AASWomen Newsletter for June 18, 2021

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of June 18, 2021
eds: Heather Flewelling, Nicolle Zellner, Maria Patterson, Jeremy Bailey, and Alessandra Aloisi

[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. --eds.]

This week's issues:

VanguardSTEM + SeRCH Foundation
host Hot Science Summer (Item #4)

1. Crosspost: Retroactive Name Changes in Astronomical Publications
2. Women of Arecibo: Dr. Thankful Cromartie
3. Ethics and Authorship in the AAS Journals 
4. VanguardSTEM + SeRCH Foundation hosting Hot Science Summer to FUND BIPOC science projects
5. Zonta International awards promising women aerospace researchers with 2021 Amelia Earhart Fellowship
6. Google Doodle celebrates 99th birthday of Italian astrophysicist Margherita Hack
7. Katherine Johnson’s memoir charts her bold trajectory to NASA and beyond
8. A push for a shift in the value system that defines "impact" and "success"
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

Celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month: The Arecibo Observatory Space Academy

Photo montage by Ricardo Correa 

Today’s guest bloggers are Edgard Rivera-Valentin and Luisa Zambrano-Marin. Ed is the Project Manager for the Space Academy and a staff scientist in the Planetary Radar group at the Arecibo Observatory. Luisa is the Program Coordinator for the Space Academy and a data analyst for the Planetary Radar Group at Arecibo Observatory.

We are Latinos, we are Scientists, and we are Educators. We often struggle to succeed in a field in which we are underrepresented and devalued both consciously and unconsciously by peers. Our upbringing, culture, and expectations are diverse and diverge from the “norm”. We understand what it’s like to feel unprepared for college, graduate school, and the professional workforce. And all too often, we know the struggle of breaking through established barriers in the scientific community. We are the 3%. 

Hispanics and Latinos are the largest underrepresented group with a measured interest in STEM fields. Studies show that Hispanic and Latino students are equally as interested in entering a STEM major in college as their White counterparts, and yet we are less likely to graduate with a degree in a STEM field (Crisp and Nora, 2012). There is indisputably a gap to be filled, one that we know occurs past the interest in STEM and before the student decides their career path. At the professional stage, it gets even more noticeable, despite the fact Latinos and Hispanics compose nearly 20% of the U.S. population, we only account for 3% of the STEM doctoral degrees and 3% of Physics faculty in the United States. 

So something is very wrong when we have a significant percentage of the population of which a significant number show strong interest in STEM fields and yet are not well represented in the professional stage.