Inclusive Astronomy 2015: Update #1

This guest post is composed by the organizers of the Inclusive Astronomy meeting.

The inaugural Inclusive Astronomy meeting is coming up in less than three months: June 17-19, 2015 at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee!  This meeting is being planned in response to the reality that marginalized people face -isms and -phobias which function as barriers to their participation in astronomy.  As organizers, we are excited for this meeting and hope that it will be the first of many.  

The content of the meeting is being organized under four broad topical areas:

• Barriers to access;
• Inclusion and access to power, policy, and leadership;
• Creating inclusive climates; and
• Establishing a community of inclusive practice.  

Each broad area will contain plenary presentations, breakout sessions, and workshops.  Some of the topics to be addressed are: intersectionality between racism, ableism, cissexism/transphobia, heterosexism, and sexism; campus/workplace climate; accessibility; addressing harassment and sexual violence on campuses and in workplaces; allyship; strategies for developing bridge programs; developing the skills to influence astronomy policy; and the societal boundary conditions that impact work toward equity and inclusion in astronomy.  The plenary presenters include Chanda Prescod-Weinstein on intersectionality; Kenjus Watson on creating inclusive environments; Lydia Brown on disability justice, autistic self-advocacy, and the intersection of ableism with racism; David Helfand on why policy matters; Rachel Ivie on demographics; and a panel discussion by Ebony McGee, Casey Miller, and Richard Pitt on science identity in students, problems with the GRE, and stereotype threat.

Astro-Diversity: Post #1 – The Pipeline to Astronomy Degrees

 

Dr. Lisa M. Frehill [1] is an IPA at NSF in Strategic Human Capital Planning working as an Organizational Evaluation and Assessment Researcher.  Her home institution is Energetics Technology Center in St. Charles, MD, where she has completed science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce analysis and assessment and evaluation in support of the Office of Naval Research, the DoD STEM Development Office and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  A past NSF awardee, Dr. Frehill was the PI and Program Director of the ADVANCE: Institutional Transformation program when she was an associate professor of sociology at New Mexico State University. She is an expert on diversity in STEM and on program evaluation. A forthcoming volume (co-edited with Willie Pearson, Jr. and Connie L. McNeely) titled Advancing Women in Science: An International Perspective is due winter 2015 from Springer.  In her free time, Lisa enjoys hiking, yoga, visiting family and baking.

This is the first in a series of posts about diversity in astronomy. The idea for the series emerged from conversations with Dr. Joan Schmelz, who is serving as an NSF program officer in the Division of Astronomy on loan from the University of Memphis. Joan has been involved in issues for women in astronomy and is interested in being attentive to how to more generally increase the diversity of her field. 

This first post will provide a view of the pipeline into college and bachelor’s degree attainment in both astronomy and physics, which is an important “feeder field.” Future posts will look at U.S. astronomy degrees in greater detail.  This post relies on institutionally-reported data in the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) were accessed via the National Science Foundation WebCASPAR database tool. 

What does the STEM pipeline into college look like from a diversity standpoint?  The answer to this is a “glass half full/half empty.”  On the one hand, we have seen a significant narrowing of the sex gap in high school preparation in mathematics and sciences. Indeed, high school boys recently caught up with high school girls to earn an average of 7.4 credits in mathematics and science (Nord et al., 2011).  Girls (14 percent) and boys (12 percent) are equally likely to have taken a “rigorous” high school curriculum consisting of at least four years of English and mathematics (including pre-calculus or higher), and three years each of social studies, science (including biology, chemistry and physics), and foreign language.  These are important increases since 1990, when just 4 percent of girls and 5 percent of boys had taken a rigorous high school curriculum.  Science, not mathematics, continues to be a more important issue for girls.  An additional 15 percent of girls would have completed a rigorous curriculum by taking just one more science class, as compared to an additional 9 percent of boys.