Science by Diverse Scientists: A Cal-Bridge Physics & Astronomy Seminar Series

Published: October 1, 2021
Publication: American Journal of Physics 89, 908 (2021)
Authors: Sara Callori; Carol Hood; Alexandra Miller; Aaron Romanowsky; David A Strubbe

We would like to share a new virtual seminar series “Science by Diverse Scientists: A Cal-Bridge Physics & Astronomy Seminar Series,”¹ which was started during the 2020–2021 academic year and will continue this fall. Interested students, faculty, and departments are invited to attend these seminars. The Science by Diverse Scientists Seminar Series aims to highlight the scientific contributions of minoritized members of the physics and astronomy community, showcase future career paths for undergraduate students, and discuss anti-racism and the experiences of scientists of color.

Talks in this series are aimed at undergraduate physics and astronomy majors with time for students to “meet” speakers after the talks, and we hope that non-PhD granting departments, in particular, will benefit from this series. We strive to expose students to a broader representation of who can “do” physics and astronomy as well as to a wide range of careers achievable with degrees in those fields. In the inaugural year, there were speakers on a broad range of topics, including physics education researcher Danny Caballero, cultural astronomer Jarita Holbrook, Pixar technical director Henry Garcia, and LinkedIn data scientist Rocio Ng.

The talks are held virtually every other Tuesday at 4–5 pm Pacific time. They are also archived on the Cal-Bridge YouTube channel for any interested viewers who cannot make the “live” timeslot, including 15 talks from the last year.^2,3 We encourage physics educators to share these talks with students. In many of them, the speakers spend time discussing their own personal paths through physics and astronomy as minoritized scientists and share advice that would benefit most students in general, but especially those from underrepresented groups. At many campuses, these students may rarely have the chance to meet physics peers or role models with similar backgrounds to their own, so we hope that the Science by Diverse Scientists series is one avenue by which this gap can be filled. For more information and to sign up for notifications about seminars, please visit the series website.¹

Honoraria for the series were funded by the Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement.

References
1. Alexander L. Rudolph, “Cal-Bridge: Creating pathways to the PhD for underrepresented students in physics and astronomy,” Phys. Today 72(10), 50–57 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.4319

2. Home page for the Science By Diverse Scientists Seminar Series: https://www.cpp.edu/calbridge/resources/speaker_series.shtml.

3. Cal-Bridge YouTube page where the recorded seminars can be found: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvJthEDdGI2L4UIz5gFt_3w.