Despite the growing number of curricula, seminars, and workshops providing resources for physics educators to address EDI in their classrooms, many physics educators are hesitant to engage in critical conversations, due to lack of facilitation skills, fear of burdening minoritized students, and/or fear of causing harm due to lack of expertise. The APS EDI Fellows Program seeks to address the gap between available EDI resources and physicists' lack of expertise in critical conversations by training a cohort of physicists and pairing them with critical conversation specialists to present interactive workshops that address fear and build capacity for physicists to engage in EDI conversations. Addressing equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in physics is a prominent goal of the APS Strategic Plan.
We will select six EDI Fellows to be trained in how to foster EDI discussions in the classroom. The EDI Fellows, in partnership with the Curriculum Development Team (CDT), will develop and facilitate subsequent workshops for physics educators interested in building capacity to do EDI work in their classrooms.
During the second year, each Fellow, in partnership with one of the critical conversation specialists, will lead one iteration of the EDI Workshop with volunteer groups that have a vested interest in the success of the EDI Fellows program and the EDI Workshop. This work will be compensated with a modest stipend of $5000 and travel expenses over the 2-year grant.
The following are the responsibilities of the Fellows through the end of the grant program (Fall 2023):
This project is funded by the APS Innovation Fund.
At the end of this grant in 2023, we intend to seek funding to train more fellows. If you are interested in being notified about the progress of this program including announcements for future Fellows, please sign-up here for updates.