Keeping women in physics is aim of conference for undergrads

Some 70 (mostly) female physics majors are convening this month for the Second Annual Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics at the University of Southern California. Two USC graduate students came up with the idea for the conference, which now looks set to become not only annual but also imitated.

It started with idle chitchat a couple of years ago, when Katie Mussack, who is in the final stretch of her PhD in theoretical solar physics, and Amy Cassidy, a fourth-year graduate student whose research is on the thermalization of one-dimensional Bose gases, wondered what they might do to increase the number of women who go on to graduate school in physics. At USC, says Mussack, “there is a huge discrepancy” between the proportions of women in the physics undergraduate and graduate programs—32% and 12%, respectively. “We thought we might be able to help others make the transition” to graduate school, Mussack says. “I came up with the crazy idea that we could put on a conference, and Amy didn’t say no.”

A few months and lots of legwork later, 29 female undergraduates from several southern California colleges and universities showed up in January 2006 for a weekend of research talks, networking, and mentoring. “Our purpose was to bring together female students studying physics and to give them the opportunity to learn about research and meet other women in physics,” says Cassidy. In surveys collected from participants, says Mussack, “all the comments were very positive.” One attendee, Cassidy adds, “was not planning to go to graduate school. After the conference, she applied, and now she is a graduate student. A lot of them were able to say, ‘I can see myself being a scientist.’”

Like last year, the program this time includes talks by established scientists—Delaware State University’s Beverly Hartline on women in physics and careers in physics; Frances Hellman of the University of California, Berkeley, on novel superconducting materials; and USC’s Grace Lu on nanowires, to name a few. A PhD student has been invited to talk about applying to graduate school, and some participants will present their own work. This year the conference features an expanded panel with women from industry, national labs, and other careers outside of academia.

The organizing committee swelled from just Cassidy and Mussack to a total of four graduate students, a post-doc, and three undergraduates. The team won an $8000 grant from NSF and got $13 000 from USC to help cover such costs as travel, room, and board for invited speakers and participants.

Although most of this year’s attendees hail from southern California, a total of 26 universities in six US states plus Canada and the UK are represented. Seed groups from Yale University and the University of Michigan are coming to learn how they might hold similar conferences in their regions. “It’s difficult to be a woman in physics,” says Kate Green, one of seven Michigan undergraduates involved in starting a midwestern conference based on the one at USC. “I would hope to promote networking and camaraderie with this kind of conference.”

It’s best for these conferences to be local, Cassidy says. “We want to have as few barriers to attendance as possible. We’re not just targeting the ones who already plan to go to graduate school. We want to get the student who is on the fence.”