We present the design and implementation of the Transfer Experience Mentoring Program (TEMPO) at Michigan State University (MSU), which launched in the Fall of 2023. TEMPO is designed to support transfer students through the transition between community colleges and MSU. At the national scale, students who first enroll at community colleges are historically undersupported, especially through the transition into the bachelor’s granting institution. TEMPO utilizes resources from MSU to support a student’s transition from their final semester of community college and into their first semester at MSU. TEMPO is supported by campus partners at MSU , and financially from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Inclusive Excellence 3 project. In this presentation we will share how TEMPO represents a method of bridging the transfer transition gap between community college and a bachelor’s granting university using peer mentoring, mentor training and resources sharing, and community building activities.

This investigation compares the physics departments at three institutions using interview data from undergraduate women in physics. Using synergistic frameworks such as Standpoint Theory, Domains of Power, and the Holistic Ecosystem for Learning Physics in an Inclusive and Equitable Environment (HELPIEE), we analyze how those in the position of power, e.g., instructors, can play important roles in establishing and maintaining safe, equitable, and inclusive environments for students. This is especially important for historically marginalized students such as women and ethnic and racial minority students in physics. The three studies include Johnson's 2020 study using Domains of Power to investigate physics identity of students and faculty at a small predominantly White liberal arts college. The next study is Santana and Singh's 2023 study which utilized Standpoint Theory to understand the experiences of undergraduate women at a large predominantly White research institution and revealed a masculine physics culture. The third study is Santana and Singh's 2024 study which combined Standpoint Theory, Domains of Power, and HELPIEE frameworks to investigate undergraduate women's experiences at a small predominantly White private liberal arts college. This comparison is useful to understand the positive or negative qualities within these three departments which can help build a model for other departments to strive for.

We conducted semi-structured, empathetic interviews to understand their experiences in their undergraduate and graduate programs and how they navigate the physics departments at predominantly white institutions (PWI). The interviews serve as counter stories, which is a central tenet of Critical Race Theory. We use this framework to examine how racial identities play a role in the obstacles faced by these women, including interactions with peers and faculty members. We focus on the experiences of a Black woman in physics, Linda, to understand how her marginalized identities affected her experiences in physics during her undergraduate and graduate programs.

Although some progress has been made over the last 50 years, physics still has one of the largest gender gaps of the sciences. The gap has been attributed to a variety of causes, including aspects of culture, early exposure to STEM, and gender-based psychologies, but few studies approach this issue centering the perspectives and experiences of women in physics. We focus on the role of family to understand the engagement and success of undergraduate women in physics. The poster presents our qualitative analysis of 120 surveys and 31 interviews of undergraduate physics students (92% identifying as female). We relate our findings to recent established STEM- and physics identity frameworks (including Carlone & Johnson and Hazari), and introduce new aspects emerging from our data.

For years, the relationship between teachers and students has not evolved but stayed static. Teachers are seen as law-imposers and as the unique source of information, which is given to the students in a hurried and fast-paced way. Students sit, listen, and heave the previously heard information on a piece of paper during the exam. This buries the true and genuine spirit of education, which should be conducted with curiosity, motivation and their own interests in mind. In this poster, the new role of the teacher will be assessed, seen as a guide and a curiosity generator.

Knowing this, and with the help of the MIT Edgerton Center, in Barcelona we’ve proposed a change. We started teaching our students based on hands-on projects and the implementation of team work, soft skills and analysis. Students focus all their effort into memorising concepts instead of understanding them and comprehending the consequences they have in the material world. Besides, students are not only allowed to fail, but also encouraged to do it. Failure is seen as another path towards learning, another tool for the student to grow and engage with their own education. 

When students describe physics, they often associate this science with facts, formulae, and objectivity. In our research, we asked students to reflect on how their own experiences influence their sense of the nature of physics. We analyzed two year college students’ written reflections from introductory physics courses. Students described their own familial, cultural, and professional backgrounds, as well as their instructors’ identities and teaching methods, as impacting their perspective of subjectivity and objectivity in physics. Although culture is often ignored in STEM classes, the students can benefit from recognizing the interplay between personal and societal structures within physics learning and practice. By making space in class to compare and contrast physics culture with students’ own experiences, we hope to show students that their individual background is key to shaping their learning and improving the often inequitable field of physics.

In this study, we adapted gradational measures from prior studies to investigate students’ self-identified femininity, masculinity, and androgyny as well as their reflected appraisal of femininity, masculinity, and androgyny (i.e., perceptions of how others perceive them) in introductory physics courses. Our results show that the use of gradational measures revealed significant variation in students' self-identified femininity, masculinity, and androgyny within the binary categories of women and men and provided new insights of gender dynamics in physics. In particular, we found that many students in introductory physics courses perceive themselves as more masculine than how they think other people perceive them and self-identified women and students of color are more likely than self-identified men and White students to hold this perception. Using logistic regression and structural equation modeling, we found that students’ gender stigma consciousness plays an important role in mediating the effects of identifying as women and students of color on the discrepancies between their self-identified and reflected appraisal of masculinity. Our findings underscore the potential of gradational gender measurements in deepening our understanding of gender related issues in physics education, shedding light on the complex interplay between students' gender identity, perceptions from others, and their educational experiences in the field.