Shared Governance

The following is our team's shared governance pledge from Fall 2020.

The UC Riverside Department of Physics & Astronomy APS IDEA team’s main goal is to improve the department’s equity and inclusion climate through cooperative efforts between the Physics Organization for Womxn and the Under-Represented (POWUR) and faculty. Our team adopts the following norms in the spirit of shared leadership:

1. Participation and Power. Our APS IDEA team includes students, postdocs, faculty, and administrators. We recognize the power hierarchy between different groups, specifically between faculty and students and postdocs. We will not make team decisions without the majority support of the student/postdoc membership.

2. Validation. We recognize the validity of each team member’s perspective, even when these perspectives may not agree with our own. We recognize our own blind spots on some issues and appreciate that others may help us navigate those blind spots.

3. Preparation. Each team member brings a different level of experience with department policy-making, background on equity and diversity in academia, and personal history in our careers bringing us to our department. We accept this starting point and pledge to support each other’s growth as a way to support our department’s growth.

4. Recognition. We have pledged ourselves to challenging, meaningful change. Our entire department benefits both from our efforts in two ways:

   1. The very existence of these efforts shows that the department supports equity.

   2. The intended outcomes of these efforts will be an improved department climate.

We recognize that historically those who put the most time into these efforts do not receive recognition. We pledge to promote one another’s efforts to our colleagues and to protect our efforts from being used or co-opted (e.g. in proposals) without the entire team’s consent.

5. Accountability. We will hold our team accountable for enacting change. Minutes of our meetings (redacted as necessary) will be made public by the end of the 2021 academic year and we will reflect on the goals that we were and were not able to accomplish during this time.