Guide To Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Version 2021.1

This section has been endorsed by the APS Committee on the Status of Women in Physics (December 2022), the APS Committee on Minorities in Physics (October 2023), and the AAPT DEI Council (July 2024).

Recommendations for supporting equity, diversity, and inclusion are distributed throughout all sections of the EP3 guide. This section addresses equity, diversity, and inclusion in a systematic and comprehensive way and as ends in themselves, rather than as means of achieving other departmental goals. Diversity encompasses recruiting people from

Marginalized Groups

People of color and others with marginalized ethnicities, women and others who experience misogyny, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, and others who have traditionally been marginalized in society and in physics. According to the TEAM-UP Report, marginalized groups are “groups of people defined by a common social identity who lack adequate social power or resources to design, build, or perpetuate social structures or institutions that reflect the centrality … of their identities, proclivities, and points of view. … They need not be underrepresented or numerical minorities, but often are.” We use the term marginalized groups, rather than minorities, underrepresented groups, or other commonly used terms, because people in these groups are not always minorities or underrepresented, and in order to convey that underrepresentation is the result of marginalization rather than a statistical accident. Another common term is minoritized groups. While we use this general term for brevity and readability, it is important to recognize that the many different groups encompassed by this term face different challenges and have different needs that should be addressed individually whenever possible, to learn the terms that people ask to be called, and to recognize that these terms may change over time.

into your department and retaining them, so that all levels of physics are representative of the range of people who could be physicists. Inclusion involves creating an environment that supports everyone in feeling welcome in your department. Equity encompasses ensuring that everyone has what they need to thrive in your department, which requires taking into account the ways that some groups of people have been and continue to be marginalized in society and in physics. In an unjust society, achieving equity (everyone gets what they need) requires more than a focus on equality (everyone gets the same). Achieving equity requires recognizing and challenging the structural and cultural barriers to full participation in physics and in your department that people from marginalized groups face. This section foregrounds equity as the most important goal, over diversity and inclusion, which are necessary but insufficient for equity. A focus on diversity can help recruit people from marginalized groups into your department but does not ensure that they feel welcome, while a focus on inclusion can help integrate people from marginalized groups into your existing departmental culture but does not ensure that they have equal power and ownership of that culture. This section focuses on practices that make your department more equitable for members of marginalized groups in physics. For guidance on improving the culture and climate for all members of your department, see the section on Departmental Culture and Climate. While the overall focus of EP3 is on undergraduate programs, issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion in one part of your program impact all parts of your program. The recommendations in this section are correspondingly broad and apply to faculty, staff, undergraduate and graduate students, and postdocs.

This section provides guidance on improving equity, diversity, and inclusion through a cyclic process in which you (1) educate yourself and your department members (faculty, students, staff, and postdocs) about equity, diversity, and inclusion, (2) analyze the current state of affairs for marginalized groups in your department, (3) create, publicize, implement, and assess an action plan for equity, diversity, and inclusion, (4) pay separate attention to the particular needs and concerns of different groups and different individuals, and (5) use known strategies to improve equity, diversity, and inclusion. Parts 1–3 describe how to lay the groundwork to ensure that your efforts are effective, and parts 4 and 5 describe specific strategies for supporting members of

Marginalized Groups

People of color and others with marginalized ethnicities, women and others who experience misogyny, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, and others who have traditionally been marginalized in society and in physics. According to the TEAM-UP Report, marginalized groups are “groups of people defined by a common social identity who lack adequate social power or resources to design, build, or perpetuate social structures or institutions that reflect the centrality … of their identities, proclivities, and points of view. … They need not be underrepresented or numerical minorities, but often are.” We use the term marginalized groups, rather than minorities, underrepresented groups, or other commonly used terms, because people in these groups are not always minorities or underrepresented, and in order to convey that underrepresentation is the result of marginalization rather than a statistical accident. Another common term is minoritized groups. While we use this general term for brevity and readability, it is important to recognize that the many different groups encompassed by this term face different challenges and have different needs that should be addressed individually whenever possible, to learn the terms that people ask to be called, and to recognize that these terms may change over time.

. Part 4 includes strategies specific to particular groups, such as people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, first-generation and low-income college students, and students facing trauma. Part 5 offers general strategies that can support members of all

Marginalized Groups

People of color and others with marginalized ethnicities, women and others who experience misogyny, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, and others who have traditionally been marginalized in society and in physics. According to the TEAM-UP Report, marginalized groups are “groups of people defined by a common social identity who lack adequate social power or resources to design, build, or perpetuate social structures or institutions that reflect the centrality … of their identities, proclivities, and points of view. … They need not be underrepresented or numerical minorities, but often are.” We use the term marginalized groups, rather than minorities, underrepresented groups, or other commonly used terms, because people in these groups are not always minorities or underrepresented, and in order to convey that underrepresentation is the result of marginalization rather than a statistical accident. Another common term is minoritized groups. While we use this general term for brevity and readability, it is important to recognize that the many different groups encompassed by this term face different challenges and have different needs that should be addressed individually whenever possible, to learn the terms that people ask to be called, and to recognize that these terms may change over time.

. This section provides definitions of many equity-related terms, which you can see by hovering over underlined terms.

Benefits

Engaging in effective practices to support equity, diversity, and inclusion will enable members of

Marginalized Groups

People of color and others with marginalized ethnicities, women and others who experience misogyny, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, and others who have traditionally been marginalized in society and in physics. According to the TEAM-UP Report, marginalized groups are “groups of people defined by a common social identity who lack adequate social power or resources to design, build, or perpetuate social structures or institutions that reflect the centrality … of their identities, proclivities, and points of view. … They need not be underrepresented or numerical minorities, but often are.” We use the term marginalized groups, rather than minorities, underrepresented groups, or other commonly used terms, because people in these groups are not always minorities or underrepresented, and in order to convey that underrepresentation is the result of marginalization rather than a statistical accident. Another common term is minoritized groups. While we use this general term for brevity and readability, it is important to recognize that the many different groups encompassed by this term face different challenges and have different needs that should be addressed individually whenever possible, to learn the terms that people ask to be called, and to recognize that these terms may change over time.

to fully participate and thrive in physics, which is good for people from marginalized groups, for the field of physics, and for your department or program. It will also set positive expectations for the discipline and communicate positive messages to students about who can be a physicist and what kinds of ideas are included in physics. Physics is one of the least diverse STEM disciplines, and it has been well documented that members of marginalized groups regularly face

Implicit Bias

Unconscious and automatic attitudes or stereotypes about groups of people that impact one’s understanding of, actions toward, and decisions regarding individual members of such groups. For example, research shows that many people in the US, even those who consciously believe that all people are equal, implicitly have biases associating Black people with criminality and Asian people with being foreign, and not associating women with science. Implicit bias has measurable consequences in the world, with research demonstrating, for example, that people rate job applicants with names typically associated with women and/or people of color as less qualified than those with names typically associated with white men, and that students rate female instructors as less competent than male instructors. Everyone has implicit biases, and countering such biases requires explicit training and/or intervention strategies such as intergroup contact, perspective-taking, and exposure to counter-stereotypical exemplars. Review article

,

Microaggressions

“The everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership.” Microaggressions often appear small to, or go unnoticed by, observers and perpetrators, but because people from marginalized groups experience them so regularly, they can lead to psychological stress and exhaustion for those who experience them. Examples include complimenting an Asian-American person for their English, questioning a Black person entering a research lab about whether they are supposed to be there, and telling a female physicist that she doesn’t look like a physicist. Definition from D. W. Sue.

, and harassment within the physics community, leading to lower rates of admission, hiring, satisfaction, and retention in physics at all levels. The main argument for working toward equity, diversity, and inclusion is a moral one: Ensuring that people from marginalized groups can thrive in physics and in your department is the right thing to do and is a benefit for its own sake. There are also utilitarian arguments for how equity, diversity, and inclusion benefit your department, your institution, and physics as a whole: As the nation’s population becomes more and more diverse, physics departments must become equitable and inclusive places for traditionally underrepresented students in order to respond to institutional calls for greater diversity and recruit enough majors to stay viable. On a broader level, a more diverse group of physicists will make the field more vibrant and better able to identify, take on, and solve the ever more diverse and complex set of problems facing the world. However, while utilitarian arguments may be more comfortable for members of privileged groups, such arguments can be harmful to members of marginalized groups. Research demonstrates, for example, that

Black

A person or people of African ancestry. We use this term, rather than African American, because it is becoming the preferred term, and to be more inclusive of people who can’t trace their lineage to a specific country in Africa and/or those who are not American. We capitalize this term to acknowledge that it represents certain shared experiences, rather than just a race or skin color.

students are more comfortable and more successful in institutions that prioritize moral over utilitarian arguments for working towards equity, diversity, and inclusion.

The Cycle of Reflection and Action

Effective Practices

Effective Practices

  1. Educate yourself and your department members (faculty, students, staff, and postdocs) about equity, diversity, and inclusion

  2. Analyze the current state of affairs for marginalized groups in your department

  3. Create, publicize, implement, and assess an action plan for equity, diversity, and inclusion

  4. Pay separate attention to the particular needs and concerns of different groups and individuals

  5. Use known strategies to improve equity, diversity, and inclusion

Programmatic Assessments

Programmatic Assessments

Where to start learning how to create an equitable, diverse, and inclusive environment in physics and astronomy departments

Supporting people of color in physics

Supporting women in physics

Supporting LGBTQ+ people in physics

Supporting disabled people in physics

  • A. Lannan, J. J. Chini, and E. Scanlon, “Resources for supporting students with and without disabilities in your physics courses,” The Physics Teacher 59(3), 192–195 (2021).
  • The UDL Guidelines, CAST (2018).
  • Access for All: A Guide to Disability Good Practice for University Physics Departments,” Institute of Physics (2008): a guide that supports physics department chairs, administrators, staff, faculty, and students in embracing the spirit of disability laws rather than working solely towards compliance.
  • N. W. Moon, R. L. Todd, D. L. Morton, E. Ivey, “Accommodating Students with Disabilities in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Report,” Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access (2012): includes research findings with implications for educators and administrators to understand the array of accommodation options available to and common barriers experienced by

    Disabled People

    People who have “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, … a history or record of such an impairment, or … [are] perceived by others as having such an impairment.” Definition from the Americans with Disabilities Act. We use identity-first language (disabled people), rather than person-first language (people with disabilities), because there is a movement toward such language within the disability community. However, both kinds of language are common, and different people and groups within the disability community prefer different terms. Advocates of person-first language argue that you should put the person before the diagnosis and avoid using disability to define someone. Advocates of identity-first language argue that disability is an important aspect of their identity and prefer to embrace this identity rather than avoid it. Overview of identity-first versus person-first language

    in STEM.
  • M. A. Sukhai and C. E. Mohler, Creating a Culture of Accessibility in the Sciences, Academic Press (2016).
  • DO-IT (Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology) Center, University of Washington: a group that provides resources, communities of practice, and programs for

    Instructional Staff

    Faculty, instructors, adjuncts, teaching staff, and others who serve as instructors of record for courses. This term does not include instructional support staff who support the teaching of courses.

    , mentors, administrators,

    Disabled People

    People who have “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, … a history or record of such an impairment, or … [are] perceived by others as having such an impairment.” Definition from the Americans with Disabilities Act. We use identity-first language (disabled people), rather than person-first language (people with disabilities), because there is a movement toward such language within the disability community. However, both kinds of language are common, and different people and groups within the disability community prefer different terms. Advocates of person-first language argue that you should put the person before the diagnosis and avoid using disability to define someone. Advocates of identity-first language argue that disability is an important aspect of their identity and prefer to embrace this identity rather than avoid it. Overview of identity-first versus person-first language

    , and parents on how to make STEM more inclusive.

Supporting first-generation college students

Trauma-informed teaching

Intersectionality in physics

Curricula supporting equity, diversity, and inclusion

Recommendations for inclusive graduate admissions

Professional society statements about equity, diversity, and inclusion

Below are literature reviews summarizing the research on

Stereotype Threat

A phenomenon in which a member of a marginalized group performs poorly due to the threat of a negative stereotype about their abilities in the area being assessed, e.g., a stereotype that women or Black people are not good at math. Research demonstrates that situations that reinforce such stereotypes lead to members of marginalized groups performing more poorly on assessments related to the stereotypes, but that interventions can be designed to counteract the impact of stereotype threat. This research suggests that without such interventions, standard assessments used for admissions and hiring decisions are likely to be biased against members of marginalized groups. Review article

[1],

Impostor Phenomenon

A phenomenon in which a person doubts their own skills and accomplishments, attributes their success to luck rather than hard work or skill, and fears that they are an impostor who does not deserve the things they have earned. We use the original term, impostor phenomenon, rather than the more commonly used term, impostor syndrome, to emphasize that this is not a medical condition to be attributed to individuals, but a phenomenon shaped by interpersonal and social contexts that may lead people, particularly those from marginalized groups, to question their skills and accomplishments. Review article

[2],

Implicit Bias

Unconscious and automatic attitudes or stereotypes about groups of people that impact one’s understanding of, actions toward, and decisions regarding individual members of such groups. For example, research shows that many people in the US, even those who consciously believe that all people are equal, implicitly have biases associating Black people with criminality and Asian people with being foreign, and not associating women with science. Implicit bias has measurable consequences in the world, with research demonstrating, for example, that people rate job applicants with names typically associated with women and/or people of color as less qualified than those with names typically associated with white men, and that students rate female instructors as less competent than male instructors. Everyone has implicit biases, and countering such biases requires explicit training and/or intervention strategies such as intergroup contact, perspective-taking, and exposure to counter-stereotypical exemplars. Review article

[3],

Myth of Meritocracy

An ideology that argues that we live in a society in which achievements and rewards are based on merit, in the form of intelligence, hard work, or skill. This ideology tends to blame lack of success on lack of merit, and thus to obscure the impact of discrimination, bias, privilege, and unequal distribution of resources and opportunities based on race, gender, social class, and other factors. This ideology is particularly prominent in physics, where it is often argued that success or failure is based on objective criteria and therefore not influenced by culture, and where there is a strong culture of expectation of brilliance. Review article

[4],

Color Blindness

An ideology that argues that one does not or should not see race, and/or that the best way to address racism is to treat everyone the same and not discuss racism. Many scholars argue that this ideology is harmful because ignoring racism makes it difficult to understand and fight racism, and because people who espouse this ideology are not able to understand the full experiences and identities of people of color, whose lived experiences are profoundly impacted by race and racism. Review article

[5], and

Microaggressions

“The everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership.” Microaggressions often appear small to, or go unnoticed by, observers and perpetrators, but because people from marginalized groups experience them so regularly, they can lead to psychological stress and exhaustion for those who experience them. Examples include complimenting an Asian-American person for their English, questioning a Black person entering a research lab about whether they are supposed to be there, and telling a female physicist that she doesn’t look like a physicist. Definition from D. W. Sue.

[6]. There is substantial research demonstrating that bias is common in evaluations of job applicants based on gender [7, 8] and race [9], and that workshops for search committees on inclusive search practices can reduce the impact of such bias [10]. There is substantial research demonstrating widespread bias in student evaluations of teaching based on gender, race, and national origin, and suggesting possible modifications to the student evaluation process and/or how student evaluations are used for performance evaluations of

Instructional Staff

Faculty, instructors, adjuncts, teaching staff, and others who serve as instructors of record for courses. This term does not include instructional support staff who support the teaching of courses.

[11, 12]. There is also research showing widespread gender bias in the language used in letters of recommendation [13] and recommendations for how to avoid such bias [14]. There is substantial research illustrating that there are racial and gender biases associated with traditional metrics such as SAT scores [15] and GRE scores [16]. Research suggests that sexual harassment is common in physics [17]. Several sources provide statistics on physics programs and representation in physics [18–20] and in STEM [21], as well as lessons based on these statistics [22]. Reference 23 reviews research that shows that many diversity training programs are ineffective, compares programs that work with those that don’t, and identifies common features of effective programs. Reference 24 reports on a study that analyzes equity, diversity, and inclusion statements at various universities and finds that universities that make moral arguments for diversity have demonstrably better outcomes for

Black

A person or people of African ancestry. We use this term, rather than African American, because it is becoming the preferred term, and to be more inclusive of people who can’t trace their lineage to a specific country in Africa and/or those who are not American. We capitalize this term to acknowledge that it represents certain shared experiences, rather than just a race or skin color.

students than those that make utilitarian arguments.

  1. S. Spencer, C. Logel, and P. G. Davies, “Stereotype Threat,” Annual Review of Psychology 67, 415–437 (2016).
  2. S. Feenstra, C. T. Begeny, M. K. Ryan, F. A. Rink, J. I. Stoker, and J. Jordan, “Contextualizing the Impostor ‘Syndrome’,” Frontiers in Psychology 11, 3206 (2020).
  3. C. Staats, K. Capatosto, R. A. Wright, and D. Contractor, 2015 State of the Science: Implicit Bias Review, The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity (2015): For a brief overview of implicit bias, see Appendix A: Primer on Implicit Bias on page 72. The Kirwan Institute also provides an Implicit Bias Training Module Series.
  4. S. J. McNamee and R. K. Miller, Jr., “The Meritocracy Myth,” Sociation Today 2(1) (2004).
  5. H. A. Neville, M. E. Gallardo, and D. W. Sue (editors), “The Myth of Racial Color Blindness: Manifestations, Dynamics, and Impact,” American Psychological Association (2016). The introduction provides a good summary of the problems with color blindness.
  6. D. W. Sue, Microaggressions in Everyday Life, John Wiley and Sons (2010). For a brief summary, see D. W. Sue, “Microaggression: More Than Just Race.”
  7. A. A. Eaton, J. F. Saunders, R. K. Jacobson, and K. West, “How Gender and Race Stereotypes Impact the Advancement of Scholars in STEM: Professors’ Biased Evaluations of Physics and Biology Post-Doctoral Candidates,” Sex Roles 82, 127–141 (2020).
  8. C. A. Moss-Racusin, J. F. Dovidio, V. L. Brescoll, M. J. Graham, and J. Handelsman, “Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109 (41) 16474–16479 (2012).
  9. M. Bertrand and S. Mullainathan, “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 9873 (2003).
  10. E. Fine, J. Sheridan, M. Carnes, J. Handelsman, C. Pribbenow, J. Savoy, and A. Wendt, “Minimizing the Influence of Gender Bias on the Faculty Search Process,” in Gender Transformation in the Academy (Advances in Gender Research, Vol. 19), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 267–289 (2014).
  11. R. J. Kreitzer and J. Sweet-Cushman, “Evaluating Student Evaluations of Teaching: a Review of Measurement and Equity Bias in SETs and Recommendations for Ethical Reform,” Journal of Academic Ethics (2021).
  12. H. A. Hornstein, “Student evaluations of teaching are an inadequate assessment tool for evaluating faculty performance”, Cogent Education 4(1), 1304016 (2017).
  13. J. M. Madera, M. R. Hebl, H. Dial, R. Martin, and V. Valian, “Raising Doubt in Letters of Recommendation for Academia: Gender Differences and Their Impact,” Journal of Business and Psychology 34, 287–303 (2019).
  14. University of Arizona Commission of the Status of Women, Avoiding gender bias in reference writing (2016).
  15. J. A. Soares (editor), The Scandal of Standardized Tests: Why We Need to Drop the SAT and ACT, Teachers College Press (2020).
  16. C. W. Miller, B. M. Zwickl, J. R. Posselt, R. T. Silvestrini, and T. Hodapp, “Typical physics Ph.D. admissions criteria limit access to underrepresented groups but fail to predict doctoral completion,” Science Advances 5, eaat7550 (2019).
  17. L. M. Aycock, Z. Hazari, E. Brewe, K. B. H. Clancy, T. Hodapp, and R. M. Goertzen, “Sexual harassment reported by undergraduate female physicists,” Physical Review Physics Education Research 15, 010121 (2019).
  18. AIP Statistical Research Center: A group that regularly collects and analyzes data on education, careers, and diversity in physics, astronomy, and other physical sciences. The center publishes data on underrepresented groups in physics, including women in physics.
  19. How Does Your Institution Compare?: An

    APS

    American Physical Society. Website

    web page that provides comparison data on physics degrees awarded disaggregated by demographics. (This site is currently unavailable.)
  20. National Science Board, Science & Engineering Indicators: A source of data and reports on science and engineering, including the report “The State of U.S. Science and Engineering 2020,” which includes data on women and underrepresented minorities in the workforce.
  21. National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering, National Science Foundation (2021): Provides statistical information about the participation of these groups in science and engineering education and employment. A report is issued every two years.
  22. The Underrepresentation Curriculum: Lessons for teaching about underrepresentation in physics in high school and college classrooms.
  23. F. Dobbin and A. Kalev, “Why Doesn’t Diversity Training Work? The Challenge for Industry and Academia,” Anthropology Now 10(2) 48–55 (2018).
  24. J. G. Starck, S. Sinclair, and J. N. Shelton, “How university diversity rationales inform student preferences and outcomes,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118(16) e2013833118 (2021).
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