Projects

Goals

• Improve department communication with specific focus on departmental values and decision-making.

• Foster community across department groups.

Efforts

• Department Code of Conduct. Establish a set of values and expectations. A strong code of conduct has some framework for accountability.

• "Anti-Town Hall" Informal Discussions. Small groups of students/faculty/staff have an informal discussion about pre-determined topics.

  • Goal: opposite of town hall meetings: few participants, informal and semi-confidential discussions. Allow discussions to be frank and to convey the nuance that cannot be shared in a public forum. Support productive informal communication: what faculty/students should know from each other that should not necessarily be written down. Allow space for disagreements and for reflection.

  • Possible topics: international student concerns, the 2021 department climate survey, how to best work with the diversity committee, the role of the PADGSA/POWUR in the department, candid reflections on the 2020 "equity workshops"

  • Possible groups: students + members of key department committees

  • Rules: come with an open mind, respect other opinions, and "what is said here stays here, what is learned here may leave here." Discussion details should be kept private, but ideas should be shared.

  • Objectives: each meeting should conclude with a set of general, agreed upon values/statements/next actions that can be shared publicly by our team.

• Broader Impacts Facilitation: create a "package" where faculty can build in boilerplate templates for broader impacts efforts in NSF proposals. The package would include a letter of support, but would be in exchange for a commitment for an amount of monetary support to go towards, say, department inclusivity workshops sponsored by POWUR.

Drivers

We recognize the parallel efforts for equity in physics (some spearheaded by our members) as well as the ongoing demands of navigating COVID in academia. In order to streamline our limited bandwidth, we are choosing to spearhead these efforts with a core group of participants: Flip, Bryan, and Liz.

The role of these drivers is to take the initiative to design our efforts, get feedback from the team, and then launch our efforts. All members are invited to participate as fully as possible.

In recognition for the labor required for these efforts, student members Bryan and Liz will receive an honorarium from Flip's startup.