First I call on this year’s APS Fellow nominated by FPS, Professor Priscilla Stanton Auchincloss. She is currently Dean at the University of Rochester and Director of its program for Women in Science and Engineering (WISE), and a former Forum officer. Her Fellowship certificate citation reads:

"In recognition of her exemplary record of service to the APS and for her ongoing effective work to improve the climate for women physicists and to ensure gender equity".

Congratulations, Priscilla!

Next I want to introduce the 3 Burton Forum Awardees, George Lewis, David Wright and Lisbeth Gronlund, who are sharing the 2001 prize for their "creative and sustained leadership in building an international arms control physics community and for their own excellence in arms control physics". Their recent work was also prominently featured in the Dec 2000 Physics and Society issue, where they co-authored a well referenced and illustrated article entitled "The Continuing Debate on National Missile Defense"

They will each speak about 15 min as listed in the program, and each will have a 5 min Q&A, reserving general floor discussion to the end. (see full bios on the APS awards website)

This has been a very active and eventful year for me and the FPS, a year of change and growth.

By way of intro, my recent term as Chair elect and Chair was like coming home,: I first joined the FPS ExCom (and moved up to Program Chair) after my 1983-84 year as an APS Congressional Science Fellow, when I wanted to bring the skills and insights gained on the Hill to serve the FPS activist ideal and agenda… After a hiatus of 15 years, during which I served on various other professional societies committees (like AAAS COSEPP for 6 years, on POPA for a productive term that resulted in an energy paper and statements on EMF and helium) and on some Fellowship selection comm’s, I decided to return. Not surprisingly, I found the same old timers, a hardened bunch of idealists and activists still running the FPS because they care!

My chair-line term was compressed from a 3 years gradual crescendo to 2 years and became "a trial by fire" when Priscilla Auchincloss stepped down in mid-term as Chair elect and I had to take over the Program Chair last year and the Chair this year, ably assisted by a dedicated group of idealists who serve on the FPS ExCom (which stands for Executive Committee, not excommunicated physicists!). The ExCom works cooperatively and builds consensus: we communicate and consult via frequent e-mails on policy issues and session topics, speakers, etc quite often, openly, contentiously and productively…(but don’t get caught in the crossfire, though ExCom is a democracy!)

Here’s a brief report on some of FPS key accomplishments since last April:

This year I am proud of the fact that- as an exercise in democracy- I issued an e-mail calling for volunteers interested in serving on FPS Bylaws Committees and got a gratifying response. In addition, from respondents to the FPS questionnaire on the web, designed to gauge the range of members’ interests, yielded more names of interested volunteers. This pool of past and future candidates that will make the task of Nom Com and easier and provide us with a core of people interested in making the FPS more representative and serving broader based membership interests.

The Forum on Physics and Society has begun to redefine itself due to an interesting interplay among the Forum’s long-active leadership, its new generation of leaders, its traditional issues, and the myriad forces at play in the physics community. Two of these forces are worth noting: bachelors degree production in the US is below pre-Sputnik levels and there is a new APS Forum on the books — The Forum on Graduate Student Affairs (FGSA). I have been reflecting on these issues, particularly as they relate to the long-term health of physics, as well as to the future of FPS and our ability to continue impacting public policy debates.

The mission of FPS is to explore the intersection of physics and major physics-based societal issues, and to take action where appropriate through symposia, this newsletter, studies, and by educating and encouraging our membership about their role in society. Traditionally, FPS has focussed on arms control and energy because of the ongoing importance of these issues and because these are areas where our membership has had aggregate expertise and interest. These issues remain important and timely, particularly as the Bush administration begins its initiative for a layered national missile defense coupled to strategic arms reductions, and as the administration develops its energy policy. These issues are steeped in physics and FPS is well-positioned to have an impact on the scientific aspects of the policy debate. Yet, as the APS membership ages and as younger physicists seek new outlets for their concerns, FPS must explore whether its traditional agenda resonates with younger physicists. Are there other physics-and-society issues which the FPS should be pursuing so that the Forum remains both populated and relevant? Recognizing that FGSA will be, to a large extent, a pass-through organization, FPS has an opportunity to reach out to early-career physicists by addressing the connections between many of their professional concerns, the evolving role of physics in society, and the overall health of our field.

To understand how FPS can reach out effectively to younger APS members, we should start by recognizing that the basic social unit of the physics community is the physics department, and that in many ways the future of physics depends on actions taken at the departmental level. Furthermore, I suggest that we adhere to and promote the fundamental notion that society benefits from physics and physicists. Therefore, I propose that the Forum on Physics and Society expand its thinking about physics and society to include the following two inter-connected perspectives:

Physics and Society - The External Perspective, or how physics departments prepare physicists to have an impact in society. The education and professionalization of future physicists -- regardless of degree level -- are important to society in both quantitative terms (society needs more physicists) and qualitative terms (society would benefit from improvements in the education and professionalization). Currently, physics education largely ignores the intersection between physics and policy. Physicists generally are not exposed to techniques for applying their quantitative and problem-solving skills to policy issues such as risk, national defense, energy, and transportation. Plus, our educational culture typically does not expose students to important concerns such as professional ethics and integrity, social responsibility, and the role played by taxpayers in our fundamental professional well-being.

If we agree that these issues are critical, then FPS should encourage appropriate programmatic reforms at the departmental level. But that’s not all. FPS should embrace these ideas and encourage graduate students and early-career physicists to take leadership roles in defining the Forum’s agenda so that physics education becomes more student-centered and society-focussed. These are the sorts of pan-issue, nuts-and-bolts kinds of physics-and-society ideas that younger physicists might embrace as they prepare to enter the profession and before they have defined which specific issues light their fire.

Physics and Society - The Internal Perspective, or a look at our professional society and physics departments, and their relationship to students. The basic state of, and departmental culture surrounding, graduate student education is obviously a concern to grad students and others. Hence the emergence of FGSA. And FGSA is not simply a result of grad student self-interest. Our whole enterprise will suffer if future generations are disgruntled. Indeed, declining degree production indicates that students are voting with their feet. It would seem that physics ain't where it's at anymore. Why? Where's the disconnect? The physics profession has some very serious problems as indicated by our precipitous loss of market share on campus and our continuing inability to attract under-represented groups in a significant way. Perhaps these demographics reflect a perspective that physics is no longer relevant for meeting the career goals of students; or that physics is not doing enough to address the workforce and technical needs of industry; or that physics is no longer a player on the global policy front.

In understanding and addressing these suppositions and the overall health of our field, we may want to examine them and take action from the grad students' perspective. Doing so would extend discussions related to the relevance of physics to a dialogue on the education and treatment of grad students. As above, I suggest that the Forum actively engage these concerns and do so in a grad student-centered way. We should give grad students and early-career physicists the authority to take the lead on defining the issues and setting the agenda, and we should cultivate them as our future leaders. In many ways, the health of physics is as much in the hands of the next generation of physicists as it is in those of department chairs.

APS, physics departments, and FPS should candidly address their connections to undergraduate physics majors, to graduate students, and to early-career physicists, as well as to those who employ physicists or require the benefits of physicists’ expertise. If the Forum does so, then our ability to impact positively major societal issues will improve, as will the health of physics overall.