Women In Astronomy: AASWomen Newsletter for December 8, 2017

AAS Committee on the Status of Women AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of December 08, 2017
eds: Nicolle Zellner, Heather Flewelling, Christina Thomas, and Maria Patterson

This week's issues:

1. Meet the CSWA: Greg Rudnick
From: Pat Knezek via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

In our newest series on the Women in Astronomy blog, we'd like to introduce our readers to the Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy. Here we introduce Greg Rudnick. Greg grew up in Chicago and his interest in astronomy started with his desire to be an astronaut and was fostered by his family’s frequent camping trips to places with dark skies and bright stars. He became convinced of studying astronomy after a Saturday morning astronomy program at the Adler Planetarium run by the University of Chicago and Adler. During his career Greg has moved around a lot. He started studying Physics at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and graduated in 1996, after which he moved to the University of Arizona for the Ph.D. program in Astronomy. Half-way through his time there he moved to the Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany to follow his adviser, who became director of MPIA. After his Ph.D. he moved to the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany for a postdoc, followed by a four-year stint as the Leo Goldberg Fellow at NOAO in Tucson. He started as a faculty member at the University of Kansas in 2008 and has been there ever since. He is currently an associate professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in the Physics and Astronomy Department.

2. Cards Against Humanity Expansion Pack to Fund Scholarship for Women in STEM
From: Heather Flewelling [heather_at_ifa.hawaii.edu]

By Charlie Scanlan

"Cards Against Humanity, the card game company known for its dark humor and witty social media stunts, isn’t joking when it comes to good deeds. Cards Against Humanity’s new Science Expansion Pack is using the revenue it generates to fund a Science Ambassador Scholarship for women in STEM fields."

3. The 2018 Kavli Summer Program in Astrophysics
From: Rachel Somerville [somerville_at_physics.rutgers.edu]

The 2018 Kavli Summer Program in Astrophysics will be held at the Flatiron Institute in New York City from June 25 to August 3, 2018 next summer on the topic of "The Computational Astrophysics of Galaxy Formation". The program is co-directed by Greg Bryan and Rachel Somerville, and the program lecturers are Romain Teyssier, Eve Ostriker, Priya Natarajan, and Romeel Davé. Andrea Ferrara, Laura Sales, and Jennifer Lotz will be long-term faculty participants, along with many members of the Center for Computational Astrophysics. For more information about the program, including details about its format, testimonies from past participants, and application forms, see http://kspa.ucsc.edu

The program will consist of a first week of pedagogical lectures and state-of-the-art seminars, and the next 5 weeks are dedicated to collaborative and multidisciplinary research, with graduate students working on projects proposed by the long-term senior program participants.

This program is an outstanding venue for students to learn about a field in depth, and have the opportunity to work with leading faculty. This is also an incredible opportunity for faculty and postdocs to interact with and mentor some of the most promising students in the field. Many research projects lead to a publication.

We are currently inviting applications from graduate students and senior participants (postdocs and faculty) to participate in the program. The selection process is competitive, as the program will cover the cost of accommodation for all selected participants for the duration of their stay in New York. The deadline for student applications is January 15. Senior participant applications will be considered until the end of January or until all funds have been allocated.

Please contact the LOC chair, Seran Lee Johnson, sleejohnson@flatironinstitute.org with any questions about the program or the application process.

4. Meet the LEGO Women of NASA
From: Heather Flewelling [heather_at_ifa.hawaii.edu]

By Amy Shira Teitel

"It’s not too often that a toy depicts a real-life unsung hero in science, but the LEGO Women of NASA kit does that four times over. A couple of the names should be familiar — Sally Ride is the go to name for women in space and Margaret Hamilton’s picture has been making the rounds for a while now. Mae Jamison and Nancy Grace Roman, on the other hand, are probably less recognizable. But all four are incredible women whose mini-likeness you can now add to your own home decor."

5. Celebrating Women in STEM: Dr. Ellen Ochoa
From: Heather Flewelling [heather_at_ifa.hawaii.edu]

By Madalyn Weston

"Dr. Ellen Ochoa was the first Hispanic woman in space. Born in 1958 and raised in La Mesa, CA, Ochoa learned the value of education from her mother. After her father left when she was a child, Ochoa watched her mother struggle to complete a college degree while raising five kids. Ochoa and her siblings were high achievers in the La Mesa public school system, and Ellen was valedictorian of her graduating class in 1975. Like many of us, Ochoa didn’t know what she wanted to do yet. She enjoyed playing the flute and considered a career in music. She never dreamed however, that she would be an astronaut."

6. The Takedown of Title IX
From: Heather Flewelling [heather_at_ifa.hawaii.edu]

By Kathryn Joyce

"Last year, the phone rang in the office of the New York attorney Andrew T. Miltenberg. On the line was Tom Rossley, a trustee for 23 years at Drake University in Iowa. His son, Thomas, had just been expelled after a woman accused him of rape, and Rossley, such a longtime booster that he was sometimes called Mr. Drake, was on the verge of being kicked off the board for protesting the verdict, he believed."

7. The Cost of Devaluing Women
From: Heather Flewelling [heather_at_ifa.hawaii.edu]

By Sallie Krawcheck

"My first job out of college in the late 1980s was at Salomon Brothers, a trading house of cigar-smoking, expletive-spewing strivers. One day, I leaned over a colleague’s desk to work on a spreadsheet, and heard loud laughter from behind me; one of the guys was pretending to perform a sex act on me. Almost every day, I found a Xerox copy of male genitalia on my desk.

I was not alone in being treated this way: During that era another brokerage house, Smith Barney, paid out $150 million in a bias and harassment case — known as the “boom-boom room” suit, named after a basement party room in one of its branches. Wall Street was a hypermasculine culture, where the all-nighter was a badge of honor and the ever-bigger deal was proof of one’s status, and women were not safe, either emotionally or physically."

8. US science gender gap unpicked
From: Heather Flewelling [heather_at_ifa.hawaii.edu]

"Three US studies shed light on efforts to increase diversity in academic hiring and on differences between female and male scientists’ publication rates and salaries."

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