Panelists speak at an American Physical Society session last week on how physics departments can respond proactively to threats.
It’s not unusual for Theodore Hodapp to get a call when a university physics department is under threat of cutbacks or closure. As director of project development at the American Physical Society for the last 16 years, he’s typically gotten one or two calls a year.
“I’ve now gotten, I think, six requests in the last year, just to give you a sense, and three in the last month,” Hodapp said last week at a session of the APS Annual Leadership Meeting, which was held virtually this year due to the pandemic. “We realize that this economic thing is hitting lots of places. It’s hitting smaller places more than it’s hitting bigger places, and we’re trying to work with departments as much as we can to help them out.”