Seeking Solutions: Maximizing American Talent by Advancing Women of Color in Academia: Summary of a Conference (2013)

Appendix E-26


National Society of Hispanic Physicists

Introduction

The goals of the National Society of Hispanic Physicists are to promote the study of physics to all people, but particularly among Hispanic Americans; recognize the accomplishments of Hispanic physicists; and provide for the professional well being of Hispanic American physics students, faculty, and professional scientists. The Society’s strategic vision encompasses four primary activities to achieve its goals.

Our vision is not merely to mentor Hispanic-American students and junior faculty but also to guide and support the larger physics community as under-represented groups become a larger factor in STEM.

Mentoring at National Meetings

We have had our greatest success reaching students and junior faculty at our annual meetings. NSHP partners with select organizations to host meetings. Each of our partners offers different environments and opportunities for our students and members.

Joint Meeting with National Society of Black Physicists

The professional meeting serves as a forum for the work of students and faculty, as a grounding point for faculty and programs attempting to access our communities, and as a place

for the NSBP and NSHP to touch bases to share common concerns. The two societies have been meeting jointly since 2004, and the meeting brings together as many as 600 attendees from primarily under-represented (African-Americana and Hispanic-American) groups. Approximately half of these are students.

Student programming provides career advice, mentoring, academic support, networking, and development. Typically the professional sessions have focused talks that are accessible to undergraduates. Many of our students have their first professional presentation as a contributed oral or poster presentation at the Joint NSBP/NSHP meeting. For this reason the posters are judged and the student presenters are given ample feedback about their presentation and research.

In addition, students interact with faculty and students from other schools at the common meals. For many it is their first experience with large cohorts of students with similar backgrounds, challenges, and needs.

At the Joint NSBP/NSHP 2011 meeting in Austin, women made up 30% of the 248 students and 28% of the 167 professionals attending, and 25% of the papers presented were by women (tentative numbers based on preliminary registrations, data still under analysis).

Dr. Sharon Fries-Britt and her research team have conducted student interviews at the Joint NSBP/NSHP meeting as a systematic scholarly study of minority STEM majors. Two book chapters based on this research have been accepted for publication. One chapter, Lessons from High Achieving Minorities in Physics (Fries-Britt, Younger, & Hall), will appear in New Directions for Higher Education. The second book chapter, Underrepresented Minorities in Physics: How Perceptions of Race and Campus Climate Affect Student Outcomes (Fries-Britt, Younger, & Hall), will appear in Managing Diversity: (Re)Visioning Equity on College Campuses.

In their evaluations, or in interviews with PER researchers, students frequently mention the Joint conferences as fundamental to their progress in physics.

Students listed as among the top goals for attending the conference.

•   Meeting with Black/Hispanic Faculty

•   Meeting with other Black/Hispanic students

•   Learning about further physics study

•   Meeting with recruiters

•   Hearing research talks

Faculty programming focuses on development and support of graduate students, post-docs and junior faculty.

A comment from the 2011 meeting initiated a reflective pause.

Where are the Hispanic physicists our age?

—First-year, male faculty member at an RI university

But a quick calculation showed that the 32 faculty and post-docs at the meeting accounted for nearly a fifth of the Hispanic physicists in academia.

Joint Meeting with SACNAS

The Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science is one of the oldest and most dynamic societies devoted to minority students and faculty. It has one of the largest gatherings of students at any national meeting. The physics presence has steadily grown since NSHP began meeting with SACNAS in 2004.

SACNAS has a strong emphasis on programming for students and for junior faculty. And though we (NSHP) promote the study of physics, the mentoring at the meeting crosses disciplines.

The SACNAS 2011 Annual meeting brought in over 3600 participants, of which 1600 identified themselves as female (about 20% of the attendees declined to complete the demographics information) and 1500 of the participants identified themselves as Chicano/Latino/Hispanic.

Joint Meetings with Other Societies

In order to better reach students, NSHP meets with other societies as time and resources allow. Our principle focus at these other meetings is to reach our students and to promote our mission to the mainstream physic community. We have joined with the American Association of Physics Teachers twice at national meetings and annually with regional sections of the American Physical Society, primarily the Texas section (TSAPS) and the Southeast section (SESAPS).

Promoting Inclusive Pedagogies

One of the aims of NSHP at the Joint meeting is to bring in greater understanding of the work being done in Physics Education Research (PER) to the NSBP/NSHP community as a way to improve and strengthen the pedagogy of the undergraduate curriculum at HBCUs and MSIs.

Sample Sessions at the Joint NSBP/NSHP Annual meeting

In addition, we promote pedagogies and programmatic design that address the challenges encountered by under-represented groups in the study and pursuit of physics to the mainstream physics community.

Sample Sessions at national AAPT meetings sponsored by NSHP

Sample Invited Talks by Officers of NSHP

International Conference on Women in Physics

The NSHP has had either members of NSHP or friends of NSHP attend each of the IUPAP’s International Conferences on Women in Physics and report back to the Society of the work being pursued on behalf of women in physics on a global scale. Our current President, Dr. Luz Miranda-Martinez, has attended Conferences 2 through 4. Members of NSBP and NSHP have usually made up half the delegation to the Conferences.

Resources

Our website now houses a variety of outreach and mentoring resources.

The website Hispanic American Physicists: Past, Present and Future (www.hispanicphysicists.org/recognition/index.html) recognizes the accomplishments and contributions of Hispanic Americans who are both near the end of a long and successful career and those near the beginning and who already show significant promise. An important factor of these brief bios is that they lead to more resources, so that students can start here and follow the trail to learn more about scientists who they may not normally encounter in their studies.

We made the decision to grow this list of prominent Hispanic physicists at a rate that insures that no fewer than one-third of these highlighted physicists are women.

Another resource is the StudentGateway which tries to anticipate student questions from high school through graduate school. Included are study and career sites, general physics resources, and sites devoted to women in physics.
Website: www.hispanicphysicists.org/StudentGateway/index.html

In a similar way, the FacultyGateway is designed to address the questions of Hispanic American faculty as they move into the world of academia or industry. And the site also houses resources for faculty who are trying to meet the needs and respond to the challenges of under-represented groups as they begin the study of physics.
Website: www.hispanicphysicists.org/FacultyGateway/index.html