Back in 2020, the University of Virginia Astronomy Department jumped on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) bandwagon. Ashamed of its history of attracting so few Blacks and Hispanics, the Department formed a DEI committee to advance the goal of making the department more demographically diverse.
The committee quickly resolved to hire an outside expert to conduct a climate survey and help write a strategic plan. The Department scraped together $3,000 of its own funds and applied to the College of Arts & Sciences for another $3,000 to pay for an outside consultant.
“The changes to the admissions process should result in more applications from underrepresented students and should result in more equitable admissions offers,” stated the Committee’s application. “Changes to the department climate should result in better retention of URM (Under-Represented Minority) students, staff, and faculty.”
The Astronomy Department was a microcosm of the DEI fever that gripped UVA as a whole in 2020 in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing. The Astronomy Department’s earnest endeavors to advance racial justice were mirrored in dozens of other departments across the University.
The details described here, based on emails and documents The Jefferson Council obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, occurred four years ago, but they provide context for a climate survey underway at the College of Arts & Sciences. As documented by Bacon’s Rebellion and The Jefferson Council (“UVA Arts & Sciences to Conduct ‘Belonging’ Survey“), numerous departments have conducted climate surveys. To “ensure consistency and validity of survey instruments,” Arts & Sciences is undertaking a college-wide survey.
The grant application provides a glimpse into the significant time and energy consumed by DEI activities at the departmental level — efforts that are not captured in statistics regarding the size and scope of UVA’s formal DEI bureaucracy.
The driving force behind the DEI initiative was a recognition that Blacks and Hispanics are significantly underrepresented in the fields of astronomy and physics. One member of the DEI Committee (name redacted in the FOIA documents) framed the issue this way in an email to Professor Edward M. Murphy:
…physics and astronomy have long been disproportionately underrepresented by Black and Latinx and indigenous people. Based on the recent AIPTeamup report, while 13% and 16% of students enrolled in four-year colleges in the US are Black and Hispanic, the Black and Hispanic physics bachelor degree holders only account for 3% and 9%. And here at UVA Astronomy … the fact that we have not graduated any Black PhD holder in the history of the department also speaks volumes.
The DEI Committee established the following priorities:
- Department climate
- Education and training for department members
- Reviewing department policies and procedures
- Promoting equity in the curriculum
- Promoting mentoring and advising
Introductory astronomy courses are popular, generally enrolling between 800 to 1,000 students every semester. Those courses expose a large number of students to the field. The DEI Committee reasoned that improving the “climate” for minorities — essentially, making the department more welcoming — would make it easier to recruit and retain more Black and Hispanic students.
A critical first step was conducting a climate survey to get a sense of the department’s problem areas. DEI Committee members had no expertise in designing surveys or conducting climate interviews, therefore they deemed it necessary to hire an outside consultant. The Committee settled on Jamila Dozier, an equity and inclusion consultant with New Theory Consulting who would cost $6,000 for 42 hours of work.
The Department had limited financial resources and faced tough choices on what to fund. In an email to Murphy, then-chair of the astronomy department Craig Sarazin laid out the choices:
The College will announce a Rising Scholars post doc program sometime in the next week (unless further budget catastrophes ensue.) But, the program is completely underfunded. We are burning through all of our finance reserves this semester. So, do we want this, or to have a black post doc for 3 years?
Sarazin decided to allocate $2,000 in departmental funds and another $1,000 from the Heidi Winter Endowment gift account. “It is our hope,” he wrote in a letter accompanying the application, “that the [director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] will fund the second half of the proposal.”
However, in February 2021, the College’s DEI director Keisha John wrote Murphy, “We regret to inform you that we were unable to fund your project. … We wish you success with your work.” No explanation in the letter was given.
The FOIA documents obtained by The Jefferson Council do not reveal how the Astronomy Department responded to the disappointing news. However, four years later, the Department maintains a high-profile commitment to DEI. “We value the diversity of experience, identity, and beliefs among our colleagues, and recognize that this diversity fosters better scientific collaboration and a vibrant community,” states the Department’s website.
The DEI Committee is still active. It has nine members, including two faculty members, a postdoc, two graduate students, two undergrads, and two staff. Activities include “addressing concerns” about the climate in the Department; hosting “a few department meetings and discussions each semester” about DEI issues; reviewing department policies and procedures; hosting “additional conversations about diversity in our teaching and disparity in the classroom;” and improving “mentoring structures” in the department.
Astronomy is an intimidating major: a typical schedule requires between fifteen and twenty classes in calculus, advanced math, and physics. There is no acknowledgement in any of the Department’s written statements about the daunting challenge of recruiting minorities to the astronomy field given the paucity of minority students adept in advanced math, physics, and chemistry.
Two-thirds of UVA students come from Virginia. The number of Virginia public-school students of all races who have demonstrated a competence in math and science is dismally small. Across the Commonwealth fewer than three thousand students (2,960) scored “advanced” in their algebra II Standards of Learning (SOL) exams in the 2022-23 school year. Of those, only 143 of them were Black and 169 were Hispanic. Students gravitate toward courses and majors that play to their strengths, not their weaknesses. If they don’t achieve advanced scores in algebra II in high school, the odds of them flourishing in a calculus-intensive curriculum for astronomy majors are not good.
Similarly, only 215 students across Virginia scored advanced in chemistry, another scientific discipline that astronomy draws upon. Shockingly, a mere five were Black and twenty-one were Hispanic. (The Virginia Department of Education SOL database does not report pass rates for physics.)
Recruiting minority graduate students faces the same challenge: small numbers of Blacks and Hispanics coming through the academic pipeline.
To bolster the number of Black and Hispanic graduate students, the UVA Astronomy Department set up a UVA Bridge to the Doctorate Program in Astronomy. States the website: “The Bridge Program will support post-baccalaureate students from groups that are underrepresented in astronomy and astrophysics and who have not had sufficient training and research experiences to prepare them for admission to a doctoral program.”
The program provides $24,000 per year in living support and full payment of their tuition, fees, and student health insurance for two years. Participants engage in a combination of courses, supervised research, and “intensive graduate student professional development.”
The UVA Bridge web page contains an update, however: “**SEPTEMBER 2023: The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences has paused applications for the Bridge Program.” No explanation is provided.
To this day the UVA Astronomy Department remains as pallid as a “white dwarf” star. Of twenty-seven faculty and senior research staff only one is African-American — Aaron S. Evans, whose specialty is colliding galaxies. He has been a UVA professor since 2014, long before DEI became a priority. He was given a named professorship, the John Downman Hamilton Professor, in 2023. No faculty member has a recognizably Hispanic surname.
Of twenty-six visiting faculty, none are Black; two have recognizably Hispanic surnames.
Of seven staff, one administrative assistant is African-American. And of forty-nine graduate students, two are Black — one African and one African-American — and five have Hispanic given names or surnames.
Despite the best of intentions, the Astronomy Department has had marginal success in recruiting underrepresented minorities. Even if its efforts show greater luck in the future, it would achieve gains only by out-recruiting other STEM departments at UVA or other universities. It is beyond the Department’s power to boost the number of minorities capable of flourishing in the sciences. That change must occur in the K-12 education system, preferably starting in the early grades. Until such change occurs, it’s not evident what all the Department’s DEI activity can possibly accomplish.
James A. Bacon is contributing editor with The Jefferson Council.
