Cid, Ximena C.
Oral history interview with Ximena Cid, 2020 November 6.
In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Ximena Cid, associate professor and chair of the Physics Department at California State University Dominguez Hills. Cid recounts her childhood in Sacramento and she discusses her mothers Chicana and Yaqui heritage and her fathers Mexican heritage and the spirit of civil rights organizing that permeated her family life. She explains her early interests in space, and the difficulties she experienced adjusting as an undergraduate at Berkeley because so many students had come from better funded, and less violent high schools. Cid highlights the faculty members who supported and encouraged her, and she describes meeting Ramon Lopez at a SACNAS conference, and how he became her graduate advisor at UT Arlington. She discusses her graduate research on magnetic sub-storms and the pedagogic implications visual spatial cognition. Cid describes her postdoctoral research with the Physics Education Group at the University of Washington where she further developed her interests in teaching methods and physics tutorials. She explains the opportunities leading to her faculty appointment at CSU and her work organizing the National Society for Indigenous Physicists. At the end of the interview, Cid discusses the importance of visibility in the field as a central tool for encouraging minority undergraduates to pursue studies in STEM, and she shares her perspective on how the field has grappled with structural racism and police violence over the last year.
Dr. Ximena Cid obtained a BS degree in Astrophysics from University of California Berekeley (2005) and a Ph.D in Physics from University of Texas Arlington (2011). She is an Assistant Professor of Physics and Chair of Physics Department at California State University-Dominguez Hills.
Cid, Ximena C.
California State University, Dominguez Hills
SACNAS (Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics)
University of California, Berkeley
University of Texas at Arlington
University of Washington
Diversity in higher education
Physics -- Study and teaching
Racism in education -- United States.
Interviews. aat
Oral histories. aat
Transcripts. aat
Zierler, David, 1979- interviewer.
AIP-ICOS
American Institute of Physics. Niels Bohr Library & Archives. One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740, USA