Excellence in Physics Education Award Recipient (2022): Beyond the TEAM-UP Report: Implementation Workshops, Departmental Engagement, and Next steps toward Achieving the Doubling Goal

The AIP TEAM-UP Report, The Time Is Now: Systemic Changes to Increase African Americans with Bachelor’s Degrees in Physics & Astronomy, highlighted the reasons for the underrepresentation of African American/Black students at the undergraduate level in physics and astronomy, outlined evidence-based recommendations for addressing those reasons, and issued a challenge to the community to double the number of African Americans earning bachelor’s degrees in physics and astronomy per year by 2030. In order to achieve this goal, cultural and systemic issues must be addressed and departments, professional societies, individuals, policy makers, and funders will have to work together to support and sustain these changes.

Following the release of the TEAM-UP report, AIP received a grant from the Heising-Simons Foundation to organize two TEAM-UP (Report recommendation) Implementation workshops for a select group of physics and astronomy departments committed to cultural change, and to work with them to develop strategic plans for systemic change that supports the success of African American students. These departments have now been working for a year to learn about systemic racism and inequity affecting Black students in physics and astronomy, assessing their particular departmental cultures, and drafting plans for creating inclusive, equitable departments that attract and retain African American students.

In this talk, I will describe the TEAM-UP Implementation workshops, sharing information from the talks and workshop survey; provide an overview of the year-long engagement with the core physics and astronomy departments; and give insights on the process, what we’ve learned, and how other departments can begin to tackle systemic change that supports African American students.