Workshop of the American Physical Society Committee on Minorities

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

For the past eleven years, the APS in collaboration with the APS Committee for Minority in Physic has operated the APS Corporate Sponsored Scholarships for Minority Undergraduate Students who major in Physics. The scholarship program provide financial support, a mentorship program consisting of practicing professional physicists and corporate sponsorship. Over 100 undergraduate students have participated in the program which started in 1980. As a result, among the scholarship recipients there is a wide spectrum of students at different levels as well as varied career paths and achievements. The APS has annually updated the records of the student and thus is in excellent position to analyze the results and make suggestions for improvements. In spite of many efforts, the number of minority students who chose careers as professional physicist and other scientists is well below their percentage in the population. The APS scholarships program has obtained useful information on a rather significant portion of the minority pipeline problem by following minority students from highschool, to undergraduate school, to graduate school, to postdoctoral position and then on to employment. Thus, significant data can be developed, which can address the various decision making points at different stages in the pipeline. We proposed to hold a workshop consisting of past and present APS Corporate Scholarship winners, their mentors, corporate sponsors and appropriate members of the professional societies and government. The workshop will focus on the: 1. Identification and analysis of the crucial steps made be the student scholarship winners in deciding to go on to careers in physics or a related science, 2. Identification and analysis of the crucial decision points which resulted in some scholarship winners deciding not to major in science but in another field, 3. Identification and analysis of the variables leading to a scholarship recipient not completing his or her college education, 4. Analysis of the role of the mentor program and how it effects career choices, 5. Determination of strategies on how to involve the scholarship winners and professional physicists (many from minority groups) in accessing existing networks, and developing their own networking system with assistance from the professional societies and other programs concerned with minorities. It is expected that information and results garnered form this workshop, focused on the APS program, will be applicable to other efforts aimed at increasing the number of minority students in all the sciences.