Women in physics: an institutional perspective

Kim BudilLawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Office of the Under Secretary for Science, Department of Energy

Mary Hall Reno, Chair, Univ of Iowa Premala Chandra, Rutgers Univ Nancy M Haegel, Naval Postgraduate School Kawtar Hafidi, Argonne Natl Lab Apriel Hodari, CNA Corporation Eliane Schnirman Lessner, Natl Inst of Health –

NIH Lidija Sekaric, IBM T J Watson Res Ctr Saeqa Dil Vrtilek, Harvard-Smithsonian CFA Yevgeniya Zastavker, Franklin W Olin Coll of

Engr

2009

MIT **

University of Oregon

Nat’l Superconducting Cyclotron Lab * **

2008

Fermi Nat’l Accelerator Laboratory* **

Lawrence Berkeley Nat’l Laboratory*

2007

Vanderbilt University

Indiana University

2006

JILA/Boulder*

2005

University of Michigan

NIST/Gaithersburg *

NIST/Boulder *

Iowa State University

2004

University of Washington

Colorado School of Mines

University of Arizona

2003Purdue UniversityUniversity of MinnesotaDuke UniversityOhio State University

2002Argonne National Lab *University of WisconsinUniversity of IowaNASA/Goddard * **

2001University of Maryland (return visit)

2000College of William & MaryUCAR/NCAR *Penn State University

1998University of California/San

DiegoPrinceton University

1997Columbia UniversityUniversity of Colorado/Boulder

1996California Institute of

Technology

•* Research facilities•** Conducted with the APS Committee on Minorities in Physics

1994SUNY at Stony BrookUniversity of Texas/AustinStanford UniversityHarvard UniversityUniversity of RochesterNorth Carolina State

University

1993Michigan State University`University of New MexicoKansas State University

1992RPIWilliams CollegeUniversity of Illinois at

Urbana Champaign

1991University of PennsylvaniaBryn Mawr CollegeUniversity of Virginia

1990University of Maryland

The APS has had a long-standing interest in improving the climate in physics departments for underrepresented minorities and women.

The Committee on the Status of Women in Physics (CSWP) and the Committee on Minorities (COM) both sponsor site visit programs.

In recent years, the visits have been expanded to include national labs as well as universities.

The site visit program was initially developed to investigate the climate for minorities, and later extended to investigate the climate for women in physics.

The goals of these visits are three-fold:

1. Identify a set of generic problems commonly experienced by minority and/or women physicists.

2. Intervene to solve many of these generic problems.

3. Address problems arising in the particular physics department or lab visited and help improve the climate for minorities or women (both students and faculty) in the facility.

Site visits are conducted at the request of a department chair or lab director.

Once a date is agreed upon, a team will be assembled. Prior to the visit, students/employees will be asked to complete a

confidential survey, for the team's use only. On the day of the visit, members of the site visit team meet with the

physics department chair/lab director, groups of physics faculty members, minority or women faculty members in physics (or related areas), administrators responsible for faculty appointments or hiring, minority or women graduate students, and minority or women undergraduates. The goal of these meetings is to provide the site visit team with the quantitative and qualitative information they need to assess the climate for women or minorities in the host facility.

The team will write a report for the department chair/lab director, detailing the findings of the visit and offering simple, practical suggestions on improving the climate for minorities or women.

The chair/lab director is encouraged to share the report with the rest of the department/lab.

One year after the visit, the department chair/lab director will be asked to respond in writing to the team, describing actions taken to improve the climate.

Site visits are only done at the request of the organization’s leadership

The goal is positive – to improve the climate for women in physics

Management is expected to actively participate and promote employee participation

The survey process invites the participation of the entire workforce including men Includes the opportunity to provide anonymous

comments to the site visit team Information is requested on many aspects of

the institution

Survey process Data collection for site visit team

Workforce demographics Hiring processes and policies Career development and advancement Training and education opportunities …

Organization of the agenda Identifying members of key groups to

participate in discussion groups senior staff, mid-career, new hires, post-docs,

students, contract employees, …) Management at various levels Separate groups of men and women

Scientific institutions reflect the demographics of the field

They don’t have a single ‘institutional’ climate Institutions are collections of ‘micro-climates’ Implementation of policies and procedures is not

consistent Hiring is typically the purview of research groups

rather than the institution Researchers tend to hire based on personal and

professional connections Career development is not perceived as an active

process but rather an outcome of excellence Performance reviews rely on ‘objective’ measures and

often discount the influence of the environment Requirements for career advancement are often

unclear or not well established

The senior leadership needs to own the problem and set expectations Leading by example is essential Everyone is accountable

Role models matter Identify excellent women to take on leadership

roles Not just token involvement

The institution must make a visible commitment to the importance of diversity More than just gender Communication and leadership styles should not be

required to fit a ‘standard model’ Work-life balance is an important priority for all

employees In general, actions that improve the climate for

women tend to improve the climate for all employees

Require mandatory training for managers and supervisors Instruction on institutional policies and procedures Training on diversity issues, performance

management, conflict resolution, career development, and work-life balance issues

Ensure that the performance appraisal process is communicated to all employees

Solicit performance appraisal input for supervisors from their direct reports.

Establish, communicate and consistently apply transparent policies and procedures for all promotions

Create a strategic hiring plan that emphasizes the diversity goals of the institution

Require open and transparent hiring processes Set expectations for hiring committees

regarding diversity Tools to create diverse candidate pools Open posting and recruitment Require justification of candidate rejections and final

hiring decisions Think creatively about hiring strategies

Even with hiring constraints diversity can be pursued

Support and promote mentoring for all employees

Train supervisors to mentor employees Facilitate networking opportunities Encourage all new hires to identify a

mentor to help them find their way in the organization

Establish clear guidelines for promotion and career advancementRequire a discussion of career advancement

as part of annual review processEstablish transparent and open processes for

promotion

The opportunity to look at other institutions gave me new perspective on my home institution

The site visit process is as important as the product

National laboratories have a special responsibilityShould be leading the way, establishing

best practices They can be labs for developing the ‘model

workplace’

To build on the success of the 2007 workshop, "Gender Equity: Strengthening the Physics Enterprise in Universities and National Laboratories," the Committee on the Status of Women in Physics (CSWP) is offering a new type of site visit to university physics departments and national laboratories: Conversations on Gender Equity.

The site visit purpose is to learn what works best for physicists and to carry that information forward into future site visits and physics programs.

Conversations on Gender Equity site visits foster dialogue between visiting discussion leaders and the members of departments or laboratories they visit. Notes generated during the visit will be approved by both the hosts and the discussion leaders, and will be used by CSWP to broadly disseminate these ideas (without any identifying information).

Visitors are selected from members of the workshop steering committee, CSWP, and other physicists who are fully engaged in diversity issues. Although most of the team are working physicists, a few social scientists among our discussion leaders will contribute their expertise in facilitating dialogue.

Discussion leaders will meet with students, faculty, the department chair or lab director and whomever he or she designates, and other interested parties. Discussion leaders will then facilitate a brainstorming session to examine the institution’s culture and how that culture affects its climate for gender equity and expansion of diversity, with a goal of finding customized solutions.