support from empathetic, trained, and helpful faculty in positions of power.
- Encourage women undergraduates to attend the APS Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics () or other professional development programs for women in physics. Advertise the conference to non-physics majors in physics classes and invite them to a departmental social event or dinner following the conference to recruit (or retain) them as physics majors. Encourage women in first-year, introductory physics classes who are considering majoring in physics to attend. Use this conference experience as a cohort-building activity.
- Consider applying to host a conference. Hosting a conference can provide opportunities for your students to develop leadership skills.
- Work to identify and change misogynist policies and practices in your department and institution that lead to inequitable outcomes, including policies and practices that appear neutral. For example, not having smaller sizes for laboratory safety equipment such as goggles, gloves, or lab coats may compromise women’s safety and make it difficult for them to fully participate and feel included in laboratory activities. Recognize that cultural norms can make patriarchal structures difficult to see and that identifying them will require conscious effort and outside feedback. Pay particular attention to a lack of family-friendly policies, which can impact anyone, but often disproportionately impact women. See the section on Departmental Culture and Climate for guidance on how to create and/or advocate for broadly inclusive family-friendly policies.
- Read and implement the findings and recommendations in LGBT+ Inclusivity in Physics and Astronomy: A Best Practices Guide and the report on LGBT Climate in Physics: Building an Inclusive Community. See Resources below.
- Pay particular attention to the needs of people who are also members of other , who are likely to face greater levels of discrimination and additional issues. For example, many LGBTQ+ people of color report not feeling fully at home in majority-white LGBTQ+ groups or in majority cis/straight groups for people of color.
- Advertise to all department members opportunities available for physicists. Communicate about these opportunities in ways that do not assume you know a department member’s sexual orientation or whether they will be interested in such opportunities.
- Recognize that students and faculty are facing the impacts of homophobia and transphobia in addition to the usual challenges of physics and may need additional support from empathetic, trained, and helpful faculty in positions of power.
- Recognize and challenge assumptions of heteronormativity and/or cisnormativity, i.e., assuming that everyone is heterosexual and/or identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth or appear to have.
- Use gender-inclusive phrasing and avoid heteronormative assumptions about partners in professional conversation, e.g., say “your partner” instead of “your wife”, “chair” instead of “chairman”, “sexual orientation” instead of “sexual preference”, “they” instead of “he or she”, “everyone” instead of “ladies and gentlemen.” Learn and use appropriate terms for people.
- Advocate to make single-person, gender-inclusive bathrooms available within your department or very close to your department in order to ensure safety and comfort for people who are transgender or gender nonconforming. Advertise the presence and location of these facilities widely within your department.
- Support department members who are undergoing a gender transition by respecting and accepting their identity and by addressing administrative issues around name and gender changes on departmental records and websites, job applications, and publication lists. For example, ensure that departmental and institutional records about students and other department members provide a field to indicate preferred or , and that all department members are trained to use this name in all interactions with and about individuals. Recognize that asking questions about medical transitions is invasive and inappropriate.
- Refer to people by the names and pronouns they ask you to use. Make it a departmental norm to encourage (but not require) everyone to mention their pronouns in introductions, name tags, and email signatures. Correct misgendering when it occurs.
- Join, and encourage other members of your department to join, an “out list” as an physicist or as an ally, e.g., the lgbt+physicists OutList. These lists enable students to find mentors and allies to show leadership.
- Work to identify and change homophobic and transphobic policies and practices in your department and institution that lead to inequitable outcomes, including policies and practices that appear neutral. For example, recognize that physicists may not be comfortable traveling to states or countries where they are not safe due to discriminatory laws, and ensure that faculty evaluation policies do not penalize people for not taking advantage of professional opportunities in such locations. Recognize that cultural norms can make homophobia and transphobia difficult to see and that identifying them will require conscious effort and outside feedback.
- Ensure that your department meets and goes beyond compliance with the and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, particularly section 504, which mandates equitable access for in institutions that receive federal funding, and section 508, which sets standards for digital accessibility.
- Learn about Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and use to proactively design physical spaces, courses, and other departmental activities in ways that support all learners by reflecting the variability of their needs, abilities, and interests. This includes, but is not limited to, supporting people with visual impairments (by, e.g., using high-contrast and color-blind friendly colors and readable fonts, and reading essential text aloud in all departmental presentations), auditory impairments (by, e.g, providing closed captioning and transcription), physical and mobility impairments (by, e.g., using software that is compatible with assistive technologies such as alternative keyboards and screen readers), cognitive impairments such as or autism spectrum disorder (by, e.g., providing breaks during class periods and meetings), and emotional and mental health impairments such as anxiety or depression (by, e.g., supporting the affective needs of department members, normalizing counseling services, and providing adequate leave time). Recognize that while these supports may be necessary for some, they may also be helpful for a wider range of people. See Resources below.
- Ensure that course and classroom technologies (e.g., your campus learning management system, online homework systems, grading systems, online texts, simulations, and open educational resources) have adequate accessibility features and that learn about and use these features.
- Understand that students do not all learn the same way, and one size does not fit all. Have multiple ways for students to engage with, access, and express their learning of course materials and participate in research. Partner with your disability services office to learn how to support , including those with physical and mobility, health-related, cognitive, visual, hearing, emotional and mental health, and learning disabilities.
- Ensure that departmental leadership, , and other staff learn about your institution’s policies and practices for disability accommodations, identify any inequities, and advocate for equitable policies and practices. For example, requiring costly private testing gives an advantage to students with more resources. Support instructional staff in providing accommodations for students who need them but may not have the resources to get official diagnoses (as long as staff can do so without violating institutional policies) and/or modifying courses so that accommodations are a regular part of the course structure. This could be accomplished by, e.g., providing lecture slides and class recordings to all students, making all exams take home, and/or eliminating exam time limits.
- Partner with your disability services office to learn about disability, accessibility, and practices to include , faculty, and staff in all departmental activities. Implement practices proactively to meet needs, e.g., by changing course structures to provide multiple options for assignments and supports. At the same time, recognize that disability services staff typically do not have physics content expertise and are unlikely to be familiar with norms, practices, tools, and equipment used in physics. Therefore, your department will need to be proactive in determining what accommodations are needed to ensure that physics classes are accessible and inclusive.
- Ensure that your department has a knowledgeable and empathetic contact person who is available for to discuss access needs, get support requesting accommodations, and get connected with disability services. Ensure that students, faculty, and staff know who this person is and how to contact them. Recognize that the availability of such a person has a significant impact on how comfortable students feel requesting and using accommodations.
- Publicize to current and prospective faculty, staff, and students the steps your department has taken and the resources that are available to support accessibility needs.
- Work to counteract bias against . Recognize that on average, STEM faculty hold more negative beliefs about disability than do their colleagues in other academic disciplines, and that and disability stigma affect how disabled people engage with your department and use accommodations.
- Work to identify and change policies and practices in your department and institution that lead to inequitable outcomes, including policies and practices that appear neutral. For example, physics culture tends to conflate speed of speech or eloquence with knowledge level, and your department may have practices that reward people who can think quickly on their feet over those who need more time for contemplation. Recognize that cultural norms can make difficult to see and that identifying it will require conscious effort and outside feedback.
- Recognize that standard physics departmental culture and course designs may need to be modified to meet the needs of first-generation and low-income college students. Ask to modify course designs to make them more accessible, by, e.g., ensuring that work expectations are consistent with credit hours, formalizing study groups to ensure that all students are included, using open-source textbooks to reduce costs for students, and renaming office hours and tutoring as “free help sessions” or “student hours” to make them more inviting and their purpose clearer.
- Recognize that first-generation college students may not be familiar with academic culture. Ask advisors and mentors to teach students how to navigate this culture by, e.g., personally introducing students to other faculty members to help students feel comfortable approaching faculty; explaining how office hours work and that it is part of professors’ jobs to answer student questions; offering guidance on how to have difficult conversations with faculty; and talking explicitly about how to approach someone for a research internship.
- Recognize that first-generation and low-income students are more likely to be at risk of dropping out of STEM and/or college. Build a support team for at-risk students to ensure their success; include advisors, mentors, and support staff from campus offices. Consider using a developmental or model in order to more effectively support students, particularly first-generation and at-risk students, by addressing their broader needs. See Resources below.
- Recognize that student homelessness and food insecurity are common problems and learn about what resources exist to address them, including financial, food, and housing support and federal laws and programs such as the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. Ensure that advisors, mentors, and learn how to recognize economic challenges and respectfully help students get the support they need. See the section on Retention of Undergraduate Physics Majors for guidance on how to recognize and address economic challenges that may cause students to drop out, especially near the end of their degree programs.
- Learn about and use resources to support first-generation college students at your institution and beyond. See Resources below.
- Check in with students, particularly those from , who may be disproportionately affected by traumatic events.
- Be flexible and empathetic in your expectations for what students can complete.
- Recognize that faculty and staff are not trained to deal with many crisis situations and instruct them to immediately connect people in crisis to appropriate professional resources, e.g., by personally escorting a student to a mental health clinic or center. Ensure that all faculty and staff are aware of these resources and know how to connect people to them. For example, distribute handouts of available resources with phone numbers, links, and addresses.
Use known strategies to improve equity, diversity, and inclusion
- See the section on Departmental Culture and Climate for more details.
- Establish and consistently communicate explicit departmental norms and values of respect, equity, diversity, and inclusion through policies, physical spaces, programmatic offerings, and all forms of communication with students, faculty, and staff.
- 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., that they are held in physically accessible locations and are not too loud or crowded (to avoid excluding people who experience sensory overload due to and/or people who are hard of hearing). 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.
- Actively partner with campus and national programs that provide scaffolding to support student belonging, STEM identity development, and personal and academic support of students from .
- Recognize the strengths of students, faculty, and staff in your department. Build on their capabilities rather than focusing on their weaknesses.
- Recognize that strategies (i.e., treating everyone the same regardless of race or ethnicity) do not explicitly address the needs of people from , are insufficient to support everyone in your department, and can devalue people’s cultures.
- Recognize that equity (everyone gets what they need) is not the same as equality (everything is the same for everyone), and work toward equity.
- Work to address and eliminate systemic inequities that make it harder for some people to succeed and thrive in your program based on their race, gender, identity, national or geographic origin, socioeconomic status, disability status, homelessness status, first-generation status, age, or religion.
- Focus on creating a supportive environment in which people from can thrive and on addressing systemic and cultural problems in your department that prevent them from doing so, rather than on fixing people so they can better survive in a hostile environment.
- Recognize that due to systemic injustices in our society, you may need to provide additional support for students from . For example, see the section on Retention of Undergraduate Physics Majors for guidance on how to create and leverage support structures for students. At the same time, actively counteract assumptions that students from marginalized groups have inherent deficits or are less likely to succeed than other students. Ensure that everyone in your department has high expectations for students from marginalized groups and supports students in meeting those expectations.
- See the section on How to Be an Effective Chair for guidance on how to hire strong and diverse faculty and staff and support faculty and staff in achieving excellence.
- Recognize that members of are often actively discouraged from pursuing physics and/or do not feel welcome in the culture of physics, so recruiting efforts will need to start early (before college) and include special attention to eliminating obstacles such students face in your program.
- Consider using cohort recruiting to recruit groups of students from the same at the same time.
- Build relationships with physics educators at diverse high schools and two-year colleges and support their students. See the section on Recruiting of Undergraduate Physics Majors for details.
- Create multiple flexible pathways through the physics curriculum that are adaptive to students’ needs. See the section on Retention of Undergraduate Physics Majors for details.
- Learn about the backgrounds that are common among students in your department and institution and the experiences of people with those backgrounds (e.g., students from particular ethnic or cultural backgrounds, first-generation students, or students from low-income families), without expecting the students to educate you. Consider these experiences when guiding students, while also recognizing that each individual’s experience is unique.
- Ensure that faculty and staff are given appropriate training and support to effectively work with students from diverse backgrounds.
- If you have a graduate program, educate all department members who interact with graduate students about effective practices for recruiting and retaining diverse graduate students. Educate all admissions committee members about equitable admissions through required training and discussion of the research literature on holistic graduate admissions and bias in the use of the physics GRE (see Resources below).
- If you have a graduate program, consider becoming an partnership department, which will support your program in recruiting diverse graduate students. However, do not funnel all , , and students into your Bridge Program; reserve the program for students coming from other majors, those who have taken gap years that have put them behind, or those who would otherwise not be accepted into a graduate program.
- Establish a group such as a departmental equity and inclusion committee that provides a venue to educate department members about inclusive and supportive behaviors and regularly discuss topics of equity, diversity, and inclusion.
- Learn and help educate others about how to value the diverse perspectives members of can bring to the research, teaching, and administration of your department.
- At department or group meetings, ensure that everyone has a chance to participate. And adopt a code of conduct for such meetings to govern professional interactions. Recognize that people from often report that their comments are ignored, unheard, or dismissed, and use strategies to amplify their voices by acknowledging and attributing their ideas.
- Ensure that research group meetings and other work-related gatherings support attendance and participation of all appropriate stakeholders, e.g., engineers, tech staff, postdocs, and graduate and undergraduate students. Consider how location, physical space (including its accessibility), meeting times, and meeting structure might exclude participation. For example, consider tracking who’s attending and actively participating in group meetings and/or encouraging more junior group members to ask questions and make comments first.
- Include people from in leadership roles of student groups and as student representatives of department committees, such as advisory, curriculum, and mentoring committees. At the same time, recognize that members of marginalized groups may feel an obligation to advocate for themselves and peers, resulting in a disproportionate amount of service work that limits their ability to invest as much time as members of in research and study. Compensate students, ideally by making such service paid student work.
- Ensure that those participating in the work of your department, including departmental committees and leadership roles, are diverse in terms of gender, race, age, rank, departmental role, and other factors, to the extent possible while not putting a disproportionate service load on members of who are underrepresented in your department.
- Ensure that department events such as seminars and colloquia include speakers with diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, genders and sexualities, fields of interest, career paths, types of institutions, educational paths, and occupations. Partner with professional to identify potential speakers.
- Work to create an equitable and inclusive environment for members of a diversity of groups rather than just bringing in one or more members of a . Learn about and its detrimental effects on people from marginalized groups.
- Recognize members of as individuals, not just as representatives of their groups. For example, do not ask the only woman in the room to comment on how a policy affects women in general.
- Encourage departmental leaders to be advocates for members of to proactively mitigate challenges they might face.
- Recognize that the need for community is important to success, and find ways to support your department’s members in finding communities. If you have small numbers from , this may require partnering with other departments.
- 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 and to use current and future spaces to exhibit departmental culture, community, and accomplishments.
- Identify and promote or provide safe spaces () for people from to discuss issues with others who share their identities.
- Locate or help create identity-based student groups in your institution or department, for example, for women, for students of color, and/or for first-generation students. Actively and financially support these groups. Ensure that they are connected to other departmental groups and activities.
- Share resources (e.g., information, contacts, and funding) with students to connect them with supportive communities at the department level (e.g., chapters, student chapters of national organizations for students of color, local clubs for women or students of color in physics, study groups, and other student social networks), institutional level (e.g., clubs, identity-based organizations, and sororities and fraternities), and national level (e.g., , , , , , and ).
- Provide financial support for members of to attend conferences or gatherings that build social cohesion and work to overcome barriers to success, e.g., , , , , , and .
- Incentivize and reward multiple faculty members, including those who do not identify as members of , to actively support students from marginalized groups.
- Identify multiple allies (people who have the training and desire to hear issues arising from members of ) in your department and advertise who they are. Ensure that those advertised as allies have adequate training and resources to support students and others facing difficult issues. Recruit allies from a diversity of positions in your department, including those with some security, seniority, and power. Encourage allies to become accomplices and co-conspirators.
- Identify (through the practices described above in 2A and 2B) and address reasons that students from may not avail themselves of support services, for example, because these support services may not be advertised, constructed, or staffed in ways that these students recognize as support.
- Understand and publicize your institution’s bias, harassment, and mandatory reporting policies. Ensure that everyone in your department follows your institution’s procedures and knows whom to contact to report incidents, e.g., your Title IX coordinator, human resources office, equal opportunity office, department chair, or ombudsperson. Understand the legal parameters for what constitutes harassment versus protected speech.
- For issues that are not handled at an institutional level, create an accountability structure within your department with a process for reporting and acting on those issues swiftly, while maintaining and emphasizing the importance of due process. Work with your administration, office of equity and inclusion, equal opportunity office, or your departmental committee on equity and inclusion, as appropriate. Ensure that complaints are taken seriously and responded to in a timely manner, and that victims and those with less power do not have to drive the process. Maintain a written record of reported incidents.
- Develop straightforward mechanisms for people to raise concerns and report problems, including anonymously (recognizing the limitations of anonymous reports), and to get support to address them. For example, make all department members aware of the campus ombudsperson or other institutional advocates for students; inform students that they can bring concerns to the department chair or to the equity and inclusion committee; ensure that all concerns receive timely and appropriate responses; and ensure that everyone who might receive such reports knows about appropriate resources to support victims. See Support students facing trauma above for details.
- Consider creating an ally structure (see, for instance, the Astronomy Allies or the APS Division of Nuclear Physics Allies Program) for confidential reporting of harassment and .
- Ensure your department is safe for members of by holding department members accountable for sexist, racist, homophobic, or behavior and/or for violating basic standards of respect. For example, learn about institutional policies for accountability and ensure that departmental policies are consistent with these and sufficiently strong, ensure that appropriate action is taken for each incident, note complaints and disciplinary actions in annual performance reviews, keep a written record of incidents reported, and publicly condemn harassment when appropriate.
- Ensure that there is a system in place to identify and document patterns of repeated complaints about the same person (e.g., a written record of complaints that can be checked when new complaints arise), and do not allow the behavior causing the complaints to continue unchecked. Ensure that this policy is applied consistently regardless of the level or status of the person against whom complaints are made. Familiarize yourself with institutional policies and procedures for documenting and addressing complaints and other incidents that may not individually rise to the level of disciplinary or legal action, but may collectively establish an actionable pattern of behavior.
- Ensure that everyone in your department is aware of and works to overcome and assumptions that may influence the evaluation of members of or lead to them being held to higher expectations than others. Recognize that bias is inherent in the culture of physics and beyond and is not just a failing of a few individuals. Set up departmental structures, consistent with institutional policies, to systematically address bias. For example, provide implicit bias training (see Resources below) and formalize evaluation and hiring criteria. See the section on How to Be an Effective Chair for guidance on how to hire strong and diverse faculty and staff.
- Ensure that students from are given equitable access and encouragement to participate in internships, research, mentoring, and other opportunities. Develop procedures to recruit students for these opportunities that are transparent and open to everyone, and that lower the barrier for members of marginalized groups to sign up.
- Recognize and take into account when making tenure, promotion, and other evaluation decisions for that members of are more likely to receive negative student evaluations. For example, students are more likely to rate women and instructional staff as less competent than male colleagues, comment on their clothing, or make sexually harassing comments. Students also give lower ratings, on average, to instructional staff who are of color, have accents, and/or have Asian last names. See Evidence below for details.
- Recognize that people from may perceive and experience things that people from do not, and that even if members of dominant groups perceive an environment to be welcoming, it may not be welcoming for everyone. Listen when members of marginalized groups tell you they are perceiving or experiencing harm, and do not discount others’ experiences or perceptions just because they do not mirror your own.
- Ensure that the isolation and alienation that many members of experience is not mistaken for or criticized as being “overly sensitive,” “not collegial,” or “not a team player.”
- Avoid minimizing responses to incidents in the name of department harmony.
- Ensure that your mentoring program uses and recognizes and responds to students’ identities.
- Ensure that mentors are prepared to support students from in navigating challenges they may face such as isolation, , lack of , and low expectations from faculty and society.
- Ensure that mentors understand how to advocate and act as sponsors for their mentees from in order to advance their educational and career opportunities.
- Encourage faculty and staff members to become mentors within the to get support for mentoring , , and students within your undergraduate physics program.
- See the section on Advising and Mentoring of Students for more details.