The AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy has compiled dozens of interviews highlighting the diversity of career trajectories available to astronomers, planetary scientists, etc. The interviews share advice and lessons learned from individuals on those paths.
Below is our interview with Dr. Jennifer Bartlett, the Project Scientist for Astrophysics at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Throughout her career, she has been interested in astrometry, the history of astronomy, computer science, and library science and worked in government and industry between degrees. She earned her bachelor’s degree at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and her graduate degrees at the University of Virginia, from which she earned her PhD in 2007.
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| Image Credit: Jennifer Bartlett |
Where have you lived and worked?
I was born and raised in Virginia. When I left for college, I did not imagine that I would return to my hometown. However, after completing my bachelor’s degree, I returned to Virginia to live and work and eventually return to school. My graduate education was initially financed by my employers until the University of Virginia insisted I quit my engineering job to go to school full-time for a year.
I continued to live in Virginia until last year. There is something both unnerving and uplifting to give a community outreach talk knowing your high school science teachers are listening.
What was your last academic position in astronomy/physics?
Kinnear Chair in Physics, US Naval Academy 2021-2023, a 2-3 year visiting position that rotates between the Physics and Chemistry departments.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Hampden-Sydney College 2006-2007, 2001-2002. I taught at the all-male Hampden-Sydney while I was in graduate school. The first time was the year after I completed my master’s degree. The second time was the year I defended my dissertation.
What were the most important factors that led you to leave astronomy and/or academia?
Much as I enjoyed teaching at Hampden-Sydney College and the US Naval Academy, I was not in the right position at the right time for a permanent position. My other opportunities for academic positions did not align well with opportunities for the rest of my family, either employment for my husband or education for my son. Our recent relocation to Massachusetts after years in Virginia was more challenging than we anticipated, but we believe it is the best choice for everyone. Because I enjoy teaching and mentoring, I am looking for opportunities to include more students in my work at CfA. Last summer, I sailed on the US Coast Guard Barque Eagle from Hamilton, Bermuda, to Halifax, Canada, to train cadets in celestial navigation, a very practical application of astronomy.
If you have made a career change, what was your age at the time? I have made multiple career changes, most recently in my 50s. Leaving RPI with an undergraduate degree in physics, I went into political campaign management, lobbying, and legislative service. After a few years, I tried information security for about a year. Next, I returned to using my physics background as a space systems engineer. Seven years after completing my undergraduate education, I started a part-time graduate program in astronomy using my employee education benefits. While still in graduate school, I moved from space systems to naval systems engineering and eventually to teaching. After completing my doctorate, which required 10 years, I joined the US Naval Observatory as a geodesist. I then moved into astronomical software application development. Three years ago, I tried teaching again when a temporary position opened at the US Naval Academy. Each change has brought challenges and opportunities. I have learned something and found interesting experiences with each new position. What, if any, additional training did you complete in order to meet the qualifications? To move fully from systems engineer to astronomer, I completed my doctoral work. To be a better teacher, I participated in education workshops offered at AAS meetings and through the teaching and learning centers at my institutions. As a graduate student, I also had a fellowship in instructional technology. I am currently taking training in effective lesson development from the University of California, Los Angeles. As I moved into software development, I took numerous short professional development classes in programming and software engineering.
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| Working aloft on USCGC Healy Image Credit. J. Bartlett |
If you have made a career change, what was your age at the time? I have made multiple career changes, most recently in my 50s. Leaving RPI with an undergraduate degree in physics, I went into political campaign management, lobbying, and legislative service. After a few years, I tried information security for about a year. Next, I returned to using my physics background as a space systems engineer. Seven years after completing my undergraduate education, I started a part-time graduate program in astronomy using my employee education benefits. While still in graduate school, I moved from space systems to naval systems engineering and eventually to teaching. After completing my doctorate, which required 10 years, I joined the US Naval Observatory as a geodesist. I then moved into astronomical software application development. Three years ago, I tried teaching again when a temporary position opened at the US Naval Academy. Each change has brought challenges and opportunities. I have learned something and found interesting experiences with each new position. What, if any, additional training did you complete in order to meet the qualifications? To move fully from systems engineer to astronomer, I completed my doctoral work. To be a better teacher, I participated in education workshops offered at AAS meetings and through the teaching and learning centers at my institutions. As a graduate student, I also had a fellowship in instructional technology. I am currently taking training in effective lesson development from the University of California, Los Angeles. As I moved into software development, I took numerous short professional development classes in programming and software engineering.
To move from individual technical contributor to supervisor, I completed a Navy executive leadership training program, including earning my Project Management Professional certification and multiple courses at the Annapolis School of Seamanship. For privileged access to Navy networks, I earned a CompTIA Security+ certification.
I will probably undertake some more formal training in computer and information science for my current position over the next few years.
Describe job hunting and networking resources you used and any other advice/resources.
I obtained most of my early non-astronomy jobs through networking. Even as I moved into astronomy positions, I maintained my engineering networks by keeping in touch with former colleagues and attending functions.
Moving from graduate school into a professional career in astronomy, I leaned heavily on the school placement office. I made consistent appointments with the same counselor and developed a strong relationship with her as I worked to improve and tailor all of my application materials.
More recently, I worked with Alaina Levine through the AAS employment services to make a late career change within astronomy. I have also participated in mentoring circles offered by the Association for Women in Science, District of Columbia chapter.
Some of the best advice I received at my first or second AAS meeting was that the best use of my time at meetings was networking, regardless of whether I was actively looking for a job. I try not to miss an opportunity to connect with people, which strengthens all of our relationships.
What has been your career path since you completed your degree?
I completed my doctorate while teaching full-time (4/3 load) at Hampden-Sydney College as a sabbatical replacement. At the end of that 1-year contract, I accepted a GS-12/13 career position with the Naval Observatory in the Astrometry Department. I learned about the position from staff members to whom my advisor had introduced me and with whom I had remained in contact for several years. After 2 years, I moved to a GS-12 position in the Astronomical Applications Department. In my first months in that position, I learned I was pregnant. Instead of full-time maternity leave using all of my available leave, I negotiated to work from home for several months using a few hours of leave each week, I returned to work full-time in person in time to apply for the position of GS-13/14 division chief, supervising a nominal team of 4 government astronomers and 3 contractors. After 11 years as division chief, I accepted a rotation as Kinnear Chair at the US Naval Academy. I stumbled across this position when I was on the institution website looking for other information. I taught one course each year in the general physics program, supported astronomy lectures, and mentored research students. Although my rotation was extended to the full three years, I chose to join the CfA as project scientist for astrophysics. I learned of this most recent opportunity through a banner on the ADS website.
What have been particularly valuable skills for your current job that you gained through completing your degree?
The most important technical skill for my current position is one I developed as part of my degree program: how to do research - how to ask a question, how to consider what additional information I need, how to develop a means of testing the ideas I have about the topic, and then how to summarize what I have learned for others to use. This skill applies to the research portion of my job and to the service portion of my job, and what changes is the types of questions I am asking. I can ask what stars are most practical to observe during nautical twilight or I can ask how we index bibliographies within a digital library. I am still working on both.
The most important soft skill for my current position is one I developed as part of my degree program: managing multiple priorities, projects, and people simultaneously. As a graduate student, I had my academic responsibilities alongside a professional career and a separate family business. As a project scientist, I have multiple projects designed to improve our services, community outreach
responsibilities, and leadership roles in AAS working groups along with my personal research. In both cases, I have to manage a family life as well. Describe a typical day at work. Like many jobs, a typical day involves too many meetings and too much staring at a screen. Today, I arrived at CfA at 9:30 AM after a 1.5-hour commute due to bad traffic, which I made longer by detouring to the Post Office to mail legal documents related to a family business matter. At 10:00 AM, I attended an in-person interview for a new librarian hire. Between the interview and a virtual planning meeting for the NASA booth at the January AAS meeting, I worked on a proposal for a fellow to assist me with illuminance research and uploaded data to an Open Science Foundation project as a step towards making it publicly available. I ate lunch at my desk, a habit that I am trying to break. I had planned to attend a stress test of a new feature that would improve the reading of scanned literature hosted by ADS; however, that session was deferred to next week. I had planned to attend a virtual meeting of the Astrophysics Data Center Executive Council (ADEC) but my supervisor recommended that I simply submit an update for the minutes. Instead, he met in-person with all the project scientists to review which professional meetings we planned to attend over the next year and would we be staffing a booth or presenting. We were briefly sidelined by a discussion of the network issues ADS and SciX have been experiencing. As a further aside, these issues were also preventing a colleague from compiling a bibliography of all the papers written by Steve Murray, one of the founders of ADS. The biography of Murray will appear in the third edition of the Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers that I am editing. After that, I worked on a draft lesson plan for a training module intended to teach librarians about using the new Science Explorer (SciX) interface and about Open Science resources. Then, I met virtually to discuss our progress in designing these lessons with the librarian with whom I am collaborating. Next, I cross-referenced candidates for the ADS and SciX users groups and issued invitations for new members of the ADS Users Group. The commute home took only an hour. My menfolk were at Boy Scouts so I ate dinner alone, chatted with my mother on the telephone, and, then, attended a virtual Compline service. By then, my men were home and I put my son to bed. I am now writing this profile, which I should have completed last week. Earlier this week, I chased down registrations for the January AAS meeting for our team here and the Oral History Interview program. I started collecting information for a HAD News article about the Astro observatory. I looked over illuminance measurements made by a colleague during the 2017 total solar eclipse for comparison with my 2024 experiment. I walked across Harvard to collect a book about the development of astrophotography because CfA no longer has a local library. I attended a colloquium given by Stephanie Jarmak, our project scientist for planetary science, on her asteroid research. I reviewed recent claims of planets orbiting Barnard’s Star and sent the latest paper on the topic to my graduate advisor who is now retired. I participated in a planning meeting for the November ADS User
Group.
Looking forward to the rest of the week, the project scientists will meet with the leader of our development team to discuss priorities for the next year. We have a general staff meeting. I have two virtual appointments to mentor proteges: one is a non-traditional graduate student and the other is a mid-career scientist. I also need to write a recommendation for my summer intern from last summer. I will meet with a developer about assigning keywords from the Unified Astronomy Thesaurus to scholarly articles but need to review the 100 test cases he sent me so far. The senior editors of the Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers will meet this week to coordinate assignments. I anticipate editing at least two articles.
On a personal level, I attended the live (touring company) Mamma Mia! with my husband last night but will probably spend this weekend working on the tax filings for our family business.
All things considered, going to sea sounds like a wonderful idea right at the moment.
How many hours do you work in a week?
I plead the 5th.
What is your salary?
I am a Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory trust fund employee in the Boston metropolitan area, IS-1330-14 step 10, with a mandated annual salary of $179,462.
What is your level of satisfaction with your current job?
Very high.
What are the most enjoyable aspects of your job?
I enjoy the flexibility to define my position and pursue my own interests while contributing to an essential community resource.
What do you like most about your working environment? My current team is mutually supportive and bound together by a common passion for ADS. What opportunities does your job provide to be creative and/or to take initiative? On the creative side, I am exploring how to better promote and exploit public libraries within ADS. I am also considering how to harvest dissertations for ADS and the Astronomy Genealogy Project more efficiently than the current practice of hand entering all the data. All the project scientists are thinking about what relevance means within our discipline and how we would express that algorithmically. With respect to taking the initiative, I am working with the new AAS Working Group on the Unified Astronomy Thesaurus to recover from the loss of the part-time curator previously provided by the Wolbach Library. While the abrupt closure of the Wolbach Library was very disruptive, it is an opportunity to re-think everything about the Thesaurus and to revitalize this project to provide a single, controlled vocabulary to describe research products in astronomy, planetary science, and heliophysics. How satisfied are you with your work-life balance in your current job? To the extent that my life is out of balance, the fault is in my own enthusiasms. I am very intellectually engaged in many of the improvements to ADS on which we are working. I enjoy working with my scientific data. I am passionate about the preservation of our astronomic heritage and understanding the human cultural aspects of our science. I like doing public outreach projects. My son is at the angsty teen phase where no parent could understand the social trauma of high school nor remember how to solve an algebra equation or punctuate an essay. He does not, however, hesitate to ask me to work from home on a school holiday so he can have friends over or invite me to play D&D with his friends when tax season passes. Although I only work in-person at CfA three times a week, the hour plus commute from Framingham means that I see little of my family on those days. However, living closer would mean less satisfactory accommodations for our family. How family-friendly is your current position? My supervisor and my colleagues have been nothing but supportive of maintaining work-life balance. Our discussion today of what professional meetings we should attend included an appraisal of whether the anticipated travel would put too much stress on our families. The three-day a week in-person requirement is very much tempered by flexibility to take care of family matters, a sick child, a school play, What advice do you have for achieving work-life balance (including having a family)? I am blessed by a supportive husband and a delightful (for a teen, that is) son. I have an extended family, including elderly parents, that I love. My life would be diminished by the loss of any of these. On the other hand, I do have to work to support my family. However, I cannot work or take care of them if I do not maintain my own mental and physical health. Everyone’s requirements and responsibilities regarding work and family life are different. Each of us must determine our own definition of balance and figure out for ourselves what we need to accomplish that. In addition, the balance point will probably shift over the course of our lives. We need to keep assessing our situation and our needs. Do not be afraid or ashamed to ask for what you need to be a balanced and successful person. What do you do for fun (e.g., hobbies, pastimes, etc.)? My family are medieval re-enactors. I enjoy archery, axe throwing, fencing, dance, cooking, embroidery, weaving, and nalbinding. I am determined to master the drop spindle. I look forward to some version of my schedule that allows me to resume swimming on a regular basis. I read voraciously. My husband generously refrained from commenting on the number of my books, even when two trips with a pick-up truck were required when I was moving offices. Can we include your email address for people who may want to contact you directly about your specific career route? Certainly, jennifer.bartlett_at_cfa.harvard.edu (replace the _at_ with @).
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| Bartlett on her first day at CfA Image Credit: J. Bartlett |
responsibilities, and leadership roles in AAS working groups along with my personal research. In both cases, I have to manage a family life as well. Describe a typical day at work. Like many jobs, a typical day involves too many meetings and too much staring at a screen. Today, I arrived at CfA at 9:30 AM after a 1.5-hour commute due to bad traffic, which I made longer by detouring to the Post Office to mail legal documents related to a family business matter. At 10:00 AM, I attended an in-person interview for a new librarian hire. Between the interview and a virtual planning meeting for the NASA booth at the January AAS meeting, I worked on a proposal for a fellow to assist me with illuminance research and uploaded data to an Open Science Foundation project as a step towards making it publicly available. I ate lunch at my desk, a habit that I am trying to break. I had planned to attend a stress test of a new feature that would improve the reading of scanned literature hosted by ADS; however, that session was deferred to next week. I had planned to attend a virtual meeting of the Astrophysics Data Center Executive Council (ADEC) but my supervisor recommended that I simply submit an update for the minutes. Instead, he met in-person with all the project scientists to review which professional meetings we planned to attend over the next year and would we be staffing a booth or presenting. We were briefly sidelined by a discussion of the network issues ADS and SciX have been experiencing. As a further aside, these issues were also preventing a colleague from compiling a bibliography of all the papers written by Steve Murray, one of the founders of ADS. The biography of Murray will appear in the third edition of the Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers that I am editing. After that, I worked on a draft lesson plan for a training module intended to teach librarians about using the new Science Explorer (SciX) interface and about Open Science resources. Then, I met virtually to discuss our progress in designing these lessons with the librarian with whom I am collaborating. Next, I cross-referenced candidates for the ADS and SciX users groups and issued invitations for new members of the ADS Users Group. The commute home took only an hour. My menfolk were at Boy Scouts so I ate dinner alone, chatted with my mother on the telephone, and, then, attended a virtual Compline service. By then, my men were home and I put my son to bed. I am now writing this profile, which I should have completed last week. Earlier this week, I chased down registrations for the January AAS meeting for our team here and the Oral History Interview program. I started collecting information for a HAD News article about the Astro observatory. I looked over illuminance measurements made by a colleague during the 2017 total solar eclipse for comparison with my 2024 experiment. I walked across Harvard to collect a book about the development of astrophotography because CfA no longer has a local library. I attended a colloquium given by Stephanie Jarmak, our project scientist for planetary science, on her asteroid research. I reviewed recent claims of planets orbiting Barnard’s Star and sent the latest paper on the topic to my graduate advisor who is now retired. I participated in a planning meeting for the November ADS User
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| Bartlett and her son on eclipse day. Image Credit: J. Bartlett |
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| Showing how a sextant works Image Credit: J. Bartlett |
What do you like most about your working environment? My current team is mutually supportive and bound together by a common passion for ADS. What opportunities does your job provide to be creative and/or to take initiative? On the creative side, I am exploring how to better promote and exploit public libraries within ADS. I am also considering how to harvest dissertations for ADS and the Astronomy Genealogy Project more efficiently than the current practice of hand entering all the data. All the project scientists are thinking about what relevance means within our discipline and how we would express that algorithmically. With respect to taking the initiative, I am working with the new AAS Working Group on the Unified Astronomy Thesaurus to recover from the loss of the part-time curator previously provided by the Wolbach Library. While the abrupt closure of the Wolbach Library was very disruptive, it is an opportunity to re-think everything about the Thesaurus and to revitalize this project to provide a single, controlled vocabulary to describe research products in astronomy, planetary science, and heliophysics. How satisfied are you with your work-life balance in your current job? To the extent that my life is out of balance, the fault is in my own enthusiasms. I am very intellectually engaged in many of the improvements to ADS on which we are working. I enjoy working with my scientific data. I am passionate about the preservation of our astronomic heritage and understanding the human cultural aspects of our science. I like doing public outreach projects. My son is at the angsty teen phase where no parent could understand the social trauma of high school nor remember how to solve an algebra equation or punctuate an essay. He does not, however, hesitate to ask me to work from home on a school holiday so he can have friends over or invite me to play D&D with his friends when tax season passes. Although I only work in-person at CfA three times a week, the hour plus commute from Framingham means that I see little of my family on those days. However, living closer would mean less satisfactory accommodations for our family. How family-friendly is your current position? My supervisor and my colleagues have been nothing but supportive of maintaining work-life balance. Our discussion today of what professional meetings we should attend included an appraisal of whether the anticipated travel would put too much stress on our families. The three-day a week in-person requirement is very much tempered by flexibility to take care of family matters, a sick child, a school play, What advice do you have for achieving work-life balance (including having a family)? I am blessed by a supportive husband and a delightful (for a teen, that is) son. I have an extended family, including elderly parents, that I love. My life would be diminished by the loss of any of these. On the other hand, I do have to work to support my family. However, I cannot work or take care of them if I do not maintain my own mental and physical health. Everyone’s requirements and responsibilities regarding work and family life are different. Each of us must determine our own definition of balance and figure out for ourselves what we need to accomplish that. In addition, the balance point will probably shift over the course of our lives. We need to keep assessing our situation and our needs. Do not be afraid or ashamed to ask for what you need to be a balanced and successful person. What do you do for fun (e.g., hobbies, pastimes, etc.)? My family are medieval re-enactors. I enjoy archery, axe throwing, fencing, dance, cooking, embroidery, weaving, and nalbinding. I am determined to master the drop spindle. I look forward to some version of my schedule that allows me to resume swimming on a regular basis. I read voraciously. My husband generously refrained from commenting on the number of my books, even when two trips with a pick-up truck were required when I was moving offices. Can we include your email address for people who may want to contact you directly about your specific career route? Certainly, jennifer.bartlett_at_cfa.harvard.edu (replace the _at_ with @).
