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Community

Outreach     Diversity     Social Life     Support Resources     Contacts     Trainings     |     Teaching Resources     Wellness Resources

Our Department

We study the Universe both to help solve the world’s problems and to open up new frontiers of understanding for humanity. Our enterprise is inherently global: we rely on the combined efforts of people from all over the world. It is also inherently open-minded: we embrace logical inquiry and empiricism, which unite us regardless of race, gender, sexuality, disability, and religious and political beliefs. We affirm the commitment of the department to maintaining a welcoming and protected space for science and thus for everyone who joins in our shared enterprise. This community page provides contact information for faculty, staff, and students who hold departmental positions that support this mission, as well as links to UNC resources ranging from confidential support to formal investigation of problems. We welcome input on further actions we can take to support all members of our department community and broaden access to the larger world of physics and astronomy. We also thank the many members of our department who engage daily in creating a welcoming community.

Activity tables led by the Lopez, Kannappan, and Oldenburg research groups at the UNC Science Expo exploring the optics of feathers and butterflies, making construction paper galaxies with glue and glitter, and conducting laser experiments in a box.

Outreach

Outreach is an important part of department life. The “Carolina Physics on the Road” demo show visits area schools and public events such as the annual UNC Science Expo, part of the North Carolina Science Festival. With support from the Stirling Foundation, the department hosts Science is Awesome Day in which hundreds of local fourth-graders from Title IX public schools visit for a day-long field trip supporting NC curricular standards Most Friday evenings, astronomers staff the Morehead Observatory Guest Night, offering fascinating presentations and an opportunity to look through the telescope. The online Skynet control system enables anyone to take an astronomical image using one of many remotely controlled telescopes linked into its worldwide education and research network. Graduate students from our department run the “Astronomy on Tap” and “Physics from the Ground Up” outreach series, which give students and faculty the chance to engage with the local community in an informal setting. Research groups, student groups, and individuals give outreach talks and host activity tables at schools, museums, and special events such as the department’s SHAPE symposium for high school physics teachers, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences “Astronomy Days”, and the Women and Math Program’s Marjorie Lee Browne Day. We also welcome visitors into our labs for tours and sometimes research experiences, through the Carolina ADMIRES program for high school students and two summer programs, a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) at TUNL and a Computational Astronomy and Physics Summer Boot Camp (CAP).

Climate

Creating a welcoming and inclusive environment for all is key to the mission of the department. Our community is culturally diverse, with students from all over the world and an international faculty representing North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Our faculty is over 25% female (40-50% at the assistant/associate professor level), representing significant recent improvement over the national norm. Nonetheless, like other physics departments, we still have work to do to ensure that our field fully represents Carolina’s broad community. We have committed to a sustained effort to remove barriers to success in our department, through self-education about best practices in admissions, hiring, mentoring, teaching, and review/promotion. After reforming our graduate admissions and mentoring, we were selected as an APS Bridge Program Partnership Institution in 2016, and this year we further modernized our graduate course and exam structure. At the undergraduate level, we are engaged in a continual effort to improve advising, webpages, and other forms of communication, to equalize access to opportunities, mentoring, and networking. Our student-led Grad-to-Undergrad Mentorship Program provides a mentoring structure with the goal of providing holistic support to underrepresented undergraduates in our department. Self-education is important to our continued improvement, and in recent years many of our faculty and students have been exposed to materials on unconscious bias, test anxiety, the impostor syndrome, and microaggressions. We have held department-wide workshops on sexual harassment and LGBTQ sensitivity; and nearly all members of the department are HAVEN trained, and many are also official Safe Zone allies.
Among other responsibilities, the Department Mentoring and Climate committee works to enable access to effective mentoring for all department community members, works with student groups like AM-WISE to conduct and respond to regular department climate surveys, and supports the implementation of best practices in the realm of faculty and staff hiring, mentoring, and review/promotion.

Social Life

The department social committee organizes three department-wide events: a welcome back picnic, holiday party, and spring pizza party. Additional social gatherings include special staff events, undergraduate club activities for Visibility in Physics at UNC and the Society of Physics Students, and graduate student outings including an annual trip to Kerr Lake. If you’re new to the department, please ask the Director of Undergraduate or Graduate Studies (as appropriate) and also staff in the main office to be added to all relevant department listservs so you’ll be in the loop about upcoming events. Also, reach out to the contacts below so we know to look out for you!

Faculty, staff, grad and undergrad students dressed in Hawaiian leis for the winter party and wacky costumes for Halloween. Watch out for Duane Deardorff juggling on stilts!

Support Resources

Contacts

Mentoring and Climate Committee Members
Outreach Committee Members
Additional Contacts

Physics and Astronomy Undergraduate Academic Advising (scroll to bottom of page)
Physics and Astronomy Graduate Student Association (e.g., President, Social Officers)

Note regarding confidentiality: University faculty are required to report certain violations (e.g., Title IX) if they become aware of them. If you wish to discuss a concern confidentially and are not ready to report it officially, please ask the person you are approaching what they can keep in confidence.You can find a list of confidential resources at https://eoc.unc.edu/resources/helpful-links/.

Trainings

Many members of our department have taken trainings to help them provide support and resources related to different topics. All of these people are willing to serve as allies. For faculty and staff allies, please see the contact information listed below. For student allies, please contact Maggie Jensen (listed below) who maintains a database of their trainings and contact information.

Name Training(s) Preferred Contact
Daniel Ayangeakaa Haven, Mental Health First Aid ayangeak@unc.edu
Gökçe Basar Haven gbasar@email.unc.edu
Tamara Branca Safe Zone, Haven, Mental Health First Aid rtbranca@unc.edu
Shane Brogan Green Zone, Mental Health First Aid, Safe Zone brogshan@physics.unc.edu
Gerald Cecil Green Zone, Haven cecil@physics.unc.edu
Art Champagne Haven artc@physics.unc.edu
Duane Deardorff * Haven, Safe Zone, Mental Health First Aid duane.deardorff@unc.edu 
Louise Dolan Haven ldolan@physics.unc.edu
Joaquin Drut * Haven drut@email.unc.edu
Gina Elmore Mental Health First Aid gelmore@email.unc.edu
Jon Engel * Haven, Mental Health First Aid engelj@physics.unc.edu
Adrienne Erickcek * Haven, Safe Zone, Mental Health First Aid erickcek@physics.unc.edu
Mike Falvo Haven falvo@physics.unc.edu
Julieta Gruszko * Haven, Safe Zone, Mental Health First Aid jgruszko@unc.edu
Fabian Heitsch * Green Zone, Haven, Mental Health First Aid, Safe Zone fheitsch@unc.edu
Reyco Henning Haven, Mental Health First Aid rhenning@unc.edu
Patina Herring Mental Health First Aid paherrin@live.unc.edu
David Hill Haven david_b_hill@med.unc.edu
Christian Iliadis * Haven iliadis@physics.unc.edu
Robert Janssens Haven rvfj@email.unc.edu
Stefan Jeglinski * Haven jeglin@physics.unc.edu
Maggie Jensen Carolina Firsts, GreenZone, Haven, Mental Health First Aid, Safe Zone, UndocuCarolina mejensen@email.unc.edu, 919-962-7173
Sheila Kannappan * Haven, Mental Health First Aid, Safe Zone sheila@physics.unc.edu
Dmitri Khveshchenko Haven khvesh@email.unc.edu
Rene Lopez Haven rln@email.unc.edu
Andrew Mann * Haven, Safe Zone awmann@unc.edu
Laurie McNeil Haven, Mental Health First Aid, Safe Zone mcneil@physics.unc.edu
Jack Ng Haven yjng@physics.unc.edu
Amy Nicholson * Haven, Safe Zone, Mental Health First Aid annichol@email.unc.edu
Nicolas Pegard * Haven pegard@unc.edu
Rich Superfine Haven, Safe Zone rsuper@physics.unc.edu
Frank Tsui * Haven ftsui@physics.unc.edu
Colin Wallace Haven, Mental Health First Aid cswphys@email.unc.edu
Jen Weinberg-Wolf * Carolina Firsts, Green Zone, Haven, Mental Health First Aid, Safe Zone, UnDocuCarolina jweinber@physics.unc.edu
John Wilkerson * Haven, Mental Health First Aid jfw@unc.edu
Tiffany Woodall Mental Health First Aid tiffw@unc.edu
Yue Wu * Haven yuewu@email.unc.edu
Dan Young Haven dyoung4@email.unc.edu
Otto Zhou * Haven zhou@email.unc.edu

Safety & community

We study the Universe both to help solve the world’s problems and to open up new frontiers of understanding for humanity. Our enterprise is inherently global: we rely on the combined efforts of people from all over the world. It is also inherently open-minded: we embrace logical inquiry and empiricism, which unite us regardless of race, gender, sexuality, disability, and religious and political beliefs. We affirm the commitment of the department to maintaining a welcoming and protected space for science and thus for everyone who joins in our shared enterprise. See our community page for more information.

CONTACT US

Frank Tsui, Chair
Chair's Office
phone: 919-843-4815
email: ftsui@physics.unc.edu
   

Mailing Address

UNC Physics & Astronomy
120 E. Cameron Ave.
Phillips Hall CB3255
Chapel Hill, NC 27599