“Black students don’t need to be fixed. … So instead of trying to change them, let’s talk about why they are turned off by the environment in physics and work to change that.” TheMissingPhysicists
Physicist Mary James was a sophomore at Hampshire College in Massachusetts in 1974 when a professor encouraged her to apply for a prestigious internship at a world-class laboratory. Such competitive internships are often an essential step to becoming an academic scientist, which was her goal. But for a young Black woman from Chicago, the idea of spending 10 weeks at what is now called the SLAC National Linear Accelerator Laboratory in California seemed far-fetched.
That way of thinking is so common in physics that it even has a name. Diversity scholars call it the deficit model, and they say it’s a major reason fewer than 4% of all undergraduate physics degrees awarded by U.S. institutions go to Black men and women. Sadly, that underrepresentation is getting worse: A 2020 report by the American Institute of Physics found Black people now comprise a smaller slice of those degrees than they did 2 decades ago.
“The percentage of incoming freshmen who express interest in astronomy [1%] is not different between majority and minority students,” says Stassun, who identifies as Hispanic and says he has “lived the life” of someone from an underrepresented group in science. “But 2 years later, 60% of all students have fallen away, while the rate is 90% for Black students. It’s a massive disparity from which we never recover.
Instead of trying to win another REU grant, Kannappan decided to create a 2-week paid boot camp just for UNC students, including those from marginalized groups. It teaches them computational skills applicable to any area of physics, and is supported by institutional funding and a supplement to her standard NSF research grant. Its short duration, she says, “still allows [students] to go home or take [other] classes.
Similar efforts are still uncommon at other campuses around the United States, according a 2020 AIP survey of 310 physics department chairs. Three out of four chairs identified “low enrollment or retention of historically underrepresented groups” as a major challenge.
The Fisk-Vanderbilt program puts more weight on factors such as perseverance, the ability to set long-term goals, leadership, and community engagement. Those qualities, Stassun says, don’t penalize students of color and are also seen as better metrics for success. The bridge program has made impressive strides in increasing diversity: Some 80% of the 150 students who have earned master’s and doctoral degrees identify as either Black or Hispanic, according to data compiled by the program, and more than half are women. Along the way, says Stassun, who stepped down as director of the program in 2015, Fisk has become the nation’s top producer of Black students with master’s degrees in physics and materials science. “And my lab has awarded more Ph.D.s.
“Sometimes it felt that they were just checking a box,” says Mulu-Moore, who spent 10 years trying to find her place in physics after also earning her Ph.D. from AAMU in 2009. “We were doing a lot of outreach to minority schools for CISM. But I don’t know of a single minority student who came through the CISM program and went into the field.”