AASWomen Newsletter for July 19, 2024

AAS Committee on the Status of Women

Issue of July 19, 2024

eds: Jeremy Bailin, Nicolle Zellner, Sethanne Howard, and Hannah Jang-Condell

[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. --eds.]

This week's issues:

Dorothy Vaughan, a "hidden figure"
Credit: NASA

1. Celebrating Apollo-era Women    

2. AAS seeking plenary speakers for AAS 245

3. Heising-Simons Foundation’s Science Program Soliciting Proposals 

4. Black Space Week 2024 Recordings Available 

5. This Month in Astronomical History: July 2024   

6. Sloan Research Fellowships 

7. Mary-Lou Pardue, MIT professor whose anti-bias efforts lifted women in science, dies at 90

8. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

9. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

10. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/ at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.

NASA SMD Bridge Program: Funding Opportunities for non-R1 Institutions

By Padi Boyd, NASA Headquarters

Learn about the NASA SMD Bridge Program at the Summer AAS meeting in Wisconsin!

The Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Bridge Program’s primary goal is to develop sustainable partnerships between NASA science and engineering researchers and faculty and students at institutions historically under-resourced by NASA. These institutions include Minority-serving Institutions (MSIs) such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), Primarily Black Institutions (PBIs), and Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), and also Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs) and community colleges. These research collaborations include faculty and NASA researchers and paid student research opportunities, with the goal of transitioning the students from undergraduate studies into graduate schools and/or employment by NASA or other STEM employment.

A unique element of the program is that it is being co-created with the community it seeks to serve. A community workshop in October 2022 gathered together hundreds of community members to understand the current landscape at a variety of under-resourced institutions (URIs), as identified above. Themes and perspectives from the workshop have provided a foundation for establishing funding opportunities in the Bridge Program. Importantly, the key takeaways from the workshop were

• To build research capacity, the ideal NASA Bridge Program would center the needs of students, faculty, and institutions that have been historically and systematically marginalized.

• The ideal NASA Bridge Program would lead a paradigm shift by assuming primary responsibility for building impactful relationships/partnerships with marginalized and underserved communities  to diversify its workforce and the STEM community.

Common themes from the workshop include

• the need for NASA to help facilitate new partnerships where no NASA collaboration currently exists. 

• the importance of strong positive mentorship in developing students into STEM professionals, as well as the impacts of poor mentorship on retention of STEM students. 

A report from the workshop is public and available on the SMD Bridge website. Workshop content, including agenda, and recordings are available on the workshop website. 

Members of the SMD Bridge Program team have organized a special session for the Summer AAS meeting in Madison at

10 am - 11:30 am on Tuesday, June 11

Ballroom C

We’re looking forward to sharing an overview of the program, presenting some examples of newly selected teams who have received seed funding to initiate research partnerships between a wide variety of URIs across seven NASA Centers, and providing updates on current and future funding opportunities through NASA SMD’s Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science (ROSES) omnibus solicitation. Everyone is welcome to attend!

A list of other DEIA and Education activities at the AAS meeting can be found here.

NASA To Expand Cutting-Edge Science At Emerging Research Institutions

By Padi Boyd

NASA has announced two new funding programs to support, enhance, and enable cutting-edge science at emerging research institutions. These institutions include primarily undergraduate institutions, community colleges, minority-serving institutions, such as historically black colleges and universities, hispanic serving institutions, and tribal colleges and universities. Combined, these institutions enroll ~75% of undergraduate students across the United States.

The new SMD Bridge Seed Funding (BPSF) solicits proposals to provide support for faculty investigators and their students at the kinds of institutions above to carry out NASA-relevant research. Through the BPSF program, NASA aims to boost research capacity across a broader range of institutions, and to forge enduring collaborations. 

NASA's Research Initiation Awards aim to enable investigators at emerging research institutions to initiate activities to provide catalyzing funding support for a competitive, sustainable, and productive research program. It will also make it possible for undergraduate students affiliated with the successful teams to perform cutting-edge research.  

In total across both programs, NASA expects to award up to $6 million per year.

A joint informational webinar about these funding opportunities will be on May 24 at 1-2:30 p.m. ET via Zoom. Those who register will receive a Zoom calendar invitation that will get updated with connection information.

Text and due dates for the Bridge Program Seed Funding call can be found here

Text and due dates for the Research Initiation Awards can be found here.

Read more about both programs here.

AASWomen Newsletter for July 23, 2021

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of July 23, 2021
eds: Heather Flewelling, Nicolle Zellner, Maria Patterson, Alessandra Aloisi, and Jeremy Bailin

[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. Be well! --eds.]

Parenting penalties graphic, from item 9
Credit: Veronica Cerri

This week's issues:

1. Crosspost: How Dragonfly will explore Saturn's 'bizarro Earth' moon, Titan

2. Announcement of Opportunity: AAS-EPD Mini-Grant Program

3. Call for NASA Keck Key Strategic Mission Support Proposals for 2022A

4. NASA investigates renaming James Webb telescope after anti-LGBT+ claims

5. Survey finds bullying and harassment systemic in astronomy and geophysics

6. Amid turmoil, Afghan female students win award at International Astronomy Competition

7. Fixing A Physics Culture Problem

8. Why science needs a new reward and recognition system

9. The parenting penalties faced by scientist mothers

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

An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.

AASWomen Newsletter for February 05, 2021

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of February 05, 2021
eds: Heather Flewelling, Nicolle Zellner, Maria Patterson, Alessandra Aloisi, and Jeremy Bailin

[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. Be well! --eds.]

Ada Carrera
from item 4
Credit: Unistellar

This week's issues:

1. AAS Code of Ethics and the Code of Ethics Committee

2. Early Career Astronomers & their supporters session on 28th of June 2021 - call for (suggested) speakers

3. PI Launchpad: Developing Your First Flight Mission Proposal

4. Asteroid naming contest sparks discussion of women in astronomy

5. Black History Month: Highlighting African-American Engineers, Pt. 1

6. Learn more about these 28 scientists for Black History Month

7. Job Opportunities

8. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

9. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

10. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.

Announcement of DPS Workshop on Proposal Writing: Friday October 26th

The success of scientists depends upon their ability to obtain funding. Using Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences (ROSES) from NASA as a primary example, this workshop will focus on teaching the audience key points to writing a successful proposal.

Topics to be covered include:
8:00-8:15- General introduction and welcome
8:15-9:15- Proposal lifecycle, guidance on writing for specific audiences, compliance checklist
9:15-9:30- Break
9:30-10:30- Evaluation criteria, the review process, programmatic balance, debriefs and appeals, and making changes to address review concerns
10:30-11:00- General wrap up and group Q&A
11:00-11:30- One-on-One Q&A as needed.

Proposal Writing Workshops help early career scientists, as well as those looking to improve their previous proposal performance. As a result of this session, participants will be able to understand the proposal writing, reviewing, and selection process for federally funded proposals, as well as help those who have previously submitted proposals improve their performance. The workshop will be done in a format that allows for a great deal of audience participation.

Volunteer Reviewers Needed for NASA Programs

By Max Bernstein

Dr. Bernstein is the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Lead for Research at NASA Headquarters. This post also appears on the Women in Planetary Science blog. 

As the lead for research at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD), I am often told by the NASA HQ folks who run the research programs that it's a lot of work to find enough qualified proposal reviewers who are not conflicted. Similarly, it's not uncommon for proposers who are unhappy with their evaluations to assert that the people who reviewed their proposal must have been unqualified. To solve both of these problems and, just as importantly, to increase the diversity of the pool of reviewers, I am writing this appeal to potential reviewers:

Please sign up using our web-based volunteer reviewer forms. Each form asks for: 1. contact information, 2. whether you are willing to be a panelist, mail-in reviewer, or executive secretary (good for graduate students and post docs who have never served as a reviewer before) and 3. identify specific technical areas of expertise.

There are many different technical areas depending on the program, from Solar Interior through Outer Heliosphere and the Interstellar Boundary in Heliophysics, from formation of the Solar System to technology development in planetary science, as well as Astrophysics data analysis and Earth Surface and Interior and Space Geodesy Programs. Links to all of the forms may be found at https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/volunteer-review-panels.