Kim Budil
Lawrence 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
2003
MIT **
University of Oregon
Nat’l Superconducting Cyclotron Lab
* **
Lawrence Berkeley Nat’l Laboratory*
Argonne National Lab *
University of Wisconsin
University of Iowa
NASA/Goddard * **
Indiana University
1992
2000
1998
University of Washington
University of Pennsylvania
Bryn Mawr College
University of Virginia
1997
Columbia University
University of Colorado/Boulder
Iowa State University
2004
1991
University of California/San Diego
Princeton University
University of Michigan
NIST/Boulder *
RPI
Williams College
University of Illinois at Urbana
Champaign
College of William & Mary
UCAR/NCAR *
Penn State University
JILA/Boulder*
NIST/Gaithersburg *
Michigan State University`
University of New Mexico
Kansas State University
University of Maryland
(return visit)
2006
2005
1993
2001
2007
Vanderbilt University
SUNY at Stony Brook
University of Texas/Austin
Stanford University
Harvard University
University of Rochester
North Carolina State University
2002
2008
Fermi Nat’l Accelerator Laboratory*
**
1994
Purdue University
University of Minnesota
Duke University
Ohio State University
1990
University of Maryland
1996
California Institute of Technology
Colorado School of Mines
University of Arizona
•* Research facilities
•** Conducted with the APS Committee on Minorities in Physics

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




Hiring is typically the purview of research groups
rather than the institution


Institutions are collections of ‘micro-climates’
Implementation of policies and procedures is not consistent
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



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


Leading by example is essential
Everyone is accountable
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 advancement


Require a discussion of career advancement as part
of annual review process
Establish 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
responsibility


Should 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.