There is a severe shortage of Black scientists in the United States. Amid the recent national movement to dismantle systemic racism and racial injustices, many scientists publicly highlighted the prevalence of racist learning environments in STEM, contributing to the underrepresentation of Black students in STEM fields. Acknowledging this…

The Academic WorkForce Survey has been conducted every two years since 1986. Between March and June 2018, researchers contacted 797 physics and astronomy departments (including 39 astronomy-only departments) that award a bachelor's degree or higher in physics or astronomy. Responses were received from 720 institutions, a 90% response rate. This…

In any academic department, faculty members retire or leave for a variety of reasons, and new faculty members are hired to replace departing faculty or fill newly created positions. This report focuses on departures, retirements, recruitments, and new hires in physics and astronomy departments. In our Academic Workforce Surveys, we collect the…

As we near the close of another academic year, we highlight departments in the United States that consistently award more physics bachelor's degrees than other similar departments. We categorize departments by the highest physics degree they award. Typically, departments that award a doctorate have more faculty members and more students; thus, one…

Background: The continuation of teacher preparation activities after a 3-year Physics Teacher Education Coalition (PhysTEC) grant is used as a case study to examine multi-faceted aspects of sustainable change in higher education. Since teacher preparation is outside typical physics departmental activities, success is highly dependent on finding a…

Women and some racial and ethnic groups remain underrepresented in chemistry departments across the United States, and generally, efforts to improve representation have resulted in minimal or no improvements in the last 10 years. Here, we present the outcomes of a graduate-student-led initiative that sought to assess the issues affecting…

This report provides data on the size of degree-granting physics and astronomy departments by examining the number of bachelor's degrees awarded and the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) faculty members employed. The benchmarking data in this report is intended to allow physics and astronomy departments to see how they fit in the national…

There is a significant clustering of African-American physics faculty members at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Almost half (47%) of African-American physics faculty members are employed by physics departments at HBCUs. Physics departments at 30 HBCUs award degrees in physics; this accounts for about 4% (30 out of 746) of…

It was a pleasant surprise to see Gary White's call for papers on race and physics teaching. We definitely think that the physics teaching and learning of students from diverse and minority backgrounds is an important issue to discuss, especially given the fact that bias and discrimination are common experiences in the lives of many Latinx,…

Nowadays, the rapid spread of the interdisciplinary approach contributes to the development of disciplines and scientific developments in many ways. Therefore, how the interdisciplinary approach is addressed in the studies carried out is important in terms of guiding other studies. For this purpose, an attempt to determine how 155 doctorate theses…

Polymers are part of our lives; scientists dedicated to polymer science design new materials thinking about more eco-friendly methodologies and satisfying people's needs. In most universities, polymer science is taught by academics associated with the traditional chemistry departments (organic, analytical, physical, and inorganic chemistry). In…

In this article, we have considered the role of the chair in leading the learning necessary for a department to become effective in the teaching and learning of science from a reformed perspective. We conceptualize the phrase "leading learning" to mean the chair's constitution of influence, power, and authority to intentionally impact…

While there is a wealth of research evidencing the benefits of active-learning approaches, the extent to which these teaching practices are adopted in the sciences is not well known. The aim of this study is to establish an evidential baseline of teaching practices across a bachelor of science degree program at a large research-intensive…

In this article, Brian Coppola begins with the single key concept of Boyer, in "Scholarship Reconsidered." The statement appears as follows: "We believe the time has come to move beyond the tired old "teaching versus research" debate and give the familiar and honorable term "scholarship" a broader, more capacious…

Women's representation in physics lags behind most other STEM disciplines. Currently, women make up about 13% of faculty members in all physics degree-granting departments, and there are physics departments with no women faculty members at all. These two data points are often cited as evidence of a lack of equity for women. In this article,…