Today I attended the a really nice seminar put on by APS. It was excellent summary of all the great things that are being done at APS and the other national physics organizations, including but not limited to APS Bridge Program (one of my favorites), National Mentoring Community, APS IDEA (Signing up is on the to do list for July), STEP UP, and TEAM UP (This report is awesome!).

There were a number of interesting takeaways:

(1) Jim Gates and the rest of the panel were Amazing!

(2) STEP UP was initially created to be focused on improving physics for woman. But now it is moving into improving physics for other underrepresented groups.

(3) The national physics societies have power. We could use our national meetings to boycott cities that have poor policing policies. DAMOP was moved from Charlotte a few years ago for that state’s actions against the LGBTQ community.

(4) We need more high school physics teachers!

(5) Departments should build a diversity team. This team should include folks from all different levels: students, faculty, etc.

(6) WOW! Neil deGrasse Tyson, asked a good question. I am paraphrasing: Black students take high school regents physics in NYC significantly less than white students (4-to-1). How can you fix the diversity issue when this is happening at the high school level?