The UW–Madison Department of Physics Climate & Diversity Committee (the Committee) conducted a department-wide climate survey from December 2021 through January 2022. In particular, the Committee sought to identify and understand the department’s strengths and weaknesses with respect to its overall climate, departmental support mechanisms, how harassment and exclusionary behavior are dealt with, and how it is handling the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
In this report, we provide an executive summary, overview of departmental demographics, description of the survey process, an abridged summary of the survey results, and a series of recommendations and next steps.
We hope that these recommendations will be a starting point upon which conversations can begin and other initiatives can be built, and moreover we strongly believe that by working to improve the experiences of groups that disproportionately and consistently report a more negative climate within the department, we will indeed improve the climate for everyone.
Climate & Diversity Committee: Tulika Bose (Chair), Elizabeth Baldridge, Mallory Conlon, Aedan Gardill, Sharon Kahn, Shimon Kolkowitz, Lu Lu, Moritz Münchmeyer, Abigail Shearrow, and Michael Weaver.