Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2022
Volume 67, Number 6
Saturday–Tuesday, April 9–12, 2022; New York
Session L05: Experiences from the APS Bridge ProgramDiversity Education Invited Live Streamed Undergrad Friendly
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Sponsoring Units: COM Chair: Helen Caines, Yale University Room: Astor |
Sunday, April 10, 2022 3:45PM - 4:21PM |
L05.00001: The APS Bridge Program and my journey to the PhD Invited Speaker: Laura D Vega I will summarize aspects of the Fisk-Vanderbilt Masters-to-PhD Bridge Program and the APS Bridge Program, that through guiding principles such as diversity, equitable access, sustainability, and accountability, have significantly increased the number of underrepresented minoritized students earn doctoral degrees in STEM. I will draw from my experiences in how their mentoring practices and core strategies --- replacing the GRE in admissions with indicators that are more predictive of long-term success; partnering with a minority-serving institution for student training through collaborative research; and using the master’s degree as a deliberate steppingstone to the PhD --- have helped me achieve my professional goals. Finally, I will summarize how universities and institutions can further improve student retention and student success in undergraduate and graduate programs based on recommendations in the Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics 2020. |
Sunday, April 10, 2022 4:21PM - 4:57PM |
L05.00002: Experiences from the APS Bridge Program Invited Speaker: Daniel C Diaz The goal of the APS Bridge Program is to rectify the disparity between the number of physics bachelor's degrees awarded to under-represented minority members and the corresponding number of physics PhDs awarded to the same group. As a student, I was given the advice to apply to this program at the end of my undergraduate work. I was selected, through the bridge program, as a bridge student and I was matched to the California State University at Long Beach (CSULB) to complete a master's degree. I was part of CSULB's first bridge program cohort. With the supervision and mentorship of the faculty at CSULB, I graduated from the program and successfully moved on to a physics PhD program at Florida State University (FSU). At FSU I maintained my connections with the bridge program through regular meetings with the bridge program coordinators and through interactions with fellow bridge students at the university. Prior to entering the bridge program, I had an interest in studying particle physics. At FSU I completed the PhD program in experimental particle physics by performing my research at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland. Now, I have been placed as a postdoctoral scholar with the University of California San Diego, where I continue to perform research with the LHC. |
Sunday, April 10, 2022 4:57PM - 5:33PM |
L05.00003: Experiences from the first APS Bridge Program Cohort Invited Speaker: Brian W Casas I will try to summarize my experiences in the APS Bridge program in the first ever cohort in 2013. The experiences I gained during my 2 years at the University of South Florida and the guidance of mentors through the APS Bridge Program have led to opportunities I did not expect to have as an undergraduate struggling to find a community and a sense of belonging in my physics department. My experiences can act as testimony for the nature of how a program expecting to serve the diverse needs of its students can have a profound impact on students’ lives. Through my experiences gained in the Bridge Program I was able to attend University of California, Irvine to attain my Ph.D.. I now work as a Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory working in topologically non-trivial matter at high magnetic fields. |
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