Dear Physics Community,
As June ends, I feel like most people have stepped back a little and begun prioritizing things for themselves and their families. I believe we have entered a “recovery” phase of the pandemic. COVID-19 remains with us – the US records about 300 deaths daily, and I hear of a steady stream of friends and colleagues who fall ill. These rates have become normalized. I feel way, way into uncharted territory. We have suffered six years of once-in-a-generation calamities but have kept going about, sometimes finding joy in various ways.
To me, the recent Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade lies only second to the pandemic as one of the calamities. I do not have a word for it. I want to write, “It will be okay,” but I can’t because I don’t know it will. Not knowing what to say has also become normalized, and I can only acknowledge the pain many of us feel about the ruling. As a trusted colleague said, “It’s hard just to get up and go to work as though nothing happened.”
The start of July brings the new fiscal year. The Department made several recent requests for this year’s budget based on community input and existing and previous suggestions from across the Department. New things we can fund this year are:
- A Department community officer to support our student groups, graduate advising, DEI activities, and other things. PVC and the Department produced a short document describing the position, and we will now work with HR to get it posted.
- Continued funding for the Mentoring program started two years ago by Ed Bertschinger with Kerstin Perez, Erin Kara, Peter Dourmashkin, and others. This program supports our undergraduates in our first and second-year subjects.
- Initial support for the Basic Service, the Departmental computing plan committed to bringing access to high-performance computing across the Department.
- A Staff Development Fund that supports our staff in community events and professional development.
- Bridge support for MKI and LNS for pandemic-related delays in projects and other funding shortfalls.
- More funds to support student travel for research and to present papers at conferences.
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A poster printer (though we need to figure out where it will go)
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Additional resources for Junior Lab and our Tech Services group, with the goal of enhancing the teaching experiences of our students.
We have always supported our student and post-doc groups, which will continue. The Department continues robust hiring with four faculty offers this year and a good yield for our incoming graduate class.
I have had a hard time writing this and hesitated for several days: with some much bad news, writing about good news provides a challenge, but these messages serve to report what happens.
I hope everyone continues to have a restorative summer.
Peter
Above the Fold
- Message about events surrounding the Supreme Court ruling here
Physics
- The predicted coincidence between fast radio bursts and X-ray emission here
- Starlink: Elon Musk’s 2,200 Starlink satellites bringing low(wish) cost internet to the world could wreck astronomy and make a mess in low Earth orbit.
Announcements
- Lecturer position at Trinity University here