AAS Committee on the Status of Women
December 21, 2018
eds: Nicolle Zellner, Heather Flewelling, Maria Patterson, and JoEllen McBride
[Happy Holidays to all! --eds.]
This week's issues:
1. Transitioning From Astronomy to the Space Industry
2. Conference attendance boosts authorship opportunities
3. COSPAR SYMPOSIUM CALL FOR PAPERS: “Small Satellites for Sustainable Science and Development”
4. Women Scientists Who Made Nuclear Astrophysics
5. NASA Appoints Its First Female Chief Flight Director
6. How One Organization Is Keeping Women In STEM Careers
7. How Implicit Bias and Lack of Diversity Undermine Science
8. What Happens When You Double Blind Astronomers?
9. Job Opportunities
10. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter
11. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter
12. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter
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1. Transitioning From Astronomy to the Space Industry
From: Therese Jones via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com
I am often sent students who want to transition into the space industry, having converted from an astronomy Ph.D. program (Berkeley), to a policy Ph.D. program with a focus on space (RAND, a non-partisan think tank), then becoming Senior Director of Policy at the Satellite Industry Association. As a crash course in how to get started, I compiled this “Guide to the Space Life” to get students/young professionals up to speed on what it took me five years to figure out on my own! This post summarizes a few of the highlights of the document, but please see the full guide for more information.
Read more at
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2. Conference attendance boosts authorship opportunities
From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]
By studying the publication output of 17,467 researchers, Raquel Campos, an economist at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and co-authors quantified what academics find to be true: developing professional networks at conferences leads to collaborations and more publications.
Read more at
Read the original study at
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3. COSPAR SYMPOSIUM CALL FOR PAPERS: “Small Satellites for Sustainable Science and Development”
From: COSPAR Conference organizers [torkabi_at_paragong.com]
“COSPAR recently initiated a new series of scientific meetings, the Symposia, aimed at promoting space research at a regional level and to be organized in countries with medium or small size space infrastructures. … The Fourth COSPAR Symposium will be held in Israel, on 4-8 November 2019, and will address the broad topic of “Small satellites for sustainable Science and Development”.” There will also be a teacher training session.
Read more at
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4. Women Scientists Who Made Nuclear Astrophysics
From: Aparna Venkatesan [avenkatesan_at_usfca.edu]
A poster and quiz on the contributions women have made to Nuclear Astrophysics, including a selection of 12 female figures in this field who made seminal contributions, was presented for the first time at the Nuclei in the Cosmos Symposium 2018. Please feel free to download, print, and present these at events and meetings.
The poster can be downloaded from the ChETEC website at:
The quiz about these 12 outstanding women who helped develop nuclear astrophysics can be found at:
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5. NASA Appoints Its First Female Chief Flight Director
From: Vanessa McCaffrey [vmccaffrey_at_albion.edu]
“NASA took another giant step for equality this week when it named Holly Ridings as its first female chief flight director! Ridings, who is originally from Amarillo, Texas, will lead the flight directors that oversee human spaceflight missions from Mission Control in Houston's Johnson Space Center.”
Read more at
Read the NASA press release at
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6. How One Organization Is Keeping Women In STEM Careers
From: Alessandra Aloisi [aloisi_at_stsci.edu]
In a recent interview, Nicola recalled that she would go months without attending a meeting where another woman was present. And she used to think nothing of it because it was so common. She also wasn’t uncomfortable working in those male dominated environments. …
Today, she is surprised that these male dominated fields haven’t actually changed more. At a recent industry conference, she noted that there were only three women present in an auditorium full of more than 100 men—a reality that Nicola now not only recognizes, but internalizes. “It can feel pretty lonely pretty quickly,” she says.
Read more at
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7. How Implicit Bias and Lack of Diversity Undermine Science
From: Heather Flewelling [flewelling.heather_at_gmail.com]
“In general, the less diverse or inclusive a field, the heavier the reliance on stereotypes and implicit biases towards underrepresented groups (be it women, racial minorities or LGBTQ+), the greater the harassment they face (sexual or otherwise) and the more likely they are to leave STEM fields. It then takes a movement like #MeToo to expose, to the horror of many, just how widespread and pervasive the problem is.” As noted in the sub-title: “The first step toward fixing the culture of STEM is recognizing that it’s broken.”
Read more at
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8. What Happens When You Double Blind Astronomers?
From: JoEllen McBride [joellen.mcbride_at_gmail.com]
Most of you probably know about the famous test of blind auditioning for symphony orchestras, in which every candidate performs behind a curtain: after it was adopted, suddenly a whole lot more women got hired. …
Needless to say, the same thing happens in other fields. Take astronomy. Every year hundreds of researchers submit proposals for time on the Hubble Telescope, and every year proposals from men get accepted at a higher rate than proposals from women. Finally, last year, the Telescope Allocation Committee decided the only solution was genuine double-blind reviewing: neither the applicants nor the reviewing committees know each other’s names, and proposals have to follow a style that hides the identity of the proposer. Guess what?
Find out at
Read the STScI article at
http://www.stsci.edu/news/newsletters/pagecontent/institute-newsletters/2018-volume-35-issue-04/hubble-cycle-26-tac-and-anonymous-peer-review
and an article in The Atlantic at
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/12/hubble-space-telescope-gender-disparity/578545/
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9. Job Opportunities
- Tenure track position(s) in Planetary Science, Purdue University
For those interested in increasing excellence and diversity in their organizations, a list of resources and advice is here: https://cswa.aas.org/#howtoincrease
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10. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
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12. Access to Past Issues
Each annual summary includes an index of topics covered.
