Career Profile: Astronomer to STEM Inclusion and Outreach Specialist

 The AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy is compiling interviews highlighting the diversity of career trajectories available to astronomers. The interviews share advice and lessons learned from individuals on those paths.

Below is our interview with Regina Barber DeGraaff. Regina is a Mexican-Taiwanese-American, pop-culture-obsessed, astrophysicist, who teaches physics, astronomy, and science communication at WWU. Regina completed her PhD in physics at Washington State University in 2011, studying distant extragalactic globular clusters using the Hubble Space Telescope. Over five years ago Regina co-created and began to host the radio show (KMRE) & WWU podcast Spark Science. This talk show strives to humanize the scientist and make Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) accessible. She also created the position of the STEM Inclusion and Outreach Specialist at WWU devoted to the retention and support of underrepresented students and faculty in STEM. Through all her efforts, Regina’s goal is to break apart the scientist stereotype so that anyone can see themselves in science.

To access our previous Career Profiles, please go to http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/search/label/career%20profiles

AASWomen Newsletter for July 8, 2016

AAS Committee on the Status of Women

Issue of July 8, 2016

eds: Nicolle Zellner, Elysse Voyer, Heather Flewelling, and Christina Thomas

This week's issues:

1. Black Lives Matter - In Solidarity 

2. Astronomer to Health Care Data Scientist        

3. People Deem Feminine Women Less Likely to Be Scientists

4. Men cite themselves more than women do

5. “We Got This”

6. Gender Summit Europe 2016

7. UK risks losing over 33,000 much-needed female scientists each year, research shows 

8. Tips for Getting Girls Involved in STEM  

9. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

10. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

11. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

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On LGBTQ Visibility at Colloquia

Today's guest post is by Dr. Jane Rigby. Jane Rigby is an astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, a contributor to Astrobetter, and a member of the AAS’s Committee for Sexual-Orientation & Gender Minorities in Astronomy (SGMA)).  This is one of a series of regular monthly posts from SGMA.

You know the experiment where you give first graders crayons and ask them to draw a scientist. They draw white men with beards. Given that, if we want to make STEM more inclusive, we need to change the “scientist” cartoon in peoples’ minds. On average and generalizing, my female colleagues give more public talks than my male colleagues. In part, I think this is a conscious effort on their part to make female scientists more visible to the public.

A while back, my colleague Jason Wright (at my Alma Mater, Penn State) asked me a question about visibility for LGBTQ speakers in particular, and I responded. We did not come to any conclusions, so here we hope to start a broader conversation on the topic here that could inform LGBTQ colloquium speakers and their hosts. 

AASWOMEN Newsletter for August 15, 2014

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of August 15, 2014
eds: Daryl Haggard, Nicolle Zellner, Meredith Hughes, & Elysse Voyer

This week's issues:

1. All Sparks Are Good Sparks
2. Report from 5th International Conference on Women in Physics 
3. Career Profiles: Astronomer to President of a Defense Industry Company
4. AAS/DPS Astronomy Ambassadors Outreach Workshop
5. Top Math Prize Has Its First Female Winner
6. Should Women "Man Up" for Male-dominated Fields?
7. How "The Big Bang Theory" Represents Women in Science
8. Why are the media so obsessed with female scientists' appearance?
9. Women in science: A temporary liberation
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

Astronomy Postdoctoral Positions where EPO is Explicitly Included & Valued

Each year postdoc applicants ask -- besides the NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship, are there other astronomy postdoctoral opportunities in which education/outreach efforts are explicitly included and valued as part of your effort? 

Below is the list I've compiled so far. If you know of other opportunities, please post a comment or send me an email. I'll then post the final list to the AstroBetter Wiki, astrobites, and aas.org (if they're interested), and/or anywhere else people suggest. 

Embedding Networking Opportunities for Women in STEM into your Outreach Events

We hosted (our first annual) Girls Do Hack at the Adler Planetarium this past Saturday… and it was awesome. Fifty Chicago Public School high school girls came to the planetarium to participate in a full day of STEM-tech activities, like mobile phone app coding, detecting planets around other stars, designing low-cost water filtration systems with 3D printers, creating their own planetarium shows using World Wide Telescope, and much more.

Boys need outreach, too

Lately, I've been finding myself doing a lot of public outreach directed towards boys.

This is mostly because I'm the mother of two boys, and both are heavily involved with Boy Scouts, and whenever they work on a badge related to science, they call upon their in-house scientist, namely me. And while I'd love to do more outreach to girls as well, it's easiest to follow the path of least resistance in pursuing outreach opportunities, given my busy life as pre-tenure faculty and working mother. The Girl Scouts don't seem to be nearly as active in my kids' school. It seems like the girls lose interest in scouting by 4th or 5th grade. I do volunteer in my kids' schools, too, but I don't do much exclusively with girls when I do.

So how does this jibe with my commitment and desire to increase the participation of women in STEM?

While I may not be directly encouraging girls in STEM by working with Boy Scouts, I do serve as an example to them. When I volunteered to talk about being a scientist to my older son's Webelos den, the den leader introduced me by saying, "We have a special guest scientist to speak to you today," and the kids all looked around wondering who the scientist was. They were a little surprised when I stepped forward. I believe I made an impression on them that day, that a scientist can look like someone's mom, and not always a wild-haired white man in a lab coat. Perhaps they will be more respectful of their female peers who go into STEM fields. Someday, they might support their spouses' career ambitions, whatever they might be. Maybe their younger sisters will hear about so-and-so's mom who is a scientist, and realize that it's something they could do, too. So not only do I get to increase the scientific literacy of these boys, but I also get to set an example for them, as a woman scientist and a working mother.

There was a time I thought that raising a daughter to be a confident, successful scientist would be the best way to help women in science. It's become more and more clear to me that it's just as important to raise sons who respect women, too.

Guest Post: Lauren Tompkins on Expanding Your Horizons

Guest Post from Lauren Tompkins a postdoc in the University of Chicago ATLAS group.

Last February, as my first winter as a University of Chicago postdoc wore on, I became restless with my everyday routine.  I was doing interesting work on an electronics upgrade to the Atlas Experiment at the LHC, but felt disconnected from life outside of the Ivory Tower.  I thought that doing some outreach, particularly in a city as large and diverse as Chicago, would restore that connection for me.  As was mentioned in a previous post, finding an existing program is a good way to get started in outreach, so I set out to find a program that I was sure would exist in Chicago, Expanding Your Horizons (EYH).  

EYH is an international organization of over 70 one-day conferences for middle school girls.  At the conferences, women from the local STEM community do hands-on workshops with the girls, showing them that STEM careers are fun and accessible, hoping to empower them to take their place in the science and technology world.  Jessica and I participated in EYH several times through UC Berkeley’s Society of Women in the Physical Sciences.  Our perennial workshop was build-your-own radio.  Our group spent less than $500 on simple crystal radio kits which we helped the 45 girls construct during the workshop. Watching their faces light up when they first heard a transmission on a radio they constructed by hand was a treat. EYH seemed like a perfect way to get involved in outreach.  

Guest Post: Julia Kamenetzky on Tips for Conducting Astronomy Outreach

Julia Kamenetzky is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Colorado at Boulder.  Her research focuses on extragalactic submillimeter spectroscopy with Z-Spec and Herschel.  She is active in CU’s Women in Astronomy group and is the recent winner of the CU Boulder Graduate School’s Dorothy Martin Doctoral Student Award for a student active in women’s issues.

Role models are critically important for encouraging young people to pursue science and math careers, especially young girls.  Astronomy is in a unique position because space is an incredibly interesting and awe-inspiring topic for the general public, yet most people don’t have a good understanding of what astronomers do.  As I mentioned in a previous guest blog post, I recently started working with an afterschool STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) program for elementary school girls.  

For this guest blog post, I wanted to share some tips for conducting astronomy outreach, based on what I’ve learned:

- Make it easy for yourself.  Finding an established outreach group is ideal because you can volunteer your time but not have to worry about finding space or advertising to get participants.  Use established curriculum from sources such as NASA (http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/index.html); if you’re not worried about strict classroom standards, feel free to pick and choose the portions you want to use and the ones that are not necessary for the outreach environment.  Utilize equipment from your department, local planetariums and science museums instead of reinventing the wheel.  If you have money to spend, utilize websites and catalogues for science teachers (such as http://www.teachersource.com, I found the ultraviolet detecting beads to be a big hit).

- Make it easy for your volunteers  My goal was to establish a bridge between our Women in Astronomy group and the school group, so that those who recognize the importance of volunteering can just sign-up and spend a few hours of their time volunteering without advanced preparation.  Utilize online services such as Doodle or Google Forms to determine availability or sign-up volunteers electronically.  Send volunteers the plan of activities so that they can know what to expect and ask questions ahead of time in order to feel more comfortable when they arrive.  If possible, offering carpooling may be useful.  We are all busy so don’t make extra work for yourself or others.

Feminine Role Models

This week's guest blogger is Kate Follette. Kate is a graduate student at Steward Observatory and an adjunct instructor at Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona. Her scientific research focuses on planet formation in circumstellar disks, and she is also engaged in educational research on mitigating quantitative illiteracy through introductory science courses for non-majors. 

I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who was dismayed when I read the headline “My Fair Physicist? Feminine Math and Science Role Models Demotivate Young Girls”.

The article, which was posted to the WIA blog on April 16th and is linked here, was published in Social, Psychological and Personality Science. Its abstract reads:

Women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are labeled unfeminine, a costly social label that may discourage female students from pursuing these fields. Challenges to this stereotype include feminine STEM role models, but their counterstereotypic-yet-feminine success may actually be demotivating, particularly to young girls.

• Study 1 showed that feminine STEM role models reduced middle school girls’ current math interest, self-rated ability, and success expectations relative to gender-neutral STEM role models and depressed future plans to study math among STEM-disidentified girls. These results did not extend to feminine role models displaying general (not STEM-specific) school success, indicating that feminine cues were not driving negative outcomes. 

• Study 2 suggested that feminine STEM role models’ combination of femininity and success seemed particularly unattainable to STEM-disidentified girls.
The results call for a better understanding of feminine STEM figures aimed at motivating young girls.

After reading the study myself, the bitter aftertaste of its primary conclusion - that “feminine” STEM role models demotivate girls who are STEM-disinclined - stuck with me for several months. I kept coming back to it and thinking “this CAN’T be true, can it??”

I do a fair amount of outreach with middle-school aged girls, and I’d like to consider myself a “feminine” STEM role model.  I don’t want to believe that my femininity is “demotivating”. Of course, just because I don’t want to believe it doesn’t mean that it’s not true.

The root of my personal discontent is that as a STEM role model, the message I received was that I should choose to be either discipline-independently feminine OR gender-neutral if I want to motivate young girls (or avoid demotivating them). I loathe this idea, because to consciously cultivate a “gender-neutral” appearance/demeanor or avoid specific mention of STEM success means not practicing what I preach. I want to be myself when I work with girls, and encourage them to do the same.

So before accepting their conclusion at face value, I suggest that we approach this paper with the same rigor afforded any other published scientific paper. Let’s  examine the data and experimental method and decide for ourselves whether the conclusion is warranted.  Here’s what I found when I did so:

1) Just 144 and 42 girls’ data were analyzed to draw conclusions for Studies 1 and 2 respectively.

2) Although statistics on the race distribution and grade level of participants are provided, no other demographic information is given. A few simple and potentially revealing questions might include how many/what type of schools were included, geographic (urban vs. rural) information, socioeconomic status, etc.

3) The crux of Study 1 was three interviews with university students, which the girls read and answered questions about. The setup is described as follows: “Participants then read magazine-type interviews with three female university students displaying feminine (e.g., wearing pink clothes and makeup, likes reading fashion magazines) or gender-neutral appearance and characteristics (e.g., wearing dark-colored clothes and glasses, likes reading).” Is this the definition of femininity?  Feminine women don’t read books or wear black?  This strikes me as almost comically narrow.

4) Since the students were only reacting to a small number of role model interviews (n=3) and rating them in general categories such as “positivity” and “perceived similarity”, it seems to me that conducting interviews with participants regarding WHY they chose certain rankings would be advisable. This could serve to reassure the reader that the girls are basing their rankings on the characteristics that the study designers claim – femininity and STEM success. In the educational literature this is called establishing “content validity” and involves answering the question “does your instrument measure what you think it does?” I’m not a social scientist, but I imagine that such a thing is (or should be) standard practice.

5) The second study used a similar set of interviews but asked two more direct questions
a. “How likely do you think it is that you could be both as successful in math/science AND as feminine or girly as these students by the end of high school”
b. “Do being good at math and being girly go together?”
The effect here was the same, but more marginal than in the first study (see Figure 3 of the paper) and had fewer participants (n=42), a less-standard setup (some girls participated in a classroom and some at a county fair) and a procedural error through which an (unspecified) number of girls didn’t receive item 2.

While this study is an interesting and thought-provoking result worthy of further investigation, I would have liked to see more of an effort on the part of the authors to emphasize the small and preliminary nature of the study.  Scientists of all persuasions need to be careful about how their work will be interpreted by non-experts, and this study reaches some particularly dangerous and counterproductive conclusions to be throwing around before they are fully supported by evidence. It is NOT the final word on the advantageousness of feminine STEM role models.

New Blogger -- Hello! & One Example of the Mutual Benefits of Outreach

As a new member of the CSWA and first-time blogger, I thought I'd take this moment to introduce myself: I recently began my first (only?!) postdoc as a CIERA (Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics) fellow at Northwestern University. In my research, I use optical emission line and X-ray diagnostics to identify galaxies that are actively accreting material onto their central supermassive black holes and the role that this accretion (and the consequent feedback) plays in galaxy evolution.

I've kept myself happy and sane by working to protect a life outside of research -- as a roller derby queen with the Mad Rollin' Dolls (my moniker was 'Big Bang'... really, what else could you be as an astronomer crashing around on wheels?), as a stilt walker and trapeze artist (still looking for good names for this alter ego, any suggestions?), etc.

I was also lucky to have been part of a great group of women (and men) graduate students at UW-Madison. Together we formed WOWSAP (Women of Wisconsin Strengthening Astronomy and Physics), a mentoring and networking group for women graduate students, postdocs, and early career faculty. The discussions we had and the professional development we provided for ourselves played a key role in keeping me in this field.

For the Spring 2011 AAS in Boston, CSWA has proposed to host a special session panel discussion on 1) ways to ensure the sustainability of mentoring programs and 2) sharing examples of how departments and institutions have managed to change the climate so that these programs become accepted as the norm. I'd very much appreciate hearing about your experiences with these two aspects of mentoring programs.

Have you had success (or encountered obstacles) promoting the sustainability and institutionalization of a program in your department, university, or other work place? What ways have you found to improve climate and culture with respect to mentoring/networking programs?

Outreach, in its various forms, has also provided an essential counterbalance to my time spent doing research. I'm sure many of you feel the same -- one very much energizes the other. My current postdoc position is ideal for me, with an 80/20 split between research and education/outreach. Which brings me to the real subject of today's blog:

Part of my CIERA appointment is as an advisor to the STEM graduate students involved in Northwestern's recently funded NSF GK12 'Reach for the Stars' program*. 'Reach for the Stars' pairs STEM graduate students with local middle and high-school teachers to develop computational modeling curricula for their K-12 science classrooms and provide authentic research experiences for the K-12 students.

Recently I read Kitts (2009), which provides further supporting arguments for programs like GK12. Kitts presents the results of surveying 2500 rural and urban middle- and high-school students on their attitudes about science as a career. On the positive side, the work of the last 10+ years in portraying scientists as people appears to have paid off -- most students no longer view scientists as 'other', e.g., caricatures in white lab coats. However, not surprisingly, a major hurdle remains the lack of direct interaction with science role models and lack of authentic science experiences**. The opportunity to identify with scientists and envision themselves as scientists greatly enhances youth consideration of science as a career (Kitts 2009).

The GK12 STEM graduate students, in turn, are gaining invaluable experience learning to effectively communicate their science, an extremely important skill that's given too little (if any) focus in most graduate programs. Incorporating their research into the K-12 curriculum forces the grad students to think about the big picture connections and motivations for their research, about audience preconceptions and ways to highlight the relevance to existing interests, about the use of jargon and how best to introduce and use specific terminology, about ways to gauge audience understanding, etc.

What have you found to be effective in developing your ability to communicate your science to a broad audience? What support are you providing for the students you're mentoring to develop this important skill?

My current list:

Within a department/research center:

- promote a culture of support and acceptance so that students have a chance to build their confidence, make mistakes, and constructively learn from these mistakes

- present articles in a journal club setting (not just within your research group)

- take the lead on summarizing an article for an astro-ph setting. Check out http://voxcharta.org -- my new favorite organizational resource

- mentor, mentor, mentor

- practice 2 minute talks (i.e., an engaging, big-picture 2 minute summary of your research for use in informal moments, like during coffee breaks at the AAS).

Through education/outreach in your local community:

- give public lectures for a general audience (look to your local science museum, community centers, retirement homes, etc.)

- lead activities for science clubs at local schools, science museums, community centers, etc.

*The NSF GK12 program, now at over 140 universities, began in 1999. Potential grad students -- check out this great program!

**There were no statistically significant differences between male and female responses in this survey. Differences with respect to race or socioeconomic status were not investigated, although the article notes that minority youth are particularly challenged in constructing a science identity because of cultural stereotypes about their competence (see Hanson 2008).

Kitts. 2009. "The Paradox of Middle and High School Students' Attitudes towards Science vs their Attitudes about Science as a Career", Journal of Geoscience Education, 57, 2

Work-Family: It's Not Always About Balance

So often we hear discussions of work-family balance, as if work is on entirely one side of the scale and family is on the other, and the two must always be in conflict. This article in today's Washington Post is no exception. The article discusses the challenges faced by women trying to succeed in academia, challenges I'm all too familiar with.

To be perfectly honest, I've been avoiding discussing some of my own personal experience with work-family issues on this blog, in large part because of evidence that mothers are at a distinct disadvantage in the job market. But the reality is that having children has made me a better communicator, educator, and scientist, so to not acknowledge my kids is to do them a disservice.

My kids are in elementary school now, and they are always bubbling over with questions about how the universe around them works. Explaining scientific concepts to them is a source of joy for me, though I sometimes have to stop myself when I find myself rambling on excitedly on some topic for 10 minutes at a time while their eyes slowly glaze over. My kids have taught me how to simply but accurately explain things to them before their attention spans time out. They have also taught me that my enthusiasm for science is contagious.

Recently, I participated in Science Day at my kids' elementary school, where a variety of scientists were brought in to talk to the kids. I was assigned the first graders. Although I had given public talks before and am completely comfortable with facing challenging questions from PhD scientists, I was really really anxious heading into Science Day. Would I be able to handle a classroom full of antsy six- and seven-year olds? As it turned out, the experience was a lot of fun for myself, the children, and their teachers. I talked to them a little bit about what it was like to be an astronomer, and my heart warmed when I asked them, "how many of you would like to be an astronomer when you grow up?" and nearly all of them, including the girls, raised their hands. Most of the kids are ethnic minorities, too. It's thanks to my kids that I both had the opportunity to do Science Day, and had the experience to carry it out successfully.

Children are naturally curious about the world around them. So many times, their simple, "why does...?" questions turn out to have rather profound answers. We went blueberry picking earlier this summer, and after staring at his stained hands, my son asked, "Why are they called blueberries? The juice is purple." This led to a full-fledged kitchen chemistry experiment involving acids and bases and blueberry juice as an indicator. I had just as much fun as my son did. My kids' enthusiasm and joy of discovery make me more enthusiastic about pursuing science questions of my own.

My children enrich my scientific life. So while there are days where I have to head out early to chaffeur them to one activity or another, and there are late evenings that I spend working while the kids sleep, I don't believe that the work-family balance is an either-or proposition: sometimes they can work in harmony together.