United States

Undergraduate student leaders and faculty must partner to build thriving physics and astronomy programs. To achieve this aspirational goal and address systemic underrepresentation of African Americans and other groups within our departments, departments need to implement processes for self-evaluation and change. Department culture, SPS, and the role of advising are instrumental in effecting lasting change. This session will aim to examine areas where undergraduate student leaders and faculty can implement the recommendations of the AIP Task Force to Elevate the representation of African Americans in Undergraduate Physics (TEAM-UP) report. The session will focus on self-assessment tools and methods of evaluation for students,&amp;nbsp;faculty, and undergraduate groups.

AAPT WM 21

Driving Undergraduate Departmental Change: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

equity

inclusion

diversity

The 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting brought together physics educators from around the globe to learn about the latest in physics theory, research methodology and education from leaders in their field. The program featured plenary speakers, sessions, workshops and many special activities.

For more information please visit the 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting page at: https://www.aapt.org/Conferences/SM2020/index.cfm.


AAPT SM 20

The 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting brought together physics educators from around the globe to learn about the latest in physics theory, research methodology and education from leaders in their field. 

Undergraduate student leaders and faculty must partner to build thriving physics and astronomy programs. To achieve this aspirational goal and address systemic underrepresentation of African Americans and other groups within our departments, departments need to implement processes for self-evaluation and change. Department culture, SPS, and the role of advising are instrumental in effecting lasting change. This session will aim to examine areas where undergraduate student leaders and faculty can implement the recommendations of the AIP Task Force to Elevate the representation of African Americans in Undergraduate Physics (TEAM-UP) report. The session will focus on self-assessment tools and methods of evaluation for students,&nbsp;faculty, and undergraduate groups.

technical paper

AAPT® is a strong professional physics science society dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in physical science education.

Winter and Summer National Meetings:
These National Meetings, held each winter and summer, are opportunities for members, colleagues, and future physicists from around the world to:

- participate in physics workshops
- meet and greet other physics educators
- form networks nationally and locally
- engage exhibitors and learn about the latest physics resources
- discuss innovations in teaching methods
- share the results of research about teaching and learning.

If you're not able to log in, you're most likely using **incorrect login credentials**. Double-check that you are using the same email and password that you used to register for the conference, submit your abstract or access your AAPT membership. There may also be **an issue with your AAPT meeting registration**. Please email aapt2021@underline.io and programs@aapt.org and we will work quickly to resolve this issue.

Many physics teachers are seeking ways to make our courses more just and equitable, including creating units that address issues of social justice and utilize culturally relevant pedagogy. We often feel constrained by the innumerable topics that are supposed to fit into our courses, so how do we weave social justice into our courses and not make it an add-on that feels like one more thing we need to “cover”? Knowles Engineering, a project of the Knowles Teacher Initiative, is focused on helping teachers integrate engineering into their courses using content they already teach. Now, we have developed a framework to help teachers create curriculum that connects to local and global issues of social justice and uses the engineering design process to incorporate culturally relevant strategies. In this presentation, we will provide our draft framework, discuss the development of the framework, and how it can be employed by teachers.&nbsp;

Towards a Framework for Equity-Minded Engineering Integration in Physics

This presentation will feature the stories of multiple physics teachers across the USA, Latin America, and the Caribbean who have participated in the Inter-American Teacher Education Network. Each of these teachers has been recognized for their role as teacher leaders, and they will share how they have worked to impact the policies and practices of their schools and educational systems. These teachers will provide exemplars for how other physics teachers across the hemisphere can become agents of change in diverse ways. &nbsp;

International Physics Teacher Leadership: US, Latin America, and the Caribbean

There is a good deal of focus on recruiting underrepresented students to study physics at the collegiate level, but a lack of focus on how to make sure they are being recruited into a welcoming and safe environment that values their identity. Because of this, underrepresented students tend to feel a disconnect from the physics community and are more likely to drop out or switch majors. One potential method of combating this issue is increasing the peer networks of these students through informal outreach programs, which give students a sense of purpose, belonging, and confidence in physics. This systematic literature review synthesizes studies on the effects of informal STEM programs on the facilitators and identifies gaps in this research as it pertains to underrepresented students.&nbsp;

Retaining Underrepresented Students through Outreach Programs: A Systematic Literature Review

As part of our volunteer-run nonprofit's efforts to engage students in the US and around the world in learning physics through innovative practices and to supplement their classroom instruction (or lack thereof, as is the case in 40% of US high schools that do not offer physics classes), we organized a virtual summer program this past August, consisting of two parts: a summer school and a summer camp. The former constituted a three-week series of nine innovative lessons in general physics taught by three volunteer instructors - from Harvard and UC Berkeley - live via Zoom and recorded for students from different time zones. The latter involved a series of over twenty facilitator-led online networking sessions for participants from nine countries, in addition to several career panels. Our free pilot program was well-received, and we plan to organize new iterations specifically targeting underrepresented groups, including incarcerated learners. We are seeking partners in facilitating future events or acting as host sites and would welcome your interest.

Summary of Physics Unlimited's Virtual 2020 Summer Program

This talk will introduce two High School level contemporary Physics activities that can be easily integrated into a standard High School Physics curriculum in either an in-person or online environment. These are activities that take the concepts of the conservation of mass, energy, and momentum into the relativistic realm and demonstrate the statistical techniques used in HEP analysis. Where to find these QuarkNet activities and others like them on the Data Portfolio section of the QuarkNet website will also be discussed. These are also two activities that can be used as preparation for the LHC Data Workshop to be discussed in later talks.

CMS-related activities in LHC Data Workshop

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused educators to revisit almost every aspect of teaching and learning, including assessment.&nbsp; In spring of 2020, the Advanced Placement program found itself with the challenge of quickly designing, administering, and grading their exams in a purely online environment.&nbsp; This talk will share observations of the 2020 AP Physics exams and discuss how these observations helped shape the author's design and administration of online exams and quizzes.&nbsp; Examples of several styles of questions administered through the course management system at the author’s university will be included.

Designing Online Assessments: Inspirations from the 2020 AP Physics Exam

Jupyter notebooks [ JN ] are&nbsp;rapidly becoming the tool of choice of rmodelling the mechanics of physics calculation and investigation. This open source tool is used in research, engineering as well as compter and data science.&nbsp; It can also be an effective tool for classroom use at the high school level as well.&nbsp; A framework for introducing and using using jupyter notebooks as a model for student engagement in topics presented at the high school level will be presented.&nbsp; In the form of Google's&nbsp;CoLab (a cloud based implementation of JN ) it&nbsp;can also allow remote interaction with distance learning students through shared documents as well.

Using Jupyter Notebooks in the High School Classroom

For the past fifty years, undergraduate physics programs have struggled with the underrepresentation of women. The STEP UP project (STEPUPphysics.org) was designed to reduce barriers for women in physics&nbsp;and encourage high school women to pursue an undergraduate physics degree. STEP UP focuses on implementing high school interventions by working with cohorts of high school physics teachers called Ambassadors, who are trained to teach and propagate STEP UP's research-driven materials throughout their teacher networks. To understand the effects of Ambassador training, several surveys are being administered to Ambassadors throughout the school year.&nbsp; Taking a “tempered radicals” framing, this talk will present an analysis of initial survey responses and the characteristics of teachers who are willing to be disruptive in order to reduce barriers. Results will inform the future selection of Ambassadors, guide STEP UP training, and be relevant to other programs seeking to develop “tempered radicals” in their communities.

Identifying “Tempered Radicals” in the STEP UP Ambassador Program

We conducted a series of multiple linear regressions to examine the predictive ability of race on introductory mechanics final exam scores when controlling for ACT math scores and physics placement test scores. When we followed a common method of categorizing students as URMs and non-URMS for our analysis, we found that students who earned comparable scores on the ACT math test and the physics placement test performed similarly on the final exam. However, when we established separate groups for Non-Hispanic White American, Asian American, African American, Hispanic, International, Multi-Race, AIAN, and NHPI students, we found that African American and Asian American students, and to a lesser extent, Hispanic students, under-performed in their physics course relative to their prior test scores. We conclude that there is still work to be done at the university level to provide a learning environment supportive of students of all backgrounds.

URM Grouping Hides Struggles of Black and Asian American Students

The COVID-19 outbreak has introduced unexpected barriers and uncertainty for prospective graduate students and physics departments. Chief among concerns are the safety and health of students, and the economic shortfall resulting from reduced enrollment.Such concerns may significantly disrupt the application and admittance processes; of particular concern is the impacts on the diversity of incoming graduate cohorts. Using&nbsp; exploratory survey data collected from physics departments in Fall 2020, we will report on how COVID-19 has impacted the processes, pressures, and demographics of physics graduate programs, including the effects of various departmental responses and preparation. We will present practices implemented by departments, with special attention paid to those that have been successful in maintaining the size, diversity, and preparedness of the 2020 graduate cohort. The findings of this study will inform on actions related to recruiting, admissions, and/or post-admissions that will support graduate admissions in the coming years.

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