It takes an even number of protons and electrons to produce a balance, and the Cal Poly physics department is working to create a better balance of men and women in both faculty and students.
Having more diversity in the department would create more ideas and better science, according to assistant professor of physics Katharina Gillen. The goal would be to have an equal amount of men and women majoring in physics.
The national average of women majoring in physics is approximately 21 percent. So with only 15 percent women students in the department, there is still work to be done, Gillen said.
“I think any department can only benefit from diversity,” Gillen said. “There’s so few women, it can be hard to find each other. There is a different feel to classes.”
The national average of female faculty in physics departments is approximately 12 percent. At Cal Poly, however, the physics department tried to even out the gender ratios by hiring more women. The faculty is now 25 percent female.
With more women faculty members, female students have more role models, Gillen said. By having more women to look up to in their department, the female students are encouraged to stick with the major.
The department was not always as diverse, though.
When physics department chair Nilgun Sungar was hired in 1989, she was the only female faculty member.
“The climate was not as welcoming,” Sungar said. “I would bring in my child to work and get odd looks in the beginning.”
Some female physicists feel an unconscious bias against women in science, Sungar said.
“Everything you say is attributed to gender,” Sungar said.
In other parts of the world, women are not as underrepresented in the sciences as they are here in the U.S. In Sungar’s native country of Turkey, women represent approximately 40 percent of the physicists, Sungar said. In Europe, the overall number is 30 to 40 percent women in physics.
“I never thought physics was for men until I came to the United States,” Sungar said.
Some women are discouraged from going into the physics major because there are not many female role models for female students to look up to, Sungar said.
There are about 2 to 3 women in a class, physics senior Kelsi Flatland said. Flatland said she is used to being in the minority of female students in physics, and when some of her GE classes had a majority of women, it felt different.
“It’s weird being in a class full of girls,” she said.
The gender imbalance discourages some women from studying physics, Sungar said.
“It is hard to be in a class full of men and feel included,” she said.
She also said the media puts pressure on women to study other subjects.
“There is a perception that physics is difficult,” Sungar said
For female physics students who wish to get involved, Cal Poly has a Women in Physics Club. The club encourages female physics students by having events that help them meet each other, Sungar said. It creates a community for the women that helps them to succeed. It helps to keep the female students from changing majors, she said. Those who don’t get involved are the ones that the department loses the most.
While it is difficult for the department to recruit directly because the admissions office deals with that, it has been doing its best, Sungar said. The physics department tries to call all prospective students who have been admitted to Cal Poly. The Women in Physics Club is also present at Open House every year. There are plans to update the website to better appeal to women and minorities.
“I would like to see more of a balance between genders in Cal Poly physics,” Gillen said.
This article was written by Rachel Scott.