Career Interview Series: Deborah Skapik Leans Into Research Skills With Her Students

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, and enthusiasts. These interviews share advice and lessons learned from individuals who have navigated both traditional and non-traditional paths in the field.

Deborah Skapik traces her interest in space back to 1977, when a partial eclipse captured her interest. She built a shoebox diorama of the event on her own initiative. “I remember cutting out a circle on the side to put a flashlight. I even remember the color of the flashlight was this red plastic flashlight that my parents had, and putting that in the side of the box and hanging a styrofoam ball and making a shadow and just the visualization in three dimensions of what was going on.” 

Deborah Skapik

This wasn’t the only astronomy project Skapik tackled as a child interested in space. She also glued pastina—pasta shaped like stars—onto black construction paper and recreated the cosmos for herself. When Carl Sagan’s series Cosmos released in 1980, Skapik was mesmerized. She naturally gravitated to space and science, and felt fortunate to be in a public school system that encouraged STEM for all pupils. Her seventh grade science teacher allowed her the space to explore what it means to be a scientist as he led the class through multiple dissections that year. Skapik vividly remembers dissecting sharks outside and the smell as they dug into the process. “I didn't love that part of it, but the fact that we were so hands-on…he allowed me to explore and really do what felt like research science in seventh grade and use the tools of a scientist.” That same teacher assigned research papers, and Skapik enjoyed learning the scientific process of research as she looked up information in encyclopedias.

That encouragement came at just the right time. Instead of falling away from STEM, like so many can in middle school and junior high, Skapik pursued science and math. By the time she was a senior, she had taken every science and math course she could and headed to Swarthmore College with the idea of pursuing particle physics. Her first week on campus, Skapik needed to find a part-time job, and she hoped to find one related to astronomy. She knocked on the door of Sproul Observatory to ask if anything was available. A professor in a white lab coat opened the door. “He looked like Doc from Back to the Future,” Skapik recalls. 

“Can I help you?" he asked her, speaking with a German accent. Skapik asked for a job, and the professor immediately ushered her inside. “Yes, you will be working with this.”

He took her inside the dome where a 24-inch refractor telescope stood. Skapik was stunned. She had only used backyard telescopes to this point. The professor, Dr. Wolf Heinz, wanted her to observe binary stars using the telescope’s photographic plateholder. It was 1987. Skapik loaded glass plates into the plate holder to capture images. Skapik held this job throughout her college years, spending many nights in the observatory learning how to operate the 36-foot-long telescope, built in 1911. 

The next semester, when she met with the assigned class advisor, she said, “I want to do astrophysics.”

“No, you don’t,” he replied. “You want to be a physics major.”

“I don’t want to study physics,” Skapik replied.

“Yes, you do. Minor in astrophysics,” he advised her. “That was an incredibly wise piece of advice,” Skapic says. The advisor understood physics would give Skapik more flexibility and ground her well. 

While at Swarthmore, Skapik landed an REU opportunity at Kitt Peak in Arizona. “I was in love with the telescopes. I spent a lot of time at the summit, living up there, working on the 0.9-meter, doing a research project on quasar photometry, making some contacts, meeting some people, and meeting other people my age who were going into the field, but it really anchored me in knowing what I wanted to study.”

Skapik did her graduate degree in astronomy at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy. She’d moved away from high energy astrophysics to quasar photometry. She also did another REU at NRAO in Green Bank, West Virginia, which taught her that she didn’t like radio astronomy. 

In Hawaii, she ran across the idea of colliding galaxies and became a research assistant studying the Butcher-Oemler Effect. While she was in the middle of this research, Skapik was also teaching and realized how much she enjoyed explaining these complicated theories to her students. At the same time, she observed how busy the professors were writing proposals to search for funding for their research and doing a lot of administrative work as well. It dawned on Skapik that she didn’t want to devote her career to that. 

She decided to take a job as an observatory supervisor, which included mentoring teaching assistants, at Williams College in Massachusetts. Skapik continued her PhD at the University of Hawaii by spending a lot of time on the phone with the telescope operator and flying out to Hawaii. Then she went to the University of Pennsylvania to help develop an astronomy education program, as well as running two observatories. She also had three children and decided she wanted to pursue education more than astronomy. Instead of finishing her PhD, she got certified to teach. She interviewed for a teaching position at Friends’ Central School and was hired to teach AP Physics, the same subject she didn’t think she wanted to pursue in college.

“Twenty-five years later, almost, here I am… I love doing research with my students. I am a researcher. I understand the tools, I understand the techniques, and I can teach them how to do it at the high school level.” Skapik’s students are currently looking at images taken on Haleakala to try to re-image an asteroid field to see if the object they previously found was actually a new asteroid. She is hopeful they can publish the data. 

Skapik’s advice on teaching, and on career paths in general, is simple: “Follow your heart and do what you love, because if you don't love what you're doing, you're not going to enjoy your life. And I know what I love doing; like I said, I get really excited doing the research. But it's not just doing the research alone—it's doing it with the students because they have so much energy. They're fifteen years old, and they're getting excited about a movement on a screen. They come back here, and they're excited to tell me about their paths that they've followed.” 

Skapik has former students at NASA and remembers one who told her how important it was to have a female role model like Skapik, even though she didn’t realize it at the time. “So I do think it's really important for women to be in these higher positions, but I think contact with students on a day-to-day basis is also really important, and showing confidence and competence, and not minimizing what astronomy educators do, or physics educators, for that matter." It’s hard, but to have a research background is so valuable because I can say, "These are the tools. This is what you have to do later. It's not all academic.’” 

Deborah Skapik currently teaches at Friends Central School and also teaches astronomy at St. Joseph’s University and Delaware County Community College. 

Skapik at UPenn in 2002.

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.

Guest-post by John Johnson: Zen and the Art of Astronomy Research

Guest-post by John Johnson, professor of Astronomy in the Caltech Department of Astrophysics. His research is on the detection and characterization of exoplanets. This post is a re-post from astrobites. With the start of a new academic year, his career-life advice seemed particularly timely and useful. Read on!

I had the pleasure of visiting the Harvard Center for Astrophysics back in February when I stopped through to give a colloquium. One of the CfA traditions is for the graduate students to treat the speaker to lunch. So on the day of my talk I hung out in a classroom with about two dozen graduate students where we munched on pizza and talked about everything from the difficulty of measuring stellar radial velocities at 1 m/s precision, to advice about applying for postdoctoral fellowships, to what it’s like to be a professor.

Near the end of our conversation one of the students asked me if I had any career advice for them. I’m sure this is a common if not boiler-plate question to ask speakers, so I thought carefully about what advice they likely haven’t heard before. Rather than talking about how many papers they should publish in order to get a named fellowship, or what fields of research are hotter than others, I decided to focus on a topic that I’ve found extremely important in my professional life lately: mental health.

Most people find the topic of mental health a bit unsettling, so I made sure to qualify what I meant by the term. I wasn’t insinuating that anyone in the room was crazy or mentally unstable. And I wasn’t trying to get all squishy with my audience by talking about warm fuzzies, or fuzzies of any  for that matter. But in the same way that it’s important for you to take care of your lower back by lifting with your legs, it’s important to take care of your mental state while you tackle the rigors of science. After all, you can in principle reduce your data with a bad back. However, if you’re not thinking clearly, or if you are perpetually unhappy with your lot in life, your astronomy research will certainly suffer.

I can’t remember all of the specific advice I gave to the Harvard astro-grads because it wasn’t really planned. So I hope the good folks who run Astrobites won’t mind if I riff once again. Here’s my advice about keeping things in order upstairs:

1) For most of us, if we were to wake up five mornings in a row with excruciating pain in our right arm, we’d probably go see a doctor and get it checked out. So why is it that we don’t get our minds checked out if we, say, wake up five mornings in a row feeling stressed, burned-out, or otherwise unhappy?

The field of astronomy comprises extremely smart, technically-gifted people who could easily have made very comfortable salaries after they graduated with their B.S. degrees. Yet astronomy grad students spend their days in cramped offices working 10 to 14 hour days for annual salaries that place them squarely below the poverty line. My point is that we’re not doing astronomy for the money. Most of us are in this field because we find it inspiring, exciting and…fun. Right? Isn’t that why were here? Yet, sadly, some graduate students spend a lot of their time being stressed-out and unhappy. I know my time in grad school certainly wasn’t all roses and publications.

All of this is to say that if your arm hurts you should see a doctor. If you’re unhappy, you need talk to someone. Your university has a counseling center set up just for this type of thing. They know how to help and they’ll keep it confidential. Seeking help for your mental state isn’t being weak or an indication that something is fundamentally wrong with you. This is 2011, after all, not 1950. Go get a checkup if you need it.

2) Spend a small part of your week pondering the Universe. I just wrote about how grad students are paid relatively little given their talent and expertise. The flip side of that is you all have pretty sweet jobs. It’s your job to figure out how the Universe works. So focus solely on this part of your job for at least one hour a week away from any distractions, and away from your day-to-day grind. In so doing you’ll simultaneously keep your mind limber and strong, while keeping yourself from burning out on seemingly menial tasks like tracking down that bug in your spectrum-fitting code.

Perhaps someone once mentioned that the reddest subgiants in the Solar neighborhood give a lower limit of the age of the Galaxy, but you were busy with something else and couldn’t give the notion the reflection it deserves. Or after one of your recent research talks someone stumped you with a question that, while you were able to wiggle free of at the time, you really should have had a better answer for. Or maybe you can’t seem to remember whether it’s okay to use a preposition to end a sentence with. Make sure you have a small window of time in your week to give the matter some serious thought.

3) Identify something that poses a serious challenge for you and pick a fight with it. I’m being figurative, of course, so please don’t apply this advice to your challenging office mate. Instead, I’m talking about that topic in your field or aspect of your job that you don’t have a firm handle on just yet. Maybe you’re still uncomfortable giving talks, or you’re not satisfied with your writing style. Don’t shy away from these things. Spend some time reading books on that tough topic. Sign up to give an extra journal club talk. Write a guest post on Astrobites!

By continuously looking for ways to shore up your perceived weak points you’ll give yourself opportunities for small yet regular victories, all while adding variety to your work week. Remember, your time to learn didn’t end with your qual exam; it continues throughout your career.

4) Periodically make it a point to give someone effusive yet specific praise for a job well done. Did a postdoc in your dept recently give an outstanding research talk? Stop by their office and tell them that you really liked it, and be specific about what aspects of the talk worked for you. Did a classmate recently post a paper on astro-ph? Read their paper, stop them in the hallway and congratulate them on a job well done. Or how about this: we’ve all gotten one of those emails from someone congratulating us on our recent paper, and BTW they published on the topic last year and would appreciate a citation. Try sending one of those emails to someone, but without the last part requesting a citation. If nothing else, it’s a lot of fun imagining the look of confusion on the recipient’s face when they reach the end of your note.

Kind words, encouragement and praise are hard to come by in astronomy, but keep in mind that you’re not the only person who needs these things.

—————

This might sound like strange advice coming from a professor. Shouldn’t I be telling you about publishing or perishing? Shouldn’t I tell you to suck it up and pull an all-nighter again? Well, science is fundamentally a human pursuit and we do ourselves and the field a disservice by forgetting this simple fact. Unhappy graduate students tend to be sloppy, less productive researchers. Happy students, on the other hand, vigorously pursue interesting science questions, give outstanding talks and churn out well-written papers. Thus, as a professor, it’s in my best interest to work in a science field full of mentally-healthy students.

THE ACADEMIAD

I’ll admit it – I’m an Olympics junkie. During these 17 days every two years, I stay up way too late to watch events I never think twice about otherwise. This summer they included synchronized diving, rowing, weightlifting, badminton, swimming – you name it, I’ve probably watched it. I’m addicted to watching thrills of victory and agonies of defeat, none closer to my heart this year than our local girl, Jordyn Wieber, who, though the 2011 World Champion in the All Around for gymnastics, failed to qualify for the same in the Olympics. My sister was a competitive gymnast, so I know her life, and my heart broke for Jordyn. However, as I watched her rebound during the team competition and witnessed the anxiety – and then the elation – of the close-knit teammates as they awaited the final score to post for the Team competition, I couldn’t help but think how much graduate school is like a gymnastics event. In fact, academia is very much like the Olympics in general.  You don’t believe me?  Let me explain… but forgive me if I stretch the analogies or flip-flop between ideas. 

Entering graduate school is like mounting a gymnastics apparatus – for a comparison, let’s just call it the beam, on which we have to balance the many aspects of our life as a graduate student. As we take courses, collect data, write programs, or build instruments, we are performing routines that get evaluated by judging advisors and reviewers.  Eventually, we dismount, graduating with a brain full of knowledge and a diploma in hand.  Sometimes we stick the landing, and sometimes we don’t. The anxieties and pressures are similar, and along the way, we might have to re-evaluate our progress and our goals, much as a gymnast must after a fall or an extra step. What is the new level we wish to achieve?  Or do we leave altogether?  Our team of friends, families, or advisors, who motivates us and cheers us on, despite extra steps and balance checks, helps us with those decisions.

To draw some uneven parallels, I think teaching is much like competing in the heptathlon, a collection of Track and Field events in which athletes compete in the 100-meter hurdles, the 200-meter sprint, the 800-meter run, the long jump, the javelin, the high jump, and the shotput. Since I try to expose my students to the whole Universe in just 15 weeks, I regularly sprint among topics and constantly answer questions that students throw at me.  Sometimes the hurdles of requisite math skills and expectations are easily overcome, but sometimes it’s a long leap for students to make the connections. Round and round I go with some of them! Honestly, when I’m finished teaching non-science majors about all things astronomy, I’m out of breath!

Research could be described as any kind of water event – smooth sailing, rough waters, or anything in between.  A team of colleagues analyzes the data and writes up the results, considering every stroke of the keyboard; sometimes it’s a crew of two, sometimes four, sometimes more.  We shoot the rapids as we discuss data and reviewer comments. Sometimes we go overboard, and sometimes not everyone has an oar in the water!

Though it is in meetings where we hone leadership skills, a professor’s greatest opponent has to be committee service and administrative work in general. Committees wrestle with policy, pin down curriculum modifications, or try to lift the institution and/or department to higher standards.  Weighty issues such as recruiting and retaining students and faculty are heavy responsibilities, but ones that need to be addressed.

Interspersed among all of these activities are the 100-meter dashes – short time-dependent events that need immediate attention.  For example, twice each semester, I’m reminded that the week of student advising is approaching and that I need to post a schedule (now) and notify my advisees (now) that it’s time to sign up for a meeting. Hallway (or doorway) conversations with my Department Chair take time, too, and refocus my attention from research to departmental issues, “for just a minute”.  Students stop in to ask about homework, have me sign a form, or just chat.  These events don’t take very long, but they draw my attention away and cause me to revisit the starting blocks of whatever I was doing before.

Academics aside, perhaps STEM in general could learn something from the 2012 Olympics. For the first time in history, Team USA had more women than men on it and the US women would rank #3 in gold medals (29/46), if they were ranked as a nation.  At the end of all competitions, women from all countries won more medals than men overall (60%), and more gold medals, too!

While the summer Olympics comes around just once every four years, the responsibilities of a faculty member never end.  As we compete in the academic arena, we have to remember to pace ourselves and remember that our presence as female participants is important.  Win lose, or draw, we, too, can inspire a generation!