Career Profile: Astronomer to High-School STEM Educator

The AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy and the AAS Employment Committee have compiled dozens of 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 Hannah Krug, an astronomer turned high-school STEM educator.   If you have questions, suggestions, advice to share, etc. about this career path, please leave a comment below.

For access to all our Career Profile Project interviews, please visit http://aas.org/jobs/career-profiles. 

Why So Few? High School Foundation II

The 2010 report entitled, Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), reviews GPAs and high-stakes testing. The graph above shows students’ average GPA in high school math and science combined over time, by gender. High school girls now also earn higher GPAs in math and science, on average, than their male peers do. It is also important to note that average GPAs in math and science for all students are improving over time.

Why So Few? High School Foundation I

The 2010 report entitled, Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), describes how girls’ and women’s performance and participation in STEM fields have changed over time. Women have made tremendous progress in education and the workplace during the past 50 years, including progress in scientific and engineering fields.

Although, historically, boys outperformed girls in math and science, the gender gap has narrowed over time, and today girls are doing as well as boys in math in school by most measures. For example, in high school, girls’ average performance and participation in math and science has improved over time and, in some cases, has surpassed that of boys.

The graph above shows the average number of high school credits earned in math and science combined, by gender, between 1990 and 2005 (the most recent year for which data were available). Girls are in green and boys are in purple. Over time all students, both boys and girls, are taking more math and science credits - both lines are going up - and girls now earn more credits in math and science than boys do.