This document summarizes Flip Tanedo's presentation on equity as an early career academic. Tanedo discusses their experience on the tenure track and lessons learned. As a student, the focus is individual survival and support, but as a faculty member the goals shift to lifting others, changing institutions, and stewarding disciplines through mentoring and persistence. Achieving equity requires understanding incentives and compensating equity work. Building trust in institutions is important but fragile, so efforts should reaffirm shared values.

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Equity as an Early Career Academic
Flip Tanedo
April 9, 2022
APS April Meeting
Personal lessons from the tenure track

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Lessons on the Tenure Track
Based on my personal experience: your mileage may vary
Many thanks to APS IDEA network, patient colleagues, and most importantly: amazing mentors and role models.
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Student Tenure track

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How equity intersects with profession
Transition from individual marginalization to institutional responsibility
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Student Tenure track
Survival
Lift While You Climb
Change the Institution
Survival
Lift While You Climb
Change the Institution

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How equity intersects with profession
Transition from individual marginalization to institutional responsibility
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Student Tenure track
Survival
Lift While You Climb
Change the Institution
Survival
Lift While You Climb
Change the Institution
Stewardship of discipline as “insider”
persistence tenure
mentoring

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Impetus and Mechanism for Change
Images from deviantart.com/hansungkee and ipmgroupuk.com
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Easy: stop individual bad people, stop bad actions

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Impetus and Mechanism for Change
Cover designer Peter Mendelsund, Schocken edition; Wikipedia 4/8/22
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Hard: how to evolve a community (sense-making)
The Castle is about alienation, unresponsive bureaucracy, […] non-
transparent, seemingly arbitrary controlling systems, and the futile
pursuit of an unobtainable goal.
It is challenging to tackle abstract obstacles,
or even to identify them.
It is dangerous to con
fl
ate abstract obstacles
with individual villains.
“More is Different” applied to institutions
c.f.. P. Anderson “More is Different,” Science 1972

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Helen Quinn (paraphrased)
Physics is hard.
It is harder if you are a
woman, if your skin is
brown, if you are gay, if
you do not identify
with the other
physicists around you.
Example, Part 1

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A common response
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Where do Maxwell’s equations depend on the color of your skin?
Why should growing up poor affect your ability to calculate an amplitude?
“
… but physics doesn’t care about
your race, gender, sexual
orientation, socioeconomic status,
politics …
Example, part 2:
[ Comment: Maybe we spend too much time arguing whether social science is ‘science'
instead of recognizing that science is social. ]

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What is your job?
Are you being paid for it?
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Student Tenure track
Survival
Lift While You Climb
Change the Institution
Survival
Lift While You Climb
Change the Institution
Do research, maybe teach
Is this credited as service?
“research / service / teaching”

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What is your job?
Are you being paid for it?
See Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, “(Academic) Housework: The Engine of Science (& Society),” medium.com 2016 or
The Disordered Cosmos, chapter 10: “Wages for Scienti
fi
c Housework”
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“With great power,
comes great responsibility”
Often repeated in Spider-Man movies
Image: Spider-Man (2002)
Belief: as a faculty member, you have
more power to make things better.
… “wait until you’re faculty”
… “now that you’re faculty,
fi
x all this”
Better: get paid (quanti
fi
ed credit), make
sure others get paid, and understand
institutional incentives.
Equity work is work, normalize that it is
rewarded and valued.

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Incentives
Carrots for individuals and institutions
nsf.gov/od/oia/special/broaderimpacts
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As you make sure you are compensated for your equity labor, consider:
What motivates others and your institution to contribute?
(usually money)
What prevents them from contributing? (usually time)
NSF values the advancement of scienti
fi
c knowledge and activities that contribute to the
achievement of societally relevant outcomes. Such outcomes include, but are not limited
to: full participation of women, persons with disabilities, and underrepresented
minorities in STEM; …

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Time scales
Just as physics is different at different scales…
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Student
Faculty
Roughly proportional scaling for the timescale over which change
e
ff
orts are (1) relevant and (2) achievable.
Permanent positions give the opportunity for long-term change.
Do not stop short-term efforts, but be aware how they intersect.
~5yrs
~40 yrs

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First and Second Order Change
Values at the core of institutional change
See, e.g. Adrianna Kezar, How Colleges Change
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Where we’re going
Where we are now
Our efforts
Our values
“sense making”

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First and Second Order Change
Values at the core of institutional change
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Making the right decision
Trust that communal decision-making
structures will make the right decision
See, e.g. Adrianna Kezar, How Colleges Change

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First and Second Order Change
Values at the core of institutional change
See, e.g. Adrianna Kezar, How Colleges Change
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Assumptions
If faculty ‘have power,’ why aren’t things better?
… Willful neglect? Resignation to status quo?
Or: institution ∋ decent people who are overwhelmed

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Institutional trust as an unstable fixed point
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> >> >>>
<
<<
<<<
0
trust
Polarization
Distrust leads to negative experiences,
which creates further distrust
progress
trust leads to positive experiences,
which cultivates further trust
Perceived responses affect future dynamics

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Watching Things Fail
Painful, but important lessons (growth mindset)
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Student Tenure track
Survival
Lift While You Climb
Change the Institution
Survival
Lift While You Climb
Change the Institution

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An ongoing case study based on personal experiences
Goal: focus on lessons from a narrative, not the speci
fi
c narrative
• Graduate students
• Department faculty
• College-level equity o
ffi
cers
This explicit narrative and understanding of recent history are my own and re
fl
ect my own blind spots.
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Partialcast
Groups are not homogeneous in belief, though easy to talk about
other groups as if they are. Perception of bad faith can create distrust,
making it more likely to perceive bad faith in the future…

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Attempt at a “second order” intervention
Inspired by our participation in the APS IDEA network
APS Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Alliance: aps.org/programs/innovation/fund/idea.cfm
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• Small group of faculty, postdocs, grad student + DEI administrator
Missing: undergraduates, department sta
f
• Goal: fortify communication between faculty/students to build trust
• Codify existing shared values
Communication for trust-building

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Attempt at a “second order” intervention
Inspired by our participation in the APS IDEA network
APS Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Alliance: aps.org/programs/innovation/fund/idea.cfm
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• Recent e
ff
orts from department for better communication
(e.g. communication platforms, new town hall events)
• COVID19, nothing is normal
(Is it “just the pandemic”? Is there anything that can be done?)
Communication for trust-building
Initialcondition

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Attempt at a “second order” intervention
Inspired by our participation in the APS IDEA network
APS Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Alliance: aps.org/programs/innovation/fund/idea.cfm
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• Who has time for this? (Incentive structure?)
• Distrust of outsider/insider intent
• Skepticism of creating lasting change (Fall back to ground state?)
Communication for trust-building
challenges

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Our Driver Diagram
Our approach to sense-making and aligning efforts with values
Presented to our APS IDEA Online Learning Community
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Develop
Community
“Inclusive
Excellence”
Build Trust
More effective
Communication
Shared
Information
Informal
communications
Shared Values
Code of
Conduct
Anti-Town Halls
Broader Impacts
Package
Evolve Norms
Align inclusive &
physics objectives
AIM PRIMARYDRIVERS SECONDARYDRIVERS PROJECTS

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“Anti-Town Hall” events
Small, personal, off-the-record discussions in good faith
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Large meetings are useful for sharing information, but are not conducive
for fully engaged discussion and good-faith debate. [e.g. Zoom faculty meetings]
Sponsor informal (but targeted) chats at the campus pub between
department stakeholders to have those discussions.

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“Anti-Town Hall” events
Small, personal, off-the-record discussions in good faith
• Incentive: chance to be heard, hear “other side,” and have frank debate.
• Secondary incentive: free food, socialize
• Everything said is understood to be private, but group approves a list of
general value-based statements that we publicize.
• We end meetings with a pledge for future steps, however modest.
• Hope: informal dissemination of information can also heal cultural rifts
between groups. (e.g. squash rumors about perceived intent)
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Our APS IDEA team
sites.google.com/ucr.edu/aps-idea/
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Public-facing website, why?
Record of our e
ff
orts, credit for
our team members.
Codify the values and goals
within our group.
Control narrative of what we
are doing.

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Our APS IDEA team
sites.google.com/ucr.edu/aps-idea/
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Led by an executive board
(faculty + 2 grad students).
Not quite shared governance, more like
a republic than democracy… for now.
Internal website to organize
and save notes of all
meetings, links to resources.
Goal: preserve what we have learned
Internal organization

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Some take-away lessons
Early lessons from our IDEA group and sense-making
• Clearly articulated motivation matters more than “theory”
• Multiple motivations for a plurality of skeptics
• Needs to be based on your values right now
• Useful way to frame motivation: When does it end?
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Summary
What changes in equity work as you progress along the tenure track?
• No longer just individual(s) support, but curating a community
• Lasting changes target values, but timescales are long
• Need to work within incentive structures, get paid for your labor
• Institutional trust can be fragile, work to fortify it
• E
ff
ective solutions re
fl
ect the community’s existing values
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Thank you to the APS IDEA leadership, the UCR IDEA team (esp. Bryan Scott and Liz
Finney), grad diversity and climate committees, POWUR, and all of my mentors and allies