The Founders of the Society. Austin, 1996

A Brief History of Our Society

The fledgling organization began to achieve reality in August, 1995. A grant from the Sloan Foundation was awarded to the Pan-American Association for Physics to establish the National Society of Hispanic Physicists.

The Founding Meeting of the Society was held in Austin at the University of Texas the next April. Later that year the By-Laws and Constitution were adopted and the first group of officers were elected.

			Founding officers of the Society.
	President		J.D. Garcia, Arizona
	President-elect		Jorge Lopez, UTEP
	Administrative Executive Officer		David Ernst, Vanderbilt
	Treasurer		Carlos Ordonez, Houston
	Technical Officer		Mario Diaz, UT Brownsville

The first annual meeting was held in Houston, Texas in October 1997. The US-Mexico Workshop on Teaching Introductory Physics, the first major project undertaken by the Society, was also held that month. The site of the workshop/conference was Monterrey, Mexico. The project was a bilingual joint venture between the NSHP and ITESM to explore the goals of the introductory physics sequence and recent pedagogical developments to meet those goals.

That year was also the year that Jorge Lopez, of the University of Texas at El Paso, became the editor and publisher of The Hispanic Physicist, the official newsletter of the NSHP.

The Society adopted the tradition of meeting jointly with other groups. Primarily this was done in order to reach out to as many students and faculty as possible. But this also allowed the NSHP to offer much more benefit to our members.

The Society began its joint meetings with the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science(SACNAS)in the fall of 1997. The relationship between NSHP and SACNAS continues to be fruitful.

SACNAS/NSHP Joint Meeting -- October 2004

In January 2003, NSHP and the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) held a joint meeting in Austin, Texas. The two organizations again met jointly in Albuquerque, New Mexico in January 2005. These meetings were particularly useful since -- in addition to the usual sessions and workshops of an AAPT meeting -- AAPT and NSHP reserved time for Joint Forums where members of AAPT, NSHP, and the National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP) could meet to discuss common issues. The NSHP and NSBP began meeting jointly in February of 2003. The common challenges and opportunities facing both organizations has led to a strong partnership that continues today. NSHP continues to meet with groups when it is beneficial to both societies. Other organizations that have generously hosted us include the American Astronomical Society (AAS), the Texas Section of the American Physical Society(TSAPS), and the Southeastern Section of the American Physical Society (SESAPS).

NSBP/NSHP Joint Meeting -- February 2005

Last updated 09/11/2007