Women in physics: an institutional perspective

1. Women in physics: an institutional perspective Kim Budil Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Office of the Under Secretary for Science, Department of Energy

2. Committee on the Status of Women in Physics Membership 2009 • 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

3. CSWP site visits • 2003 • Purdue University • University of Minnesota • Duke University • Ohio State University • 2002 • Argonne National Lab * • University of Wisconsin • University of Iowa • NASA/Goddard * ** • 2001 • University of Maryland • (return visit) • 2000 • College of William & Mary • UCAR/NCAR * • Penn State University • 1998 • University of California/San Diego • Princeton University • 1997 • Columbia University • University of Colorado/Boulder • 1996 • California Institute of Technology 1994 SUNY at Stony Brook University of Texas/Austin Stanford University Harvard University University of Rochester North Carolina State University 1993 Michigan State University` University of New Mexico Kansas State University 1992 RPI Williams College University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign 1991 University of Pennsylvania Bryn Mawr College University of Virginia 1990 University of Maryland 2009 MIT ** University of Oregon Nat’l Superconducting Cyclotron Lab * ** 2008 Fermi Nat’l Accelerator Laboratory* ** Lawrence Berkeley Nat’l Laboratory* 2007 Vanderbilt University Indiana University 2006 JILA/Boulder* 2005 University of Michigan NIST/Gaithersburg * NIST/Boulder * Iowa State University 2004 University of Washington Colorado School of Mines University of Arizona • * Research facilities • ** Conducted with the APS Committee on Minorities in Physics

4. CSWP Site visit program • 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: • Identify a set of generic problems commonly experienced by minority and/or women physicists. • Intervene to solve many of these generic problems. • 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.

5. The process • 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.

6. The site visit process has several key elements • 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

7. Preparing for the site visit is often a learning experience • 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

8. Large institutions tend to have similar characteristics • Scientific institutions reflect the demographics of the field • They don’t have a single ‘institutional’ climate • Institutions are collections of ‘micro-climates’ • Implementation of policies and procedures is not consistent • Hiring is typically the purview of research groups rather than the institution • 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

9. General observations about the climate • The senior leadership needs to own the problem and set expectations • Leading by example is essential • Everyone is accountable • 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 • 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

10. Management and supervision • 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

11. Recruitment and hiring • 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

12. Mentoring and career development • 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

13. Some final observations… • 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’

14. Conversations on gender equity site visit program • 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.