Inclusive Graduate Programs

An AGEP Pilot in Physics

The Challenge

The culture of physics graduate programs is not inclusive or equitable. Racial and gender inequality and the unequal distribution of resources, power, and economic opportunity exist across dominant and minoritized social groups in the United States. The underrepresentation of women and individuals from minoritized and marginalized racial and ethnic communities persists in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Among STEM, physics is the field with the poorest diversity in graduate education. Moreover, students with intersecting minoritized identities are further significantly underrepresented. Despite a robust literature documenting the experiences of marginalized students in graduate education, little progress has been made toward creating more welcoming and inclusive physics programs.

Our Approach

Our Inclusive Graduate Programs: An AGEP Pilot in Physics targets both changing program practices and policies, as well as the mindsets of institutional and powerful actors in departments who tend to hold deficit views on the science competency of marginalized students, to create systemic and lasting change. Further, we collaborate with deans, department chairs, and additional disciplinary societies to connect change approaches in physics across to other STEM departments.

Participating Physics Departments

Arizona State University

Auburn University

Boston University

Case Western Reserve University

Indiana University Bloomington

The Ohio State University

University of California, Los Angeles

University of Chicago

University of Cincinnati

University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign

University of Maryland, College Park

University of Utah

Broader Impacts

Our pilot AGEP project is planting the seed for the long-term success of an Institutional Transformation  Alliance project that will lead to a more inclusive culture of STEM graduate programs in support of  historically excluded students nationwide. Our pilot will generate immediate outcomes for the participating  physics programs and their marginalized physics PhD students by advancing knowledge around  approaches to institutional change and initiating those changes in departments, and by exploring how  physics can support change in other STEM departments. Change agents and team members will learn  about effective and sustainable approaches to institutional change through their direct and indirect  participation in the IGP training and will make critical changes in their program’s procedures and policies  to advance equity. As a result, those department stakeholders will shift their practices toward a collective  and deliberate approach to change, centering data-informed decision-making. Further, by housing our  curation, dissemination and scalability in the American Physical Society, data and lessons learned from  both the pilot and (if funded) ITA project will be documented and disseminated through conference  presentations, publications, and the APS Effective Practices for Physics Programs (EP3) Guide that will  inform researchers and the physics community and other STEM disciplines on effective institutional  change approaches to advance equity culture in physics programs.

Pilot Goals

    • Develop a community of practice of participating R1 physics departments.
    • Provide learning opportunities for departments to develop their collective knowledge about institutional change and equity and inclusion.
    • Support participating physics program representatives in examining the local landscape (gather existing data and collect new data when needed), identifying and analyzing local challenges and opportunities, and determining local readiness for change.
    • Support participating physics program representatives in getting institutional buy-in to get broad stakeholder engagement and increase the capacity to enact change.
    • Plan, co-develop, and execute a convening of physics departments to advance from challenges, frameworks, and successful examples to individual and collective action plans to be implemented during the AGEP Institutional Transformation Alliance (ITA).
    • Explore mechanisms of diffusion of culture change from physics to other STEM disciplines.