Explore Employment Committee Resources and Workshops

By Chelsea Sharon and Amit Vishwas on behalf of the Employment Committee

In the lead up to the AAS January meeting, the Committee on Employment invites you to explore some of the resources we provide to the AAS community, both at the meeting and throughout the year! We're excited to bring you a wealth of online resources and upcoming events designed to support your career journey. Whether you're seeking guidance on job searches, professional development, or networking opportunities, we have plenty to explore.

While you might be familiar with the Job Register, the AAS Careers page hosts information on a variety of employment topics for all career stages. For our undergraduate members, there is a long list of summer research opportunities to explore. Or if you find yourself frequently fielding questions from high school students interested in astronomy careers, we have recently updated a detailed description of the skills, educational background, and career path options that you can pass along to prospective young astronomers. The Career Resources page has useful compilations of advice, such as

Astronomy-powered careers.
Image Credit: AAS Committee on Employment

networking and job hunting in general. If you are serving on the hiring side of employment, we also have resources on best practices in equitable hiring with references. If you’re considering careers outside of academia, but aren’t sure where to start, we have an extensive archive of Panel Discussions on the AAS YouTube channel, as well written profiles on astronomy-powered careers. 

If you can’t find what you’re looking for, please reach out to anyone on the Employment Committee, and we’ll see what we can do to help! We are always open to suggestions about new resources we can provide the community, and we aim to support all types of careers paths in astronomy and beyond. 

For those attending the Winter Meeting in National Harbor, the Employment Committee is putting on two workshops that you could benefit from:

• "How To Give Great Presentations: A Scientist’s Guide to Effective Communication” on Saturday January 11th from 9am to 5pm. If you’re nervous about giving your first talk at an AAS meeting, this workshop would be particularly timely for you! 
• "Effective Project Management for Everyone: How to Get Things Done” on Sunday January 12th from 8am until noon. This workshop will cover many of the tools and best practices for project management that astronomers can adopt from our friends in industry! So if you are  struggling to juggle multiple projects, are applying to faculty positions and want to have skills in place to manage your group, or are thinking about transitioning to industry and want to learn some useful skills for outside academia, this workshop is for you! 

And don’t forget about the Beyond Academe career panel and roundtable discussion groups during the meeting on Tuesday the 14th at 2pm and 3:30pm, respectively! We have a diverse line up of panelists, including folks from the world of philanthropy, science communication, aerospace, and data science. The more personal and informal roundtable discussions after the panel are a great avenue to network and explore ideas for professional growth. The roundtables also include people from traditional academic roles and at different types of institutions, such as folks working at observatories, primarily undergraduate institutions, nonprofits, and public outreach institutions, so there is something for everyone.

In addition to these workshops and roundtables, there is a whole host of other pre-meeting workshops you can sign up for. Topics include data science skills, specific telescope tools, proposal writing, classroom teaching, and more! If you didn’t sign up for a workshop when you first registered, you can still add one. 

• Follow the meeting registration link, log in, scroll all the way down to the workshops, and click on the “Add” button to add them to your shopping cart. 
• Proceed to checkout, enter the payment information and submit. You will see the confirmation page and receive an email when registered.

We encourage you to explore the Employment Committee resources at the AAS meeting if you are attending, and online if you are not. Let's connect, learn, and grow together! You can find the contact information of the Employment Committee on the AAS website here.

AAS Committee on Employment and You! Services and Recent Updates

By Luisa Fernanda Zambrano-Marin, Emily Mason, Chelsea Sharon, and Julia Kamenetzky

The AAS Committee on Employment is here for you! What will you do for work once you complete your degree? How far up in the degree ladder are you interested in going? What branch of work would you want to go into? Here is a summary of what we have been up to this year to help you answer these questions and more!

The AAS Committee on Employment has been quite active updating our online resources and providing training to AAS members. We are composed of fourteen passionate members, led by Julia Kamenetzky from Westminster University; our charge is to

facilitate the professional development and employment of astronomers

at all career stages and on all career paths, and

to promote balance and fairness in the job market

Our most visible activities for the AAS community are workshops and splinter sessions at the winter AAS meetings. This year kicked off with the popular How to Give Great Presentations workshop, led by Rob Coyne and Kavitha Arur at the AAS 243 Winter meeting in New Orleans. Next came Beyond Academe, an awesome event showcasing diverse career paths beyond the traditional academic track. We had a panel discussion featuring NASA scientists, science communicators, and more, who painted a vivid picture of the possibilities for careers beyond academia. The roundtables, where 75 participants were guided by 20 expert facilitators, dove into specific career paths in an engaging exchange of ideas. The committee also sponsored the Software & Data Carpentries Workshops and the Astronomers Turned Data Scientists Splinter Session.

AAS Committee on Employment members (from left to right): Kavitha Arur, Quyen Hart, Julia Kamenetzky, Rica Sirbaugh French, and Amit Vishwas at the Beyond Academe Roundtable Discussion event at AAS 243 in New Orleans. Photo credit to Diane Frendak.

Our committee also works behind the scenes to support AAS members. The committee joined forces with AAS staff to provide feedback and suggestions for the revamp of the Job Register webpage, ensuring clarity and ease of use for both employers and job seekers. Members Emily Mason and Dave Principe have been conducting detailed textual analysis of job postings, in addition to our annual quantitative analysis of postings. 

We kept on with the redesign and update of the list of resources available at the AAS Career Resources webpage including the Academic Career Advice page! Updates to more resource pages will be available shortly. For a summary of the resources available to job seekers and those in charge of hiring (including resources to help ensure an equitable and fair search process) see Chelsea Sharon’s post on the AAS Digest. 

Collaboration is key. We actively engage with other AAS groups, such as the Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy and the AAS Education and Mentoring Specialist Tom Rice, fostering knowledge sharing and identifying areas of common interest. Additionally, we joined forces with the Beyond Academic Careers Advisory Committee (BACAC), aiming to amplify their collective impact. AAS Committee on Employment members also serve on the Meetings Task Force, the Early Career Engagement Task Force, and the AAS Workshop Task Force. 

Looking ahead, our main projects are to continue with popular workshops at AAS meetings. We plan to

• introduce a new Project Management workshop,
• nurture collaborations with BACAC and other AAS committees and task forces,
• keep analyzing job data,
• improve website access to career resources, and
• support international students' and employees’ special concerns.

The AAS Committee on Employment continues to support astronomers’ career aspirations worldwide. We seek to empower individuals at every career stage, foster collaboration, advocate for transparency within the field, and pave the way for a brighter future for the astronomy community.

CIERA REU Career Panel Discussion

By Aaron Geller

Aaron Geller is director of the Northwestern CIERA REU program and an NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow (AAPF) jointly appointed at Northwestern and the Adler Planetarium.  In addition to his REU/EPO activities, Aaron develops astronomy visualizations and researches star clusters and stellar evolution. His interests include dynamics in a star cluster environment and the binary and multiple stars and planetary systems that live inside, and how star clusters contribute to the production of exotic systems.  

Continuing our annual tradition, Northwestern University's CIERA Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) program hosted a live, online Career Panel discussion last week for our summer undergraduate researchers, hosted by the director of the CIERA REU program, Aaron Geller. The archived video can be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNLvliVF_Kg

Astronomers develop an incredibly useful (and employable!) set of skills while pursuing their degree and research interests. The latest stats indicate that while ~75% of recent astronomy Ph.D.s accepted a postdoc position, over 80% eventually pursue careers outside the tenure track faculty route.  

Similar to last year, one theme running through this panel discussion was the transference of skills and knowledge obtained during our panelists' Ph.D. to their current jobs, and what opportunities students should pursue during graduate school to prepare themselves for the range of careers available. 

Panelists:

Melissa Nysewander - Director of Data Science at Fidelity Investments
Leslie Sage - Senior Editor, Physical Sciences, Nature

Colette Salyk - Faculty Vassar College

Francesca Valsecci - Data Scientist / Consultant at Clarity Solution Group

Eric Wilcots - Faculty/Dean University of Wisconsin - Madison

Join us live: Career Panel Discussion this Thursday (7/30) 12-1pm CDT

Astronomers develop an incredibly useful (and employable!) set of skills while pursuing their degree and research interests. The latest stats indicate that while ~75% of recent astronomy Ph.D.s accepted a postdoc position, over 80% eventually pursue careers outside the tenure track faculty route.

To provide insight into the range of careers astronomers pursue and share advice and lessons learned along the way, we provided a series of Career Profiles.

Our next experiment is to host a live, online Career Panel discussion.

When: Thursday, July 30th from 12-1pm CDT
Where: Live via Google Hangouts