SCIENCE science.org
Undeterred—or perhaps driven—by their
experiences at UM, both Ramson and Nash
have spent years working to increase diver-
sity in physics. Ramson co-directs Fermilab’s
long-running Saturday morning physics
program for Chicago-area students and is a
member of Change-Now, a collective of young
Black physicists who are pushing Fermilab,
the Department of Energy’s leading high en-
ergy physics facility, to improve equity and
social justice within the profession and in
the community. Nash is involved in several
programs to attract more women and people
of color into science. For example, she has
helped her university participate in a na-
tional program sponsored by the American
Physical Society that finds spots for qualified
students from underrepresented groups who
have been passed over by other graduate
physics programs.UM’S AP PROGRAM has continued to evolve.
Cagliyan Kurdak, a Turkish-born physi-
cist who joined the department in 1998
and became the program’s director in 2010,
added a component for students who need
to strengthen their academic background
before diving into a doctoral program. Stu-
dents from groups underrepresented in sci-
ence receive 2 years of funding while they
earn a master’s degree, and over the years
two-thirds have transitioned into a doctoral
program, where their 80% completion rate
is more than 20 percentage points higher
than the national average. But Kurdak and
his team can’t rest on their laurels. “Creating
conditions to support access and inclusion is
not a one-time event, but an ongoing strug-
gle,” Posselt wrote in her 2017 study.
Posselt flagged two recurring challenges.
One is what she calls the “negative racial
climate” for many students of color at UM,
a predominantly white institution. Those
whom Posselt interviewed also spoke about
a “negative feedback loop, in which poor rep-
resentation of women and students of color
raises red flags for prospective students ...
and deters them from matriculating.”
Posselt says the UM AP program has re-
placed those red flags with a welcome sign
through its “commitment to diversity.” Its
interdisciplinary approach to science, flexible
admissions criteria, and family atmosphere
are baked into the AP program, agrees Sutton,
who went to the White House as Clarke’s
guest when, in 2010, Clarke received the
Presidential Award for Excellence in Science,
Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring.
“They just care so much about people,”
says Sutton, now a recruiter for Thermo
Fisher Scientific in Atlanta, about his former
colleagues. “And in the end, that is what has
made them so successful. I hope the program
lasts forever.” jBy putting students first,
University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, physicist Roy Clarke
achieved unprecedented
diversity in the applied
physics graduate program
he created.4 MARCH 2022 • VOL 375 ISSUE 6584 969