Programs

Session 1

1. Gatekeeping in Admissions & Hiring
   Christine Clark, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
   [PDF]
   In seeking to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion when thinking about how graduate students, national laboratories personnel, and faculty learn about and gain entry to your academic learning or professional work environment, key evidence-based practices (EBPs) are critical. For example, the addition of non-cognitive variables to admissions processes for graduate students and to hiring processes for industry and national laboratories personnel and faculty. In this first module on gatekeeping in admissions and hiring, we will explore how standard entry practices, progression evaluations, and the workplace climates directly contribute to the diversity, equity, and inclusion of our organizations which is directly linked to their effectiveness and innovation.
   
   
2. Incorporating a Holistic Process into Graduate Admission Reviews
   Carolyn Kuranz, University of Michigan
   [PDF]
   Often quantitative metrics (ie GRE scores and GPA) are a primary focus of graduate application review, particularly in STEM fields. However, evidence has shown that the GRE scores are a poor predictor of success1 in graduate school and college GPA has become less reliable due to increased grade inflation, which is more prevalent at private institutions.2 Not only does this practice overlook valuable indicators regarding student preparedness and potential success, it also has potential biases and can prevent underrepresented groups from gaining access to PhD programs. A holistic graduate application review is one strategy for improving diversity in PhD programs.3 This type of review includes non-cognitive or 'success critical' skills.4 This presentation will summarize current research on quantitative and holistic processes and give an overview implementing a holistic review process at your institution. 1Miller, C., Stassun, K. 'A test that fails.' Nature 510, 303-304 (2014). 2Aina Katsikas. 'Same Performance, Better Grades.' The Atlantic (2015). 3Council of Graduate Schools. (2019) Holistic Review in Graduate Admissions Sedlacek, W. E. (2004) Why we should use noncognitive variables with graduate and professional students. The Advisor: The Journal of the National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions. 24 (2), 32-39 3
   
   
3. Gatekeeping in Admissions & Hiring
   Barbara Harrison, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
   [PDF]
   Entering the workforce with a bachelors, masters, or doctorate is often fraught with equity barriers. Guidance counselors, mentors, faculty and hiring officials can foster a psychologically safe environment and create a sense of belonging for professional transitions into the workforce and academia by introducing the new-members to their network and promoting their work to help them secure a position in which they can thrive.
   
   
4. Gatekeeping in Admissions & Hiring: Recruitment & Retention
   Kimberly Young-McLear and Royce James, US Coast Guard Academy, CISA, AFIT
   [PDF]
   The Health of Climate team strives to foster psychological safety and moral courage. The team is invested in bringing experts together with the community, including members of marginalized groups, to create a psychologically safe environment. A community feedback system is being implemented to ensure that workplace climate issues are identified and addressed in a timely manner. The Cultural Competence team builds on that foundation to cultivate an inclusive culture and to unleash the power of diverse perspectives. This team has sponsored events to promote pedagogy that fuses technical subject matter with cultural exploration and has supported community-based workshop participation to address racism and all forms of oppression. Using the Healthy to innovative framework in work and learning spaces can transform climates and cultures to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion as the crux for retention and recruitment.
   
   
5. Admissions & Hiring: Small Group Discussions
   Mini-conference organizers
   Mini-conference participants will break up into small groups for guided discussions on admissions and hiring. Participants will come up with questions for the panel immediately afterwards.  After the small group discussions, participants will report back to the larger group.
   
   
6. Admissions & Hiring: Panel Discussion
   Subject Matter Experts
   We will invite subject matter experts to discuss admissions & hiring across the plasma community and answer questions that arose during the preceding small group discussions.
   
   Session 2
   
   
7. Gatekeeping via Qualifying Exams
   Christine Clark
   [PDF] [Video]
   Qualifying exams are viewed as a rite of passage in graduate school.  This talk will describe how quals can damage the mental health of graduate students and increase equity gaps in graduate education.  This talk will make the case for eliminating qualifying exams from graduate programs in our field.
   
   
8. Eliminating Qualifying Exams: Small Group Discussions
   Mini-conference organizers
   Mini-conference participants will break up into small groups for guided discussions to reimagine an impactful graduate school educational experience without qualifying exams. Topics for discussion will include identifying barriers to removing them plus possible benefits to individuals, research productivity, and quality from their removal.
   
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11. Gatekeeping in Admissions & Hiring (Part II): Post Undergraduate Entry into the Workforce Subject Matter Expert Panel
    Subject matter experts
    We will invite subject matter experts to discuss hiring (at all levels), postdoc selections, and graduate school admissions across the plasma community. Panelists will answer questions posed by the audience locally and virtually.
    
    
12. Increasing the Emphasis on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at LLNL
    Amy Jimenez, LLNL
    [PDF] [Video]
    Many of the job opportunities in plasma physics reside at the National Labs so making the climate at the National Labs as diverse, equitable, and inclusive as possible is an important component in reducing the leaks in the pipeline. We can provide role models to students and postdocs by showing that our field is equitable and supportive of women and minorities as well as providing job opportunities for exciting careers in plasma physics. We will discuss our efforts to increase our emphasis on DE&I at LLNL. These efforts support recruiting, hiring, and retention of a diverse staff with the goal of giving our staff the environment, tools, and resources needed to live up to their full potential. We are looking at our job postings and our interview process to make them more inclusive and equitable. We are giving our staff tools to help them speak up when they see behavior that is undesired. We will also be expanding our student scholar program - both for recruiting and to encourage students to pursue graduate degrees in our field. Lastly, we will engage with faculty at universities to get feedback on how we recruit their students. In this talk, we will give an update on the status of our efforts in this important topic.
    
    
13. Actions Towards Building a Thriving & Diverse Fusion Energy Program
    Mickey Wade, Oak Ridge National Lab
    [PDF]
    Overwhelming evidence shows the benefits of workplace diversity in achieving excellence in research, innovation, and performance. ORNL realizes that success in meeting the enormous scientific and technical challenge of rapidly developing fusion energy depends on our ability to build a culture that supports diversity, equity, and inclusivity in order to recruit and retain a broad array of talent. ORNL is taking a proactive approach in implementing new programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) awareness and work practices. Specific actions include the establishment of a Lab-wide DEI council, establishing outreach activities and protocols to ensure candidate pools for new positions are appropriately diverse, implementing fair hiring practices, providing staff with the awareness, training, and tools necessary to support an inclusive and respectful workplace, improving mentoring and coaching for all staff, and ensuring the input of all staff are sought out and their contributions valued. This presentation will outline the benefits of DEI in technical research, provide details of actions being taken at ORNL to improve its DEI posture, and discuss plans for how to measure progress.
    
    
14. Steps Taken to Assess and Improve DEI-Related Engagement at DIII-D
    Shawn Zamperini & Kathreen Thome, General Atomics
    [Video]
    The DIII-D National Fusion Program has created a DEI panel to facilitate engagement, opportunity and recruitment of a diverse range of personnel within the program, as well as to officially endorse programmatic changes that improve opportunities. DIII-D offers a unique challenge in that it is a user facility split between employees and outside collaborators of interconnected roles (e.g. students, technicians, staff, engineers). The panel uses the recent 2020 DPP-CPP report as a guide, which acknowledges that we, the plasma physics community, are not experts on the subject of DEI and therefore should consult outside help to accelerate change. We show that the first steps taken towards finding outside help identified the need for an exploratory site visit. The implementation of a facility-wide survey is then discussed to demonstrate the data gathering of baseline statistics can be used to track the progress of DEI-related initiatives. Existing training options are presented, as well as any gaps in training specific to a multi-institutional facility like DIII-D. Our intention is that this presentation provides inspiration and first steps towards improving DEI within a multi-institutional plasma physics organization, but also leads to insights that inform the DIII-D approach.
    
    Session 3
    
    
15. Gatekeeping: What is and isn’t Mentorship & Looping Mentorship
    Christine Clark, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
    [PDF]
    Mentoring is a common tool for improving recruitment and retention. However, poor mentoring practices can cause more harm than good. Effective, evidence based practices are crucial for the success of mentoring relationships. Looping mentorship programs transform the relationship from one of hierarchy to one of proximity. Furthermore, looping mentorship expands mentoring relationships to build matrices of support. Aspects of successful looping mentoring practices will be presented.
    
    
16. Looping Mentorship: Strategies for effective looping mentorship Sharon Zelmanowitz, US Coast Guard Academy
    [PDF]
    Mentoring programs and relationships can be an effective tool for addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion goals. Common misconceptions about the mentoring process frame mentoring as a hierarchical, transactional process. Healthy and effective mentoring relationships are mutually beneficial and respectful, with looping mentoring programs predicated on mutual accommodation. This talk addresses effective habits of mentoring from the perspective of the mentee. Strategies for participating in mentoring relationships are presented, with the goal of empowering mentees to engage in mentoring as co-collaborators.
    
    
17. Fixing the Pipeline: Student led High School Outreach and Undergraduate Research Preparation During the Pandemic
    Ernesto Barraza-Valdez, University of California, Irvine
    [PDF]
    The COVID-19 pandemic has caused more damage to an already broken educational pipeline of physics. The Pew Research Foundation has shown that some of the main reasons underrepresented minorities and students of color do not pursue careers in STEM are the lack of representation, mentorship, and skill/educational development (1). Here, we present a student-led outreach effort at UC Irvine to introduce high school students to plasma and nuclear physics with the goal of increasing BIPoC+Women professionals representation. Additionally, we present a summary of our computational plasma physics workshops meant to help underrepresented undergraduate students obtain the skills needed to conduct research which are otherwise untaught yet presumed to be. We hope our efforts will encourage others to help in improving the educational pipeline for underrepresented minorities.
    (1) Funk, C., & Parker, K. (2018). Women and men in STEM often at odds over workplace equity.
    
    
18. Looping Mentorship: Small Group Discussions
    Mini-conference organizers
    Mini-conference participants will break up into small groups for guided discussions on times when we were really supported by good mentorship; what resources are available for mentees, mentors, and facilitators; and how to implement mentoring best practices in our own institutions, including looping mentoring programs.
    
    
19. Gatekeeping via Conferences
    Royce W. James and Kimberly Young-McLear, AFIT/US Coast Guard Academy, & CISA
    [PDF]
    Prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is not just an ancillary or separate initiative, but an integrated part of the framework to produce innovative plasma and fusion science. Industry and national laboratories personnel, graduate students, and faculty must be affirmed once on the inside of your industry workplace or academic learning and workplace environments. Two key evidence-based practices to achieve this are the establishment of a Human Relations Code and a Bias Incident Policy. DPP has a history of promoting policies like these yet more work is needed. There are several equity barriers that remain in our division and are often made evident at conferences. Alternatives to unofficial and ambiguous dress codes and expectations of presentations, poster session “flirting,” and the availability of travel funding reimbursements that do not address a lack of upfront funds nor the “evaluation” of merit of submitted requests, must be implemented. Steps to address conference audio and visual and facilities accessibility, childcare, and who gets invited talks, or is encouraged to submit a talk at all are vital aspects of conference equity that can inform our communities culture in and out of conference season. In this module, Innovative practices like double anonymous peer review will be explored with a tight connection to equity gap and psychological safety monitoring to ensure our collective success and health.
    
    
20. Representation of Women in APS-DPP Invited Talks, Fellowships, and Committees
    Stephanie Hansen, Sandia National Laboratories
    [PDF] [Video]
    W+IPP has made a concerted effort to track statistics of opportunities and engagement of women in DPP over the years, from invited talk and DPP fellow percentages to committee compositions and more. We publish these results yearly for the community, creating some of the only records of DEI statistics in DPP. Historically W+IPP has been able to leverage these statistics to effect change in DPP policy.
    
    
21. Creating a More Welcoming Environment for LGBTQ+ Scientists
    Mel Abler, Space Science Institute
    [PDF] [Video]
    We present interventions led by graduate students at Columbia University which have directly resulted in a more than four-fold increase in the number of LGBTQ+ students in the department over two years.  First, the presence of an out student as graduate social chair led to previously closeted peers coming out and had a direct, positive impact on the matriculation choices of prospective students. Second, wide adoption of the You Are Welcome Here campaign by department faculty and staff signaled to LGBTQ+ students that they would be welcome in the department without requiring them to come out; this intervention is particularly important for students from backgrounds which may not permit them to be open about their LGBTQ+ identity.  Finally, LGBTQ+ and allied students successfully lobbied for institutional changes that had an immediate impact on quality of life by emphasizing impacts beyond the LGBTQ+ community. These policies include a preferred name policy which applies from application through graduation and a rapid increase in the number of gender-neutral restroom facilities.
    
    
22. Codes of Conduct for Software Collaborations
    Nicholas A. Murphy, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
    [PDF] [Video]
    Every scientific organization should have a human relations code and a bias incident policy.  This talk will describe how codes of conduct are typically applied in open source software collaborations.  The Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct is emerging as a community standard.  This code of conduct describes not only what behaviors are unacceptable, but also behaviors that contribute to a positive community climate.  Importantly, the Contributor Covenant has a built-in enforcement mechanism.
    
    
23. Plans for a DPP Queryable Equity Database
    Elizabeth Merritt, Los Alamos Natl Lab
    [PDF] [Video]
    The DEI Organizing Collective is designing a database of demographic and climate information for the DPP that can be used to evaluate and monitor equity gaps in the community. We require the database to be searchable by members of DPP committees, such as the Executive Committee as well as program and awards committees etc., such that these committees can use the database as a tool to evaluate historic and current equity in representation across the community in general and for specific nominee pools for honors and awards. Central to establishing this tool is the need for strict protection of community members' private information, so as to ideally prevent the risk of harm to individuals due to volunteering potentially sensitive information. In this presentation we will discuss the scope and requirements of the database, the status of the project, and give some examples of how to use the database to track equity gaps.