participate and develop within a community. The “+” includes anti-racism, accountability, and justice. Additional helpful definitions are included in Appendix F and in NASEM (2022a).

The first section below provides an overview of the solar and space physics community and discusses opportunities and challenges associated with a field that is broad and draws on technical expertise from a wide range of disciplines.¹ The subsequent four sections present the current demographics and desired future characteristics of the field: a diverse workforce that engages in interdisciplinary collaborations and makes advances in scientific research and practical applications. The first covers the importance of understanding the demographics of the field and associated challenges (Theme 1), along with recommendations for ensuring recruitment and retention of a diverse workforce with a broad range of skills and expertise. This will require better incorporation of solar and space physics into mainstream STEM education (Theme 2); better support for DEIA+, (Theme 3); and enhanced engagement with the general public to generate excitement about the field (Theme 4).

4.1 THE SOLAR AND SPACE PHYSICS COMMUNITY

The solar and space physics discipline comprises the study of the space environment, including the coupled Sun and heliosphere, as well as the magnetospheres, ionospheres, and neutral upper atmospheres of Earth and other planets. The solar and space physics community consists of the interconnected systems of individuals, departments, and institutions that are associated with a variety of funders, professional societies, and societal needs.

Currently, solar and space physics is one of the umbrella terms that encompass the different components of the discipline. Within NASA’s SMD, the term “heliophysics” is used to clearly distinguish it from Earth sciences, astrophysics, and planetary science disciplines. Understanding the people who make up the current solar and space physics community and the ability to study trends to assess the health and vitality of the discipline continues to be difficult due to the lack of a standard name for the discipline within different organizations. Those names include:

• Solar and space physics (the National Academies),
• Heliophysics (NASA), Geospace Sciences and Solar Physics (in separate divisions of the National Science Foundation [NSF]),
• Space Weather (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA], the U.S. Air Force, and the American Meteorological Society),
• Space Physics and Aeronomy (SPA) (American Geophysical Union [AGU]),
• Solar Physics (Solar Physics Division [SPD] of the American Astronomical Society [AAS]), and
• Various other permutations within universities.

The lack of a common name was raised in the 2013 solar and space physics decadal survey report (NRC 2013; hereafter, 2013 decadal survey) and continues to hinder the community’s ability to articulate its science broadly to the public and invested parties, as well as assess the state of the profession.

To elaborate, this lack of a unique identity raises three significant challenges for the profession:

1. Data gathering: To understand the profession and its evolution, demographic information is critical. Specifically, tracking this information can help to ensure that a strong future workforce is recruited, receives the right training, and is healthy and sustainable. In order to consistently collect accurate demographics data, a common label is needed for the field.

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¹ From NASEM (2022a): “Several studies have demonstrated that multiple forms of diversity are beneficial to the creativity, innovation, and impact of science teams (Hong and Campbell et al. 2013; Freeman and Huang 2014a,b). Although social scientists continue to try to understand how specific forms of diversity (e.g., racial/ethnic, gender, career stage diversity) relate to various aspects of team performance, it is generally understood that, when engaged productively in an inclusive environment, diverse perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds can strengthen teams and lead to better science (Sommers 2006; Diaz-Garcia et al. 2013; 2017). Accordingly, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) Vision for Scientific Excellence notes, ‘diversity is a key driver of innovation and more diverse organizations are more innovative. . . . NASA believes in the importance of diverse and inclusive teams to tackle strategic problems and maximize scientific return’ (NASA 2020b).”

2. Recruitment: To recruit a diverse workforce (on many dimensions), better exposure to the field of solar and space physics is needed in schools and colleges; every science textbook could describe the space environment and mention the Sun, the magnetic fields of Earth, and planets.
3. Public outreach: While solar and space physics science is exciting and has important ramifications for life and society on Earth as well as in space, public awareness of the subject is lacking (while there is better awareness of astronomy). The public does not associate the subject with an independent scientific field or a professional community. Better communication, including a wider variety of appealing graphics and animations, will help to raise public awareness of the valuable science of solar and space physics.

Conclusion: A common name for the field that can be broadly called solar and space physics would improve efforts in data gathering, recruitment, education, and public outreach.

There are challenges to deciding on a common name that are rooted in the different orientations of U.S. agencies engaged in solar and space physics research and operations, and even among different divisions within an agency. All of the names considered by the decadal committee introduced a bias toward particular subdisciplines in the field. A solar and space physics consortium (discussed below) that solicits input from the community could be an important mechanism for addressing this issue. In this report, the broad term “solar and space physics” is used.

4.2 THEME 1—DEMOGRAPHICS OF THE WORKFORCE

The solar and space physics profession comprises a myriad of subdisciplines, existing at the intersections among plasma physics, practicalities of the space environment, engineering, Earth science, planetary science, and astronomy. The emerging subfield of space weather encompasses not just academic science, but also applied sciences and commercial endeavors. In addition to foundational scientific knowledge, advancements in basic research and space weather require expertise in computational modeling, engineering, applied mathematics, data science, and prediction methodologies, as well as management, communications, and operations.

Historically, the “workforce” has referred to potential principal investigators (PIs) or their students who proposed studies related to solar and space physics to agency funders. In reality, the workforce includes academics, research scientists (including those at government labs, universities, and federally funded research and development centers, and in industry and private institutions), postdoctoral researchers, and graduate and undergraduate students working in subfields in solar and space physics. Moreover, consideration of the solar and space physics workforce has not historically recognized the engineers, computer scientists, management personnel, and others who support and enable the science and space weather applications. Additionally, the field is expanding into new areas, such as comparative studies of stars and planetary systems, that require a broad range of expertise and increased collaboration.

Conclusion: As the field of solar and space physics expands from pure academics to include more applied areas, the understanding of the workforce—both in description and by numbers—needs to evolve, for example, to include how many soft-money researchers, early career scientists, civil servants, data analysts, and tenured faculty are working in the field.

4.2.1 Understanding the Demographics

Preparation for the 2013 decadal survey included a demographics survey, carried out in 2011 (White et al. 2011; hereafter, the “2011 workforce survey”). For the current decadal survey, there was no specific workforce survey carried out by the agencies, despite a survey having been recommended by the midterm assessment report on progress toward implementation of the 2013 decadal survey’s recommendations (NASEM 2020b). The report of the Panel on the State of the Profession includes demographic data from the Coupling, Energetics, and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions (CEDAR) program and Geospace Environment Modeling (GEM) workshops, as well as from analysis of proposals submitted to NSF and NASA. Demographics of the overall space sciences

workforce are also presented in recent NASA and National Academies reports (NASA 2023b; NASEM 2022a,b) and reviewed in Bagenal (2023).

Despite incomplete data, the subsections below review the available demographic data as sliced from a variety of viewpoints: the total size of the workforce; the statistical significance of surveys; gender, race, ethnicity, and national origin; and evolution over time. It is important to note that the terminology used in surveys to describe gender, race, and ethnicity has changed over the past decade. In this report, gender is described as man or woman except where the original survey used male or female. A continuing challenge is the lack of comprehensive and complete demographic data.

Size of the Solar and Space Physics Workforce

The total size of the U.S. workforce in solar and space physics is difficult to quantify. The 2011 workforce survey request was sent to 2,560 unique email addresses (from the AGU Space Physics and Aeronomy Section SPA), the AAS SPD, the Space Weather Week attendee lists, and the NSF list of PIs). If the 8 percent of respondents who were students are removed, that leaves an estimated 2,355 PhD scientists in the solar and space physics workforce in 2011. Without a complete repeat survey, it is hard to accurately determine changes to this number over the past decade. Membership in the largest professional organization, AGU SPA (about 63 percent of whom reside within the United States), has fluctuated by about 10 percent from 2013 to 2023. As the solar and space physics field expands, particularly into such applications as space weather, broader groups in the profession need to be carefully surveyed.

One way to quantify the workforce is to look at the personal profiles submitted through the NASA Solicitation and Proposal Integrated Review and Evaluation System (NSPIRES), an online proposal tool. In 2023, NASA’s Office of the Chief Scientist provided data on the number of unique names attached to proposals submitted by PIs and co-investigators (Co-Is) at U.S. institutions. These data did not include proposals for student fellowships, early career grants, or researchers directly funded by missions. (Data on graduate students and early career scientists have been gathered by organizations such as CEDAR; GEM; and the Solar, Heliospheric, and INterplanetary Environment [SHINE] program).

Figure 4-2 shows the total number of unique names of PIs and Co-Is for the different divisions in SMD between 2011 and 2021. The data for the Heliophysics Division shows a flat profile of almost 1,000 people who submitted proposals each year, about 39 percent of the 2,355 U.S. PhD scientists in the 2011 workforce survey.

Table 4-1 compares the populations from the 2011 workforce survey and the 2023 NASA Researcher Demographics Report (NASA 2023b). Note that in the 2011 workforce survey, 66 percent of respondents said they sought funding outside their employment institution, 74 percent from NASA, and 46 percent from NSF.

A rough estimate of growth in the field can be obtained by counting job advertisements. As reported by the Panel on the State of the Profession, Moldwin et al. (2016) compiled the number of job advertisements posted in the AGU SPA and the AAS SPD newsletters for postdoctoral, research scientist, and faculty positions, as well as the number of new PhDs granted each year in solar and space physics from North American universities. In 2010 (just into the recession of 2008–2009), global postdoc, research scientist, and faculty job ads fell to the lowest levels in the decade (and ads for faculty positions fell to just 7 from the typical 15–25 per year from 2001 to 2009). Since 2016, the number of ads in all three positions has increased, reaching an all-time high (Moldwin 2023). However, absent a quantitative census to determine the size of the field, it is impossible to say whether these increases are sufficient to keep pace with expansion of the discipline into emerging areas. Additionally, workforce increases are difficult to compare with overall funding increases due to the complexity of defining the field in terms of both people and fractions of agency budgets.

Statistical Issues with “Prefer Not to Answer”

Most surveys have an option to not answer questions about one’s personal information (e.g., age, gender, race, ethnicity). Often 15–20 percent of people respond, “prefer not to answer” (PNA), probably for a variety

of reasons (there are anecdotal explanations but no studies of any systemic causes), which has a significant effect on the statistical validity of the results. The percentage of PNAs has decreased from 2014 to 2020 in the NASA NSPIRES database (NASA 2023b) and the proposal success rates of PNAs are similar for those who provide personal information. In contrast, a study of proposals submitted to the NSF Directorate for Geosciences (GEO) (before 2019) shows lower acceptance rates of proposals from applicants in historically minoritized communities and a distinct decline in percentage of proposers who provide demographic information (Chen et al. 2022). To better capture trends for the solar and space physics community, such a study needs to be carried out for the NSF Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, which accounts for a small fraction of scientists in GEO.

Gender

Until recently, only a binary choice of gender (male/female or man/woman) was available on surveys. More recent surveys have expanded the choice to include nonbinary, but the statistical significance of such data is strongly affected by many PNAs. From the Panel on the State of the Profession (in Appendix F):

Figure 4-3 shows that the gender of proposers to Heliophysics grant opportunities through the NASA NSPIRES online system did not change substantially between 2014 and 2020; the percentage of NASA proposals submitted by applicants identifying as women has varied between 16 and 21 percent, and those identifying as men varied between 67 and 71 percent. Over the same period, the percentage of PNAs ranged between 11 and 16 percent. Such large total numbers of PNAs suggests that the changes in submissions by women may not be statistically significant.

Conclusion: To accurately assess the demographics of the solar and space physics community, professional organizations and funding agencies need to communicate the importance of providing one’s demographic information when submitting proposals. It needs to be clear to proposers that this demographic information is not available to reviewers. Regular reminders to update one’s personal profile could be sent out to the community; ideally, such reminders would not be connected with proposal deadlines.

Race, Ethnicity, and National Origin

Survey questions about race and ethnicity have evolved from a choice of White vs. non-White to a range of categories (e.g., Black/African American, Latinx/Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaska Native/Pacific Islander). Total numbers of racially minoritized individuals in the field remain small, sometimes too small to be reported (<1 percent). The CEDAR workshop data (2021–2022) show student and early career populations are considerably more diverse than the senior scientists (see Appendix F, Figures F-3 to F-6).

As shown in Figure 4-4, the demographics of the solar and space physics workforce are largely White men. The percentage of women is lower for heliophysics than the other areas of space science, but that may be partly related to the fact that the demographic data are from a survey carried out several years earlier than for the other fields. The stark lack of non-White populations is clear across all fields. Note that the data for heliophysics in Figure 4-4 came from the 2011 survey; a modern survey may show increased diversity.

submitted by Asian researchers with little change for Hispanic researchers, while submissions by Black/African American, American Indian/Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, and multiracial researchers remain below the 1 percent level (too low to be included in Figure 4-6). According to the 2023 census results, the U.S. population demographic is 58 percent white (not including Hispanic or Latino), 20 percent Hispanic or Latino, 14 percent African American, and 6 percent Asian. While Figure 4-5 shows that race and ethnicity percentages in STEM are trending to be much more aligned with the population, Figure 4-4 shows that the space sciences are unfortunately lagging behind.

Solutions: The Need for Better Data

Performing community surveys is a difficult task, but it is worth the effort. The information provided by demographic surveys is crucial for informing agencies about the success of initiatives to further DEIA+ goals. The lack of reliable demographic data has been discussed in other reports, with several variations of suggested solutions (NASEM 2022a,b, 2023a,b). For example, the Foundations report (NASEM 2022b) recommended that funding be provided to one or more umbrella organizations (such as the American Institute of Physics [AIP]) to conduct longitudinal studies of demographics in solar and space physics. With the currently available data, it is not possible to discuss intersectionality—how different social categories such as race and gender interact with each other to shape experiences and opportunities—due to small sample numbers of some demographics. In the future, if appropriate data are available, an intersectional view would be highly beneficial.

Conclusion: To address issues related to the state of the profession, the solar and space physics community needs to understand the demographics of the past, current, and potential future workforce. Because the solar and space physics workforce spans a broad range of disciplines, gathering the requisite data is complicated.

Conclusion: Demographics of proposal success rates need to be transparently evaluated to assess progress at different agencies, including NSF and NASA.

Recommendation 4-1: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration should fund either a professional organization (or group of organizations) or a team of researchers to develop a method to systematically gather demographic information of the current workforce in solar and space physics and obtain past demographic information (where possible) to assess demographic changes. A primary objective of this effort would be to initiate a sustainable structure for continuous, longitudinal data gathering, including at the level of undergraduate majors and conference attendees, to assess the potential future workforce and determine if the pool is sufficient to meet the needs of solar and space physics. Initial results should be provided in advance of the start of the midterm assessment of the present decadal survey.

Because the solar and space physics workforce is spread across multiple professional organizations, the data gathering should be coordinated by an umbrella organization or team of researchers in the form of a solar and space physics consortium. Demographic data-gathering surveys need to involve social science expertise, specifically, demographers and survey researchers, and they need to draw from previous surveys, such as the NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates (NSF 2023). To assist in both the immediate need for information and the desire to have a sustained, long-term tracking of data in place, it is recommended that the agencies aspire to a short-term and a long-term goal.

The short-term goal is to conduct a survey immediately that is cross-cutting and comprehensive to understand the current state of the demographics in the profession, including a survey of academic institutions that are producing bachelor of science (BS), master’s, and PhD graduates who may end up in the field. This may be undertaken by an umbrella organization or by a team of researchers in solar and space physics who apply for funding in response to a solicitation. The results of this survey would be most useful if disseminated publicly prior to the midterm assessment.

into—and sometimes out of—their solar and space physics careers, as depicted in Figure 4-7. To understand the limited diversity of the workforce, it is necessary to explore the various pathways people follow throughout their careers. What are the entry points and at what stages do people leave the field?

4.2.2.1 Undergraduate Programs

The 2011 workforce survey showed that most (62 percent) of the solar and space physics workforce obtained bachelor’s degrees in physics. The AIP regularly gathers and publishes data from physics departments across the United States. Figure 4-8 shows the change in gender representation in physics careers at universities, with a major dropoff in the percentage of women participating in physics between high school and completion of a bachelor’s degree. Multiple studies over the past 3 decades show this major decline in participation of women. More recent studies show racially and ethnically minoritized individuals in STEM drop out in the first couple of years of college (Seymour and Hewitt 1997; Seymour and Hunter 2019). The percentage of racially minoritized groups along such an academic career path is even smaller, with similar dropoff between the high school and college levels.

Addressing the major drop in participation in STEM fields between high school and college requires attention at both levels. While high school education is controlled locally, there are ways for science outreach activities—particularly involving the excitement of space exploration—that could have significant impact (discussed further below). There are many suggestions for addressing the high dropout rate of historically excluded populations from STEM fields in the early years at college, many of which need to be addressed locally at the university or departmental level. Those suggestions include improving the quality of teaching of freshman calculus and physics courses and including working with science education researchers. However, there are important contributions that can be made at the national level, specifically, the development and funding of Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) and Bridge programs, as well as supplementing research grants to include support of student involvement in research through mentorships and scholarships. In addition, the AIP runs a national Task Force to Elevate African American Representation in Undergraduate Physics & Astronomy (TEAM-UP) to increase undergraduate participation and degree completion (AIP 2023c).

With the solar and space physics workforce evolving to include more applied fields, it is important that such internship programs for undergraduates are broadly advertised to departments beyond physics, including engineering, computer science, data science, Earth sciences, planetary science, and astrophysical science. These departments

have students who might be attracted by a positive research experience and thus consider a career in solar and space physics (see further discussion below).

Graduate Programs

It is difficult to assess the workforce in the field of solar and space physics because the disciplines of degrees held by researchers are evolving, spreading from mainly physics to other fields, such as atmospheric science, geosciences, computer science, aerospace engineering, and an increasing number of programs focused on solar and space physics. The 2011 workforce survey shows that the percentage of the solar and space physics workforce with doctorates in physics has decreased from 40 percent (for 1999 and earlier PhDs) to 27 percent (for 2000 and later PhDs). As the number of departments offering graduate programs in solar and space physics has increased, an increasing percentage of solar and space physics researchers obtain their PhDs in the specialized fields of space physics and solar physics. How such PhDs are counted by the AIP surveys is not clear.

Figure 4-9 shows the demographics of physics PhD recipients. While the total numbers have fluctuated and risen overall for the past 30 years, the percentage representations have not changed much. The current gender and race and ethnicity distributions in Figure 4-9 are similar to those across the heliophysics workforce shown in the demographics statistics presented above. Figure 4-9 shows that although the total number of PhDs in physics has increased by 22 percent in 2010–2020, the percentage awarded to men and women has remained the same at 80 percent and 20 percent, respectively. The percentage of PhDs in physics awarded to U.S. and non-U.S. citizens has remained roughly the same (54 percent and 46 percent, respectively as of 2019). The percentage of PhDs awarded to Latinx/Hispanic students has increased steadily to 2 percent. The percentage of Black/African Americans remains well below the 1 percent level. Both of these percentages remain considerably below the general STEM workforce shown in Figure 4-5 (15 percent and 9 percent, respectively, in 2021).

There are several studies examining how graduate-level education could be improved and how to diversify the student population. For example, Posselt (2020) contains a succinct list of actions related to recruitment, admissions, mentoring, support, and creating conditions conducive to equity in graduate programs.

Conclusion: Solar and space physics needs to engage with professionals in engineering, computer science, and management, to encourage pathways into projects in the solar and space physics fields. A solar and space physics consortium could coordinate these efforts.

Related to this new, expansive definition of the field and the workforce that underlies it, there are needs that require attention in moving forward into the next decade. The rest of this chapter details how to best support this expanding and evolving workforce and how to cultivate that workforce to attract those most enthusiastic about discovery in solar and space physics.

high-tech careers. To attract top talent to the myriad fields that involve solar and space physics, students need to be exposed to the science and the career opportunities associated with it as early as possible and at the very latest in general undergraduate courses. Data scientists, computer scientists, and others with those skill sets will be more attracted to job opportunities in solar and space physics research fields if they have previously been introduced to and engaged in those fields.

4.3 THEME 2—SOLAR AND SPACE PHYSICS EDUCATION

4.3.1 Incorporating Solar and Space Physics in K–12 and College Education

To raise public awareness of solar and space physics and to broaden the career options in the field, the subject needs to be introduced in K–12 education and incorporated into classes from undergraduate to MS to PhD curriculums. This broader education is also necessary in areas other than physics, including astronomy; applied sciences, such as aerospace and electrical engineering; and environmental science programs. College education

is the backbone of recruitment into the field, as well as the best mechanism for raising public awareness about the importance of solar and space physics research. K–12 education ensures that college programs attract the best students from diverse backgrounds.

To illustrate the depth of the issue, examples of several prominent undergraduate introductory astrophysics and general education astronomy textbooks that are nearly devoid of solar and space physics topics include: The Cosmic Perspective: The Solar System (Bennett 2019), An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics (Carroll and Ostlie 2017), and Astronomy (Fraknoi et al. 2016). Also often missing from the content are the foundational drivers of space weather—the magnetic fields and plasmas emerging from the solar surface, filling interplanetary space with the solar wind, and interacting with the geomagnetic field. Rather, the focus is only on interior processes of the Sun and geomagnetism as it relates to Earth’s geology, with the space science component omitted entirely. Fraknoi et al. (2016) is the only text to mention the consequences of space weather, but it does so without explaining the role of magnetic fields or plasma.

Many students who are not majoring in STEM studies take general astronomy courses to fulfill a natural science requirement with a topic in which they are interested (Impey and Buxner 2020). For a vast majority of these students, the astronomy course will be their last exposure to formal science education. Some progress has been made to include solar and space physics material into undergraduate education by either incorporating material into undergraduate courses or by teaching a class on space weather or space science. These are individual solutions that are undertaken by only a few professors at a handful of universities across the country. In other cases, undergraduate material about space weather is often discussed in terms of hazards. This approach is in contrast to the way in which hurricanes or volcanoes are discussed in the context of a desire to understand the natural world, in addition to teaching about their effects. An incredible opportunity exists to build topics in solar and space physics into full courses or to integrate them with astronomy to create student and public consciousness about the field. This opportunity is not currently being leveraged to its full potential.

At the K–12 level, the implementation of discipline-specific subject matter is more complex since schools are often teaching to well-defined curricula with very narrow learning objectives. However, many educators are free to enhance the standard material with extra topics that catch the students’ interest, especially if that material contains concepts related to the primary curriculum. Several examples include an app-based textbook developed by Big Kid Science, Totality, which focuses on solar eclipses but also has much of the science background included in an accessible way. Other examples are a general solar and space science textbook aimed at middle and high school levels, Solar Science (Schatz and Fraknoi 2016) and a PDF textbook available from NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center aimed at junior high and high school students, Solar Physics and Terrestrial Effects (Briggs and Carlisle 2016). Finally, there are multiple examples of curriculum-enhancing resources that have been produced through one-off grant opportunities, such as Space Weather UnderGround, started at the University of New Hampshire² and being expanded to the University of Alaska Fairbanks.³

There have been several concerted efforts to present space physics to students at the undergraduate level, starting with Introduction to Space Physics by Kivelson and Russell (first edition, 1995). Understanding Space Weather and the Physics Behind It by Knipp (2011), and An Introduction to Space Weather by Moldwin (2008)—both focusing on space weather—attempt to appeal to a general science audience. However, to effectively reach a broader audience, modest sections on space sciences are needed in the standard textbooks, including those in Earth sciences, atmospheric sciences, and environmental sciences, as well as the full range of physics and aerospace texts from introductory undergraduate to graduate levels. Furthermore, imaginative, colorful graphics could make the Sun and magnetosphere as familiar to middle school and high school students as the globe of Earth and help with retention of information on solar and space physics (Bobek and Tversky 2016). Relatable, real-life examples would extend the reach of the material, and interactive activities would engage students on a deeper level (Goldberg et al. 2010). All these resources require significant input from the current space physics

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² University of New Hampshire Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, “Space Weather Underground,” https://eos.unh.edu/space-science-center/outreach/space-weather-underground, accessed May 21, 2024.

³ University of Alaska Fairbanks Space Weather Underground, “Space Weather Underground Project,” https://sites.google.com/alaska.edu/swug/home, accessed May 21, 2024.

community; they could be produced through add-on, supplemental funding to research and analysis projects, as well as missions.

Conclusion: Solar and space physics science has not been fully incorporated into U.S. education at either the K–12 or undergraduate level in the same way that astronomy and astrophysics, Earth sciences, and planetary science have been. Consequently, the recruitment of students and professionals into solar and space physics is less than it could be.

Conclusion: The absence of exposure to solar and space physics in K–12 or early college courses means many students are unaware of the field. To meet future workforce needs and attract talented STEM students from a broad range of backgrounds, solar and space physics needs to be promoted through early educational experiences, in which a solar and space physics consortium could play a significant role.

Recommendation 4-2: Funding agencies should expand the reach of solar and space sciences in education by expanding the definition of the National Science Foundation’s “broader impacts/societal impacts” and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s “broadening impacts” to specifically include developing solar and space science educational materials aimed at K–12 and college students.

4.3.2 Implementing Education and Student Recruitment

Increasing the Number of Faculty in Solar and Space Physics

One major factor limiting the exposure of students to solar and space physics is the lack of scientists in this field on the faculty at universities. As noted above, creating the foundations of a strong workforce requires cultivation of significant interest in solar and space physics early on in college as students start to assess options for future career pathways. Education is key to this mission.

University professors often teach large “service” courses that expose a variety of students from majors other than physics or astronomy. There is an enormous untapped opportunity to reach that same number of students with topics centered around solar and space physics and discuss their relevance to society. In addition, university faculty and researchers often employ students as research assistants, including those with backgrounds in physics and astronomy, engineering, mathematics, and even chemistry or biology. This is yet another way to expose students to research at a crucial point in their decision-making process related to future career goals. Finally, university faculty often engage in large-scale public outreach, including K–12 students. Activities can include public demonstration events; public night-sky observing nights; classroom visits; summer internship and research experience activities; event-specific outreach, such as events revolving around solar eclipses; and discipline-specific organizational events, such as the Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics, the American Physical Society student conferences, and the physics congresses organized by the Society of Physics Students (PhysCon). These activities can serve to initiate the first sparks of interest that may attract students to the field. Additionally, minority-serving institutions represent an important untapped resource for recruiting students into the field (NASEM 2019).

University faculty and researchers represent the fulcrum of this interaction, serving as a bridge between public and professional, education and expertise. Furthermore, university faculty are the ones providing the intensive student training, through grants and awards, necessary to grow the future workforce in solar and space physics. Currently, there is additional pressure to this already strained system in the form of shuttering departments, colleges, and entire institutions as the college-bound population shrinks.

Conclusion: University PIs and faculty who teach courses and have major research support are well positioned to broaden the reach of solar and space physics education, as well as provide focused training to students already engaged in those sciences.

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⁴ “The Geospace Section of the NSF Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences (AGS) offers funding for the creation of new tenure-track faculty positions within the disciplines that comprise the AGS Geospace programs to ensure their vitality at U.S. universities and colleges. The aim of the Faculty Development in geoSpace Science (FDSS) is to integrate topics in geospace science including solar and space physics and space weather research into natural sciences or engineering or related departments at U.S. institutions of higher education (IHE).” U.S. National Science Foundation. April 6, 2023. “Faculty Development in geospacer Science (FDSS).” See https://new.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/faculty-development-geospace-science-fdss.

NSF should consider allowing proposals for cluster hires and allowing previous FDSS institutions to propose again.

Expanding Opportunities for Student Research

Solar and space physics would benefit from efforts to expand the reach of research opportunities in solar and space physics. Such an expansion would aid in recruitment efforts, and top talent would be more easily attracted to the field after having exposure to research. As discussed above, many university faculty lead these kinds of research opportunities at educational institutions, but there are also examples of summer internships, schools, and other training activities hosted by national and government labs, as well as university-affiliated research centers: see Figure 4-11.

The Advancing Diversity report (NASEM 2022a) found that, “Decades of educational research suggest that early and ongoing experiences with authentic research—experiences that engage students not only in learning about but actually doing research—is key to retaining students generally and URM [underrepresented minority] students specifically” (p. 76).

Long-standing hallmark programs include NSF REUs, NASA’s Heliophysics Summer School, and NSF’s Space Weather Summer School, as well as such funding opportunities as Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) fellowships (previously the Graduate Student Researchers Program), the NSF Graduate Research Fellowships Program, the NSF Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Program, and the NASA National Space Grant College and Fellowship Project opportunities offered through state universities. In addition to these relatively centralized programs, summer schools, internships, research appointments, and student workshops have been supported by individual PIs and faculty members or teams of researchers. These programs are hosted by a variety of institutions, from university campuses to government laboratories, such as the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the year-long National Astronomy Consortium program at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

Every research opportunity plays a unique role in an ecosystem of experiences available to students. This ecosystem needs to be fostered and encouraged to grow, in various directions, to provide opportunities for all interested students. These opportunities can be facilitated in many ways (e.g., through expansion of REU programs), and by increasingly allowing researchers to request funding supplements to support new or expanded research opportunities, especially ones that use novel methods of connecting with students. Support for a variety of research opportunities can help bring in more students by providing options other than the full summer research experiences that require relocation. Shorter, immersive undergraduate experiences that last for 1–2 weeks can be attractive to a different subset of the student population than the traditional 8- to 12-week REU experience, particularly students who need full-time jobs in the summer months or have personal or family commitments (Jaynes and Meerdink 2022). To this point, such research experiences need to be funded adequately such that students are paid a living wage to attend, and travel and housing costs are deferred. Participation options can be expanded as well, by offering hybrid attendance options or virtual connectivity at staggered times for small cohorts of students in different time zones.

As these experiences form a critical part of training for both undergraduate and graduate students, agencies could encourage hosts to include skill-building activities in their research experience programs. These activities could focus not only on exposure to science training and research skills, but also on collaboration and career building. Examples could be seminars and meant to improve collaborative working skills and enhance positive team dynamics in a group, as well as such interpersonal skill-building activities as mini-workshops on bystander intervention and microaggressions. A solar and space physics consortium could be helpful to pool resources for these experiences, share best practices, and assist in advertising to undergraduate and graduate institutions.

Recommendation 4-4: Funding agencies should expand the reach of solar and space physics by increasing funding opportunities for researchers to lead summer schools, workshops, and other skill-building activities for undergraduate and graduate students. Funding these activities should include time for the researchers who lead them as well as resources, such as paid stipends to address equity, for the students. Such research supplements should require gathering and reporting data on participants, activities, and their impact.

challenges: Change-resisting gatekeepers make institutional change difficult, and universities in some states have lost their DEIA+ organizations and others are adapting to the recent Supreme Court decision (Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College 2023). Making changes throughout the institution is challenging as often it is the same people, time after time, who attend DEIA+ awareness training and outreach sessions. Unconscious bias is pervasive and affects the review of proposals, interactions among colleagues, and the actions of program officers and supervisors at all levels. Changing the still-existing cultures that protect harassment and exclusion requires creative and progressive methods to dismantle them by the agencies, and by extension the community. Furthermore, university DEIA+ programs can have a role in improving the culture of academia, particularly at the early stages of student careers. Organizations such as the American Physical Society offer to set up a visiting committee to carry out climate studies at academic departments and institutes (APS 2024). These committees can identify and suggest steps to mitigate adverse conditions in the workplace

Various reports have distilled best practices that can be followed for advancing DEIA+ in the solar and space physics communities, including Advancing DEIA in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions (NASEM 2022a); Foundations of a Healthy and Vital Research Community for NASA Science (NASEM 2022b); and in the sciences in general, such as Unequal Treatment Revisited (NASEM 2024) and Minority Serving Institutions (NASEM 2019). The question then needs to be asked: Why has such little progress been made in this area?

The recent Heliophysics Division Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility working group, which is the Heliophysics arm of the NASA Equity Action Plan (NASA 2023a), is a positive step in the direction of strategic DEIA+ advances. The group has been charged with several tasks, including recommending action and policy changes that align with the DEIA mission of the Heliophysics Division. Building on successful implementation is key, such as NASA’s Bridge Program, which aims to develop partnerships with historically under-resourced institutions while engaging in NASA science. It is too early yet to assess the overall success of these newer programs. The NSF Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science (SOARS) program, managed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, is an example of the highly successful implementation of a bridge-style program. SOARS mentors students who identify as historically marginalized in science in the undergraduate-to-graduate school transition phase and provide research experience opportunities. Their long-term trends are impressive: over 90 percent of SOARS program participants continue to graduate school (UCAR 2024).

Conclusion: The solar and space physics community and funding agencies need to identify and be aware of barriers for people from historically marginalized groups in STEM who work in the field and jointly address the need to be more inclusive.

The report of the Panel on the State of the Profession, as well as the reports cited above include a wealth of knowledge and suggestions that could be considered by relevant invested parties as they work to craft meaningful actions. Here is another avenue in which a solar and space physics consortium could be immensely beneficial, by aggregating resources and coordinating dissemination to researchers, as well as compiling assessments of ongoing programs.

4.4.2 Enhancing DEIA+ in Research

DEIA+ represents a wide range of topics, encompassing diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, anti-racism, accountability, and more. The report of the Panel on the State of the Profession (in Appendix F) includes an extensive discussion on the definition of this all-encompassing term and the implications it has for how research is conducted in collaboration with others. Effort and attention going toward DEIA+ actions repay the work several times over by building a community of supportive, enthusiastic researchers who are excited to collaborate, eager to help each other, and feel safe and respected in their working environments. While this report focuses on specific activities that are within the scope of research grants and contracts and can thus be implemented in the near future, there are many additional suggestions in the panel report that are worth careful consideration by the relevant agencies. In particular, one aspect directly within agencies’ purviews, related to proposal DEIA+ plans, can be addressed at this time, as discussed below.

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⁵ NASA, “Inclusion Plan Resources,” updated May 2024, https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/inclusion.

⁶ The 2022 Small Explorers call for proposals required a two-page diversity and inclusion plan. One of the evaluation factors for the proposal is the probability of science team success, including the diversity and inclusion plan (NASA 2022).

having to develop their own DEIA+ plans can be avoided by publicizing and encouraging these partnership opportunities. Lastly, education and public outreach initiatives often overlap directly with the goals of DEIA+ activities and can therefore be leveraged to make science more accessible in a variety of ways.

Recommendation 4-5: To be proactive about enhancing DEIA+ (diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, as well as anti-racism, accountability, and justice) across the solar and space physics workforce including recruitment, working environments, and retention for all research and mission teams, all the relevant agencies, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation, should, when possible:

• Continue and enhance funding of DEIA+ activities by (1) requiring DEIA+ plans for large proposals (more than $1 million) and (2) making supplemental funding available for optional DEIA+ activities as part of proposals;
• Enhance the opportunities for the science community to participate in existing host organization–based or agencywide DEIA+ efforts; and
• Improve the quality and review process of proposed DEIA+ plans by (1) providing sample activities or successful examples of DEIA+ plans to the community; and (2) reviewing DEIA+ plans associated with large proposals in panels whose members have the appropriate expertise to provide concrete and constructive feedback for improvement.

Many of the topics addressed within this theme and recommendations to promote change have been described at length in prior reports, including NASEM (2022a,b). These prior discussions contain valuable information not repeated here, including the use of dual-anonymous proposal review processes and active education about the unintentional biases that inform decision-making and how to combat those instincts.

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⁷ For more information, see the NASA SciAct program and the 2020 NASEM report NASA’s Science Activation Program: Achievements and Opportunities.

SOURCES FOR IMAGES IN FIGURE 4-1

Composed by AJ Galaviz III, Southwest Research Institute; Background by Tim Warchocki. Left panel images from left to right: (Top row) ©DC Studio/Adobe Stock, ©muratart/Adobe Stock, ©gpointstudio/Adobe Stock, ©wavebreak3/Adobe Stock; (Middle row) ©BGStock72/Adobe Stock, ©Prostock-studio/Adobe Stock, ©Krakenimages.com/Adobe Stock, ©Martin Barraud/Caia Image/Adobe Stock; (Bottom row) ©alfa27/Adobe Stock, ©Syda Productions/Adobe Stock, NASA/ESA/A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center)/M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), ©Quality Stock Arts/Adobe Stock. Right panel images from left to right: (Top row) ©eggeeggjiew/Adobe Stock, ©Serhii/Adobe Stock, ©Framestock/Adobe Stock, ©Viacheslav Yakobchuk/Adobe Stock; (Middle row) NASA/ESA/Massimo Robberto (STScI, ESA)/Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team, ©Cultura Allies/Adobe Stock, NASA, ©sofiko14/Adobe Stock; (Bottom row) ©Syda Productions/Adobe Stock), ©Viacheslav Yakobchuk/Adobe Stock, ©Alberto/Adobe Stock, ©eakgrungenerd/Adobe Stock.