215th AAS: The Longitudinal Study

At the AAS Meeting, the CSWA hosted a special session on the Longitudinal Study of graduate students in astronomy. Pat Knezek of NOAO gave some background about the survey, and Rachel Ivie from the American Institute of Physics presented some initial results. Although some of these results were recently reported in Nature (see also here), the presentation at the AAS Meeting gave a more complete description of the survey. Here are notes on the session compiled by Michele Montgomery and Rachel Ivie.


1. Of the respondents in the study, 447 are female and 696 are male, and 77% are U.S. citizens.
2. The median age is 27, and the students have been in the program an average of 3.5 years (because there is a sizable group of older graduate students who have been in grad school only a short time).
3. 53% of females use observations for research compared to only 40% of men.
4. 54% of women and 62% of men want to eventually teach at a university.
5. Graduate students interact with faculty on research, course materials, and career opportunities but are less likely to discuss other graduate students, advisors, or their personal life with faculty members.
6. Students who are not mentored are less likely to feel welcome in their department, to feel that they cannot succeed, and to feel that they are not as smart as their peers.
7. Research Assistants with good lab equipment available to them feel they will make good researchers someday. Likewise, teaching assistants feel they will make good teachers someday.
8. Women are more likely than men to say that other people helped them succeed.


Women seem less likely to concentrate in theory or instrumentation than their male counterparts. Over half of Ph.D. graduates want a profession like their mentors or advisor (editors note: thereby showing that institutions of higher learning should be doing a better job of promoting all careers in astronomy/physics).

This is a longitudinal study, and the study ultimately hopes to show whether:
1. feeling engaged within the department reduces the likelihood of dropping out of the program.
2. whether the process of deciding to stay in astronomy is different for women and men.
Bottom line is that mentoring matters! Mentoring can help students to feel welcome in the department, to feel that they can succeed, and to feel that they are at least as smart as their peers. However, the study also found that the longer the student remained in the program, beyond three years, the less likely the student is to think they will succeed and the more likely they are to be afraid that someone will find out that they really don’t belong in astronomy.

If a student spent a majority of their time as a Research Assistant, then they feel that they can be a good researcher provided they had good research equipment during their studies. Likewise, if a student spent a majority of their time as a Teaching Assistant, then they feel that they can be a good teacher. With regards to success, women are more likely than men to credit their success to hard work than their innate ability.


Future studies may include more statistics on race and ethnicity.

215th AAS: Meg Urry

The AAS Meeting was so big, I've asked a few people to help me summarize their thoughts and impressions of the meeting. I'll be posting them over the next days and weeks. Just to prove that I'm not the only one who felt overwhelmed by the size and scope of the biggest AAS Meeting ever, here are some thoughts on the meeting from Meg Urry, former chair of the CSWA, and organizer of the first two conferences on Women in Astronomy:

Major impression: the meeting was so huge, and so busy, that it was almost impossible to do even a fraction of the things I wanted to do. The AAS January meeting has changed enormously since I started going to them 20-some years ago. Now meetings are many times bigger – typical attendance at my first meetings was a few hundred, and 600 people was a big meeting. I remember when we broke 1000, that was big news. Now we are over 3000. It was nice that there was one hotel, with lots of places to sit and talk – that really encouraged people to get together. Even so, I missed seeing more people than I actually saw.

Second big impression (almost goes without saying now): tons of young people, reporting on REU projects, and tons of women. Hard to believe that seeing other women at a AAS meeting used to be unusual. It really makes you feel as if the final barriers have been broken.

Third big impression: great talks, extremely exciting stuff happening – and not enough time to hear about all of it. Looking forward to reading more in the journals.

I agree with all of the above. I recall my first AAS Meeting in 2003, showing up with husband and baby in tow. The grad student with the poster next to mine remarked to me that she would love to see more pregnant women and people with babies at astronomy conferences. I think her wish has come true, by and large. I also found myself torn between multiple parallel sessions pretty much the entire time. As the field of astronomy has grown, so has its diversity.

215th AAS Meeting, Day 1

Welcome to the New Year, and with it, the 215th AAS Meeting in Washington, DC!

Today, I'm looking forward to the afternoon special session on the Longitudinal Study, in Virginia B.

I also want to pass on Kelle's suggestion that those of us twittering from the meeting use the tag #aas215 so that we can all find each other's posts. I'll be twittering as hannah_jc, as usual.

Here's to a great meeting!