Bringing the welcome home: One section's efforts at incorporating AAPT's diversity and inclusion practices

TL;DR

This paper examines how a physics section has adopted national diversity and inclusion practices at the local level, sharing their progress and providing a guide for other sections to enhance inclusivity.

Contribution

It presents a case study of local implementation of national diversity practices and offers a guide to help other sections adopt similar efforts.

Findings

Local section adopted several national diversity practices.

Survey results indicated a need for a leadership guide.

Progress was made in making meetings more inclusive.

Abstract

While AAPT and many other physics organizations have been introducing a series of effective practices around diversity and inclusion at the national level in recent years, it was wondered if these were being adopted at the local level. It is hoped that section members and Section Representatives will decide to further expand the actions of national leadership to make their own section meeting more inclusive. In order to assess if this was in fact the case, a survey on diversity practices that have been used the the national level and can be implemented at the section level was sent to AAPT's Section Reps mailing list in the spring of 2018, with a follow-up survey in winter 2020. Feedback in both cycles suggested that a guide for section leadership would be useful. The Northern California/Nevada section has made progress in implementing some of the effective practices from the national meetings into our local section meetings, we share these efforts in the hope that they assist our fellow sections.