APS March Meeting 2022
Volume 67, Number 3
Monday–Friday, March 14–18, 2022;
Chicago
Session W27: Physics Education at All Stages
3:00 PM–5:36 PM,
Thursday, March 17, 2022
Room: McCormick Place W-187C
Sponsoring
Unit:
FEd
Chair: Eric Brewe, FEd
Abstract: W27.00003 : Being Human in Physics (I stole this title from a program at Amherst College, because I liked it a lot.)
3:24 PM–3:36 PM
Abstract
Presenter:
Vernita Gordon
(University of Texas at Austin)
Author:
Vernita Gordon
(University of Texas at Austin)
A few years ago, the physics department at UT Austin learned that women undergraduates were leaving the physics major at roughly twice the rate of men leaving the major. Through interviews with current and former students we learned that this was largely the result of negative peer interactions in settings where faculty and graduate students were not present. Although I do not have data to support this, I suspect that students other than women are probably also discouraged and feel alienated from the physics major as a result of negative peer interactions as well, and that this is likely to disproportionately affect members of under-represented groups. Under support of a Provost's Teaching Fellowship, I have been working to grow a supportive community for physics undergraduates and to teach the undergraduates the cognitive tools and responses to shape their environment positively and to respond constructively to difficult situations. This includes bias incidents such as those reported by undergraduate women, but it also includes the intrinsic academic difficulty of physics as a discipline. This has had 2 main thrusts so far: (1) I have been running a mentoring program in which new (first-year or transfer) undergraduates are in a group with an upper-division physics major who acts as a peer mentor. This was very popular with participants last year. (2) A seminar class is intended to build a supportive community among students and address many of the non-academic things that are important for success and happiness in physics, like feeling different, how to recognize and respond to bias, how to handle academic struggles and recognize when you're good at physics, and what role models and career options are available with a physics degree. These are things that can affect all students but have been shown to disproportionately affect people from under-represented groups.
I will discuss the status of the work at present and what I would like to do in future.