Program Details
Oklahoma State University
How many tenure-track or tenured faculty -- male/female?
20 tenure-track/tenured males
5 tenure-track/tenured females
How many graduate students-- male/female?
11 females/48 males
How many post doctoral associates - male/female?
2 females/4 males
Is there a family leave policy for graduate students? If so, describe.
There is no family leave policy for graduate students in our Department
Is there family health insurance for graduate students? If so, is it included in the stipend?
There is a family health insurance policy which is not included in the stipend (students do not pay for this policy).
Please describe why someone applying to graduate school who is interested in a female-friendly department should choose your department.
Of our last six faculty hires, four have been women. Dr. Flera Rizatdinova accepted a position of Assistant Professor in our Dept. in the fall of 2005. She is involved with the Center of Excellence in High Energy Physics (HEP), originally funded in 2004 through a DOE EPSCoR grant and recently renewed in August 2007. Dr. Rizatdinova has established a HEP Experimental Program within our Dept. and travels to Fermi Lab and Cern to conduct experiments and collaborations. Dr. Rizatdinova recently received, as Principal Investigator, her first DOE grant. A position was created through the funded DOE EPSCoR grant to provide an assistant Research Professor position for her husband, Dr. Alexander Khanov. Next, Dr. Yin Guo, wife of our Regents Professor Dr. Xincheng Xie, became an assistant professor in our Department in 2005. She was hired through of the dual career opportunity program that has been instituted by the College of Arts & Sciences. Dr. Guo is a Co-PI on a recently awarded DoD EPSCoR grant titled "Nanoscale Modeling of Tribological Processes in Extreme Conditions". In 2007, we hired our first female Assistant Research Professor, Dr. Regina DeWitt. Dr. DeWitt conducts research in Radiation Physics. She has received funding from both NASA and NSF, the latter being an MRI grant to construct a confocal microscope for spatially resolved luminescence measurements. Our most recent hire is Dr. Yingmei Liu, who will be conducting research on spinor Bose Einstein Condensates. Before coming to OSU, she had two postdoctoral positions with two former Nobel Laureates in Physics; Dr. William Phillips of NIST and Dr. Wolfgang Ketterly of MIT.
We are proud to have Dr. Aihua Xie, who is a fellow of the American Physical Society and who chaired the 2005 APS Committee on the Status of Women in Physics, as a full professor in our Department. She was also one of two invited US Delegates to give presentations at the Second Annual International Union of Pure and Applied Physics conference on women in physics held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2005. Dr. Xie was recently elected as Vice Chair of the Division of Biological Physics of American Physical Society. In the next two years, she will lead the APS division of Biological Physics as Chair-elect in 2010 and Chair in 2011. Finally, Ms. Melissa Edwards has been the laboratory coordinator for all our undergraduate service courses since 2003. We feel all of our female professors provide strong role models for female undergraduate and graduate students considering our Department for degrees in physics.
A final note concerning our graduate program: For the 2009 fall semester, we recruited 15 new doctoral graduate students, five of these students are women.
Has the institution had a Climate for Women in Physics Site Visit or Gender Equity Conversation?
No
Updated: September 25, 2009
