Building Identity in Physics through Teaching

Over the past 9 years I’ve embraced the mission of recruiting Black physicists, motivated by the fact that physics has been largely monotone in culture for the majority of its existence. What I’ve been learning continually for my role as a faculty member and researcher in physics, is that it entails empathy, patience, and recognition. In order to be successful, students from underrepresented groups need a sense of belonging in a field that has been predominantly White. Helping their communities is also significant to them. Time and time again, we have seen that teaching and mentoring are crucial for these. It is also invaluable that they see physicists who look like them. Virginia Union University brought back its physics program in 2016 with a planning grant from the National Science Foundation. We started with 7 students and since then, it has grown to 25 majors at present [1]. In this talk, I will go in to detail about how we have grown this program and the lessons we have learned (and continue to do so) along the way.