We too inspiration from Project Biodiversify, and their input google form:
From Project Biodiversify:
Here is the history of my correspondances with the department, asking for input to this project:
Initial test-phase: reaching out to a few professors
Hello Professors,
I hope you're all doing well and enjoying the beautiful summer term!
I'm writing to you because I am a recent undergraduate turned graduate working on a project to help better our department, and I am hoping you might be able to help.
Our goal is to create a set of resources for teachers to use in order to facilitate a more diverse representation of physicists in teaching. As I'm sure you know, most scientists currently featured in textbooks and classroom settings do not represent the demographics of our modern-day physics community, and we would like to take some steps to change that!
We envision this resource as a deck of slides featuring high-impact research from contemporary and underrepresented historical physicists, which relate to teachable physics concepts in McGill classes and can be inserted into teaching slides with ease.
I have already started creating these slides, but I think the best and most relevant ideas will come from people working directly in the related fields (i.e. you!) and so I would like to solicit some input, if you have a moment. This is an endeavour of science communication, which is best done by people who understand the concepts at a high level, the crux of why I am choosing to reach out. I hope to eventually get input from the entire department, but I would like to test-run this with a few professors to start with.
Attached below is a prototype google form that I am using to solicit input. Filling it out involves recommending a physicist and their research to feature in this slide deck, and will take about 10 minutes of you time at a minimum. There is the option to provide more detailed information about the research in order to create the most relevant and detailed slides possible, which could take an additional 15 minutes depending on the level of depth you wish to go into, including an option to submit figures relevant to the research. I will use this information to create slides, and will send them back to you for final revision.
Please let me know if you are interested in participating! I greatly appreciate any input, but also understand that this requires some extra time in a busy term.
Sincerely,
Katie Savard
- Tami
- Martin Grant
- Sankey
- Brunner
- Eve
- Adrian
- Daryl
- Nicolas Cowan
Number of responses: 14 (still waiting on martin)
Jack said:
Hello Professors,
Thank you all so much for your participation! I am blown away with the number of responses, and the extremely helpful level of detail provided by many of you. It makes me happy to see your enthusiasm to promote excellent researchers in this context.
The process of creating these slides is a bit time-consuming at the moment (I'm just getting the hang of it), so it might be a week or two before I have versions of the slides you helped create to share with you for final revisions. I shall keep you posted.
If you had any trouble using the google form, or have any feedback on the structure or ease-of-use of the form, please don't hesitate to let me know. This project is in it's beginning stages and I value any type of feedback to improve the process.
Note: I have added a third option in the question titled
"Would you be willing to provide more information on this researcher's expertise, in order to create more tailored slides?"
which allows you to respond:
"I want to be involved in making the slides, but I don't have the time to make them myself. I am happy to review and tailor slides once they are made, or field questions about this researcher's expertise."
Which allows you to opt-out of providing more information immediately, but lets me know that you are happy to help review and field questions at a later time. I have also allowed edits after submission.
Thanks again for the engagement! I will leave the form open for responses for the time being if anyone wants to contribute again.
Best,
Katie
Hello all,
A few of your colleagues and I are currently working on a project to help better our department, and we are hoping you might be able to help!
Our goal is to create a set of resources for teachers to use in order to facilitate a more diverse representation of physicists in teaching. As I'm sure you know, most scientists currently featured in textbooks and classroom settings do not represent the demographics of our modern-day physics community, and we would like to take some steps to change that!
We envision this resource as a deck of slides featuring high-impact research from contemporary and underrepresented historical physicists, which relate to teachable physics concepts in McGill classes and can be inserted into teaching slides with ease.
The most relevant ideas will come from people working directly in the related fields (i.e. you!), and we would love to feature scientists that you are inspired by.
Attached below is a google form that we are using to solicit input. Filling it out involves recommending a physicist and their research to feature in this slide deck, and will take about 10 minutes of you time at a minimum. There is the option to provide more detailed information about an aspect of their research in order to create the most relevant and detailed slides possible, which could take an additional 15 minutes depending on the level of depth you wish to go into, including an option to submit figures relevant to the research. You can provide as much or as little information as possible when recommending a physicist, and choose weather or not you want to be involved in the curation of the slides.
Thank you in advance for your participation! I greatly appreciate it.
Please let me know if you have any feedback or questions.
Sincerely,
Katie Savard