Crosspost: I Changed Astronomy Forever. He Won the Nobel Prize for It. | 'Almost Famous' by NYT Op-Docs

For this week, be sure to check out this incredible documentary, "The Silent Pulse of the Universe," created by Ben Proudfoot for the New York Times on Dr. Jocelyn Bell Burnell. We've highlighted Dr. Bell before in an earlier crosspost, but she absolutely deserves another (several hundred).

Growing up in a Quaker household, Jocelyn Bell Burnell was raised to believe that she had as much right to an education as anyone else. But as a girl in the 1940s in Northern Ireland, her enthusiasm for the sciences was met with hostility from teachers and male students. Undeterred, she went on to study radio astronomy at Glasgow University, where she was the only woman in many of her classes. In 1967, Burnell made a discovery that altered our perception of the universe. As a Ph.D. student at Cambridge University assisting the astronomer Anthony Hewish, she discovered pulsars — compact, spinning celestial objects that give off beams of radiation, like cosmic lighthouses. (A visualization of some early pulsar data is immortalized as the album art for Joy Division’s “Unknown Pleasures.”) But as Ben Proudfoot's "The Silent Pulse of the Universe" shows, the world wasn’t yet ready to accept that a breakthrough in astrophysics could have come from a young woman.

AASWomen Newsletter for October 16, 2020

AAS Committee on the Status of Women

Issue of October 16, 2020

eds: Heather Flewelling, Nicolle Zellner, Maria Patterson, Jeremy Bailey, and Alessandra Aloisi

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

This week's issues:

1. When The Two-Body With Children Problem Turns Into The Divorced-With-Children Many-Body Problem 

Illustration of Kepler-47, a many-body system.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

2. Final Frontier? The Evolution of Planetary Science Missions  

3. Survey on effects of COVID-10 on work-life boundaries for women in STEM 

4. 2020 University of Michigan Virtual Graduate Fair

5. Why Is It So Hard to Fire a Tenured Sexual Predator? 

6. That advice to women to ‘lean in’, be more confident… it doesn’t help, and data show it  

7. Upcoming Planetary Science Research Positions at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center

8. Job Opportunities

9. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

10. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

11. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

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1. When The Two-Body With Children Problem Turns Into The Divorced-With-Children Many-Body Problem

From: Jeremy Bailin via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com

Much has been written about navigating the two-body problem in academia. Any field where it is typical to assume that people will be able to move across countries and continents every 2-3 years until their mid-30s is an impediment to long term relationships. …

Sometimes relationships don't work out—so it is also important to talk about that. In particular, what happens when pairs of astronomers have children and are then expected to move for their careers, while no longer being in a relationship with the other parent? I certainly don't have definitive answers to this question, but I do have personal experience which I will share as an example of how it can work.

Read more at

http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2020/10/when-two-body-with-children-problem.html

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2. Final Frontier? The Evolution of Planetary Science Missions

From: Nicolle Zellner [nzellner_at_albion.edu]

By Katherine Broendel

The latest episode of “Third Pod from the Sun” features an interview with Fran Bagenal, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder. Bagenal provides an overarching view of different planetary missions and describes how the research and findings of each have built upon the innovations and discoveries that came before.  

In this episode, Bagenal also discusses the importance of education that engages students and the need to support the different pathways people take to pursue science.

Read the transcript and listen to the podcast at

https://eos.org/articles/final-frontier-the-evolution-of-planetary-science-missions

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3. Survey on effects of COVID-10 on work-life boundaries for women in STEM

From: Curt Dodds [dodds_at_hawaii.edu]

Dr. Ellen Ernst Kossek, Professor of Management at Purdue University, is reaching out to individual women faculty members across the U.S. to report their work-life experiences to help inform a commissioned report for the National Academies of Sciences Committee, "Investigating the Potential Impact of COVID-19 on the Careers of Women in Academic Science, Engineering, and Medicine", to be published Spring 2021. The report will focus on work-life boundaries, domestic labor, and careers of women faculty affected by COVID-19 – with a special focus on those working in STEMM (Science Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Medicine).  Responses are requested by October 18, 2020. For questions, please contact Dr. Ellen  Ernst Kossek at ekossek_at_purdue.edu.

Fill out the survey at  

https://purdue.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0ClnhLOQeMH8ibj

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4. 2020 University of Michigan Virtual Graduate Fair

From: Jean McKee [jarbaugh_at_umich.edu]

Rackham Graduate School is hosting its first-ever virtual graduate fair on Monday, October 26, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. (EST). Representatives from the Astronomy PhD program will be on hand to answer questions about the program and the graduate school search and application process. If you are in the earlier stages of your undergraduate studies, Rackham staff will be available to talk about summer research opportunities at Michigan and help you explore your academic interests. In partnership with our graduate faculty and programs, Rackham is committed to advancing excellence in graduate education by cultivating a vibrant and diverse student community to impact the public good through the scholarship and discoveries of our students and degree recipients. 

Register at 

https://myumi.ch/88PZk

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5. Why Is It So Hard to Fire a Tenured Sexual Predator? 

From: Jessica Mink [jmink_at_cfa.harvard.edu]

This article from the October 15 issue of "Academe Today" from "The Chronicle of Higher Education" enumerates the obstacles to getting sexual predation out of academia.

[Sign-in is required to read the article. –eds.]

Read more at

https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-is-it-so-hard-to-fire-a-tenured-sexual-predator

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6.  That advice to women to ‘lean in’, be more confident… it doesn’t help, and data show it

From: Heather Flewelling [flewelling.heather_at_gmail.com]

Labor economist Leonora Risse reports on whether or not the advice to women to “lean in” and show confidence in the workplace really works.

Read more at

https://theconversation.com/that-advice-to-women-to-lean-in-be-more-confident-it-doesnt-help-and-data-show-it

Read the journal article at

https://businesslaw.curtin.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2020/08/127098-AJLE-Vol-23-No-1-2020-Text_article-3-final.pdf

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7. Upcoming Planetary Science Research Positions at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center  

From: Heidi Haviland [heidi.haviland_at_nasa.gov]

The Heliophysics and Planetary Science Branch at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, plans to offer multiple positions seeking scientists to conduct research and develop applications to solve challenging Planetary Science problems. Outstanding candidates have the potential to be selected for federal employment, joining more than 30 other federal employees, academic staff, and contractors supporting Planetary Science efforts within the Branch, a subset of the Science Research and Projects Division, and the Science and Technology Office at Marshall Space Flight Center.

Research Space Scientist positions will be offered for researchers in planetary science, with expertise in remote sensing of planets, moons, and asteroids, and the development of instrumentation for planetary science investigations. The selected candidates will add substantive capability synergistic with the current staff and the goals of NASA’s Artemis program and MSFC's strategy to integrate human space flight and science robotic capabilities in the Artemis era. The candidates will have an opportunity to lead the development of research proposals for new activities, execute funded projects, and share their accomplishments through conference participation and appropriate peer-reviewed literature.

The positions are expected to be announced in autumn 2020 under the category of Research Space Scientist and at the GS-13 grade level. Successful candidates will have had experience applying advanced tools, techniques, and/or data analysis/mining/machine learning techniques to datasets collected with remote sensing measurement techniques. Candidates should have made regular contributions to a research team with some guidance and direction, developed new analysis techniques to solve challenging problems, made contributions to peer-reviewed proposals in response to technical solicitations, and have contributed to peer-reviewed publications as part of a demonstrated publication record.

The formal announcement of the opportunity and related requirements will be posted in the near future at USAJobs (www.usajobs.gov) and can be found by searching with keyword NASA and location of Huntsville, Alabama. Applications are only accepted through the USAJobs portal, and United States citizenship is required to be eligible for these civil service positions. Candidates are encouraged to create a USAJobs profile well in advance to populate their resume and may also subscribe to USAJobs alerts received via email. Informal inquiries can be directed to Dr. David McKenzie, david.e.mckenzie_at_nasa.gov, 256-961-7896.

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8. Job Opportunities

 

For those interested in increasing excellence and diversity in their organizations, a list of resources and advice is here: https://aas.org/comms/cswa/resources/Diversity 

  

- Professor, Astrophysical Sciences AND Head of Theory, Princeton Plasma Physics Lab 

https://puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/apply/application.xhtml?listingId=18101

- Assistant Professor Of Theoretical Quantum Physics, Cal State University – Long Beach

https://tinyurl.com/y6fx47nh  

- Postdoctoral Scholar, The Center for Energy Research (CER), San Diego, CA

https://apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF02550

- Postdoctoral Position, MAVEN’s Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph Team, Boulder, CO

https://jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/jobDetail?jobId=21086

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9. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter

To submit an item to the AASWOMEN newsletter, including replies to topics, send email to aaswomen_at_aas.org 

All material will be posted unless you tell us otherwise, including your email address. 

When submitting a job posting for inclusion in the newsletter, please include a one-line description and a link to the full job posting. 

Please remember to replace "_at_" in the e-mail address above.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

10. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter

Join AAS Women List by email:

Send an email to aaswomen_at_aas.org. A list moderator will add your email to the list. They will reply to your message to confirm that they have added you.

Join AAS Women List through the online portal:

Go to https://lists.aas.org/postorius/lists/aaswlist.lists.aas.org and enter the email address you wish to subscribe in the ‘Your email address’ field. You will receive an email from ‘aaswlist-confirm’ that you must reply to. There may be a delay between entering your email and receiving the confirmation message. Check your Spam or Junk mail folders for the message if you have not received it after 2 hours.

To unsubscribe from AAS Women by email:

Send an email to aaswlist-leave_at_lists.aas.org from the email address you wish to remove from the list. You will receive an email from ‘aaswlist-confirm’ that you must reply to which will complete the unsubscribe.

Leave AAS Women or change your membership settings through the online portal:

Go to https://lists.aas.org/accounts/signup to create an account with the online portal. After confirming your account you can see the lists you are subscribed to and update your settings.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

11. Access to Past Issues

https://aas.org/comms/cswa/AASWOMEN

Each annual summary includes an index of topics covered.

When The Two-Body With Children Problem Turns Into The Divorced-With-Children Many-Body Problem

Artist's concept that illustrates Kepler-47, the first transiting circumbinary system. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

Much has been written about navigating the two-body problem in academia. Any field where it is typical to assume that people will be able to move across countries and continents every 2-3 years until their mid-30s is an impediment to long term relationships. This is compounded by the fact that many astronomers have relationships with other academics, who are commonly other astronomers, and so navigating two people who need to do that can become very difficult.

Sometimes relationships don't work out—so it is also important to talk about that. In particular, what happens when pairs of astronomers have children and are then expected to move for their careers, while no longer being in a relationship with the other parent? I certainly don't have definitive answers to this question, but I do have personal experience which I will share as an example of how it can work.

Two Body-Problem Series: Navigating the Move

Credit: Tod Strohmayer (GSFC), CXC, NASA
Illustration: Dana Berry (CXC)

This entry in the two-body problem series is an account of one person’s experience navigating the academic track with their partner. For context, the people in the relationship are cisgender and heterosexual. If you would like to contribute your own story to this series, please contact us at wia-blog at lists.aas.org. When did you and your partner meet? What are your backgrounds (educational, social, cultural, etc., for context)?

We met in college, in the first few days after freshman orientation. We grew up in different regions of the same US west coast state. We're both white with college-educated parents. Our first interaction was when I asked if he had a car and could drive two friends and me to the store! He kindly agreed, but we wouldn't date for over a year after that. He was two years ahead of me, and majored in engineering; I majored in physics.

AASWomen Newsletter for March 13, 2020

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of March 13, 2020
eds: JoEllen McBride, Nicolle Zellner, Heather Flewelling, Maria Patterson, and Alessandra Aloisi

Mary Golda Ross, from Item 3.
Image credit: SWE Photograph Collection,
Walter P. Reuther Library

This week's issues:

1. Two-Body Problem Series: Priorities Change

2. Nominate your colleagues for DPS Prizes!

3. Honoring the women who helped humans go to space

4. Research: To Reduce Gender Bias, Anonymize Job Applications

5. Elsevier global analysis on gender gap in research and innovation

6. An interesting Kickstarter project...

7. Astronomy's continuing harassment problem

8. These 10 National Parks Wouldn't Exist Without Women

9. Women with career gaps are being tapped for talent pool

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

Two-Body Problem Series: Playing the Long Game

By Anonymous

Credit: Tod Strohmayer (GSFC), CXC, NASA
Illustration: Dana Berry (CXC)

This entry in the two-body problem series is an account of one person’s experience navigating the academic track with their partner. For context, the people in the relationship are white, cisgender, and heterosexual. If you would like to contribute your own story to this series, please contact us at wia-blog at lists.aas.org.

When did you and your partner meet?

We met in college. We both knew that we wanted to apply to graduate school and pursue academic careers (he's in engineering and I'm in astronomy).

AASWomen Newsletter for November 22, 2019

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of November 22, 2019
eds: JoEllen McBride, Nicolle Zellner, Heather Flewelling, Maria Patterson, and Alessandra Aloisi

Henrietta Leavitt, from item 3

This week's issues:

1. Kick-off Post for Two-Body Problem Series

2. New Video Interview Series from the Europlanet Early Career and Diversity Committees

3. How Henrietta Swan Leavitt Helped Build a Yardstick to Measure the Universe

4. The Scientist Who First Showed Us The Double Helix: A Personal Look At Rosalind Franklin

5. Supporting Parents and Caregivers in Science, Engineering, and Medicine

6. The Long Road to Getting, and Keeping, More Women in Science

7. Navigating the 'Old Boys' Club' of Science, With a Friend

8. Why I'm not applying for promotion

9. Want more women and minorities in STEM? Address social oppression in the classroom, says new research

10. 5 Ways to Welcome Women to Computer Science

11. The mental health of PhD researchers demands urgent attention

12. Are you guilty of equity offset?

13. Job Opportunities

14. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

15. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

16. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

AASWOMEN Newsletter for March 28, 2014

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of March 28, 2014
eds: Michele M. Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, Nick Murphy, & Nicolle Zellner

This week's issues:

1. Belinda Wilkes Appointed as Director of the CXC

2. Career Profiles: Astronomer to Tenure Track Faculty at a Small Liberal Arts College

3. Women are Less Successful in Getting Grants

4. What should I do if I witness sexual harassment?

5. Women Biographies Lacking on Wikipedia

6. Webinars Galore!

7. 2014 Katherine Weimer Award

8. L'Oréal USA For Women in Science Fellowship Program

9. Research mentor training seminar - free guide available

10. Call for Proposals: 2015 AAAS Annual Meeting

11. Job Opportunities

12. How to Submit to the AASWomen Newsletter

13. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWomen Newsletter

14. Access to Past Issues of the AASWomen Newsletter

AASWOMEN February 28, 2014

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of February 28, 2014
eds. Michele M. Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, Nick Murphy, & Nicolle Zellner

This week's issues:

1. STATUS newsletter for January 2014 now available online

2. Guest post: AAS Dinners to Discuss Dual-Career Couples

3. Addressing the Campus Rape Culture in the US

4. US Position Threatened?

5. Additional Women's History Month Resources

6. Embracing Adventure, Achieving Success

7. APS March Meeting Events Focused on Women and Minorities

8. Summer AAPT meeting requests posters/papers

9. Job Opportunities

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

Guest post: AAS Dinners to Discuss Dual-Career Couples

Today I am sharing a guest post by P. R. McCullough. Dr. McCullough received a PhD in Astrophysics from UC Berkeley in 1993, then moved to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign first on a Hubble fellowship, then becoming an assistant professor. Dr. McCullough moved to the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD in 2002 and is an associate astronomer there.

How many times have you read, "We seek a highly motivated and qualified individual ... "?

Young's double slit experiment, Cooper pairs, quantum entanglement, these and other phenomena are understood not by treating the associated individuals independently, but by acknowledging their duality. For Young's double-slit experiment, by considering the light passing through one slit or the other slit individually, you will get the wrong answer, every time, regardless of your own good intentions, your institution's policies, and even society's human-made laws.

One Person’s Advice on the Two-Body Problem

By Annika Peter, from the June 2013 Issue of Status: A Report on Women in Astronomy


My husband and I recently found a long-term solution to our two-body problem after seven years of hopscotching through job seasons. When we entered into the job season last year with the goal of permanence in mind, I asked many faculty people for advice on how to approach the job search as a couple. The advice was all over the place. From this experience, I gleaned that there is no established protocol for solving the two-body problem; each couple's set of circumstances makes each search and solution look a little different. And actually, this is one of the lessons I would like to impart to you — there is no one, straightforward, established path to a two-body solution.

Nevertheless, there were a few bits of advice that we found extremely useful and appeared to be pretty generally applicable, and there were some things we learned along the way. The focus of this advice is on academic solutions at the faculty/staff level. However, a lot of this advice is applicable at a postdoc level, or at the faculty level even if you are looking for only one job, not two!

Two Body Careers Survey

The AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy is conducting a survey regarding two body careers. Please help us in our pursuit to better understand how two body careers impact the astronomical community. 

Go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CSWATwoBodyCareers to complete a brief survey. We appreciate your input and welcome participation from all members of the astronomical community.

ADVICE: When to Raise a Family

CSWA convened a panel at the January 2008 AAS meeting in Austin where astronomers at various stages in their careers described the way in which they made their decisions about when to raise a family and how their choices have had an impact on their careers. The panel was organized by then CSWA Chair, Geoff Clayton (Louisiana State University). Panel members were: Hannah Jang-Condell (University of Maryland & GSFC), Margaret Hanson (University of Cincinnati), Orsola De Marco (American Museum of Natural History), Charles Liu (CUNY) and John Debes (DTM).

One of the most difficult decisions facing professional women is whether to have children and, if so, when. In practice women in astronomy have chosen a variety of solutions, ranging from delaying or interrupting graduate school or postdoctoral fellowships, delaying child rearing until after tenure, or even abandoning the idea of having children. These decisions usually have a considerable impact on the career path of a professional woman. The following points summarize the views of the panelists and members of the audience: When is the best time to have kids?

1. All times are equally good, meaning that you need to have kids when the time is right for you. Women cannot always count on waiting until 'the time is right' to get pregnant. Nature doesn't always oblige on a schedule and if you wait too long into your late 30's or early 40's, it may be too late.

2. If you have a choice in the matter, then having kids during grad school might have the least impact on your career because it is easier to take some time off. When you are a postdoc you are usually on a two-year clock and when you are tenure track, you usually on a five-year clock.

Academia and Family Structure

Today's guest blogger is Annika Peter. Annika studies dark matter and gravitational dynamics and is currently finishing up a postdoctoral position at UC Irvine. She is moving to a faculty position in the Departments of Physics and Astronomy at The Ohio State University.

A number of studies indicate that, at the faculty level, a large proportion of women physicists and astronomers are partnered with other academic scientists (especially other physicists!). The exact numbers are hard to come by---a lot of the time, all physical scientists are lumped together in studies, even though there are hints that there are major differences across fields (with Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research finding that physicists have the most “endogamous” marriage habits). I have found only one survey specific to physicists, and it is not especially recent (1998 to be specific). Moreover, I have not yet been able to find cohort studies that examine family structures at a variety of career stages, or studies of the reasons why both men and women leave the academic track. I am also interested to see if there is greater or lesser selection pressure on dual academic couples. In my experience, a high percentage of women in physics and astronomy are coupled with other academic scientists at just about all career stages, but I would like to see some cold, hard numbers on this.

On the two body problem

Figure 1: The two-body problem. Image taken from this blog

In academia there is something called the "two-body problem." The original two-body problem involves the gravitational interaction between two massive bodies, e.g. a planet orbiting a star. This is a problem in the mathematical sense, as in something interesting about the universe that we would like to figure out. This classical two-body problem has a solution, but interestingly it is in the form of a transcendental equation that can only be solved numerically. But when done so, it looks like this. Pretty nice, huh?

It turns out that there's an even more difficult two-body problem in science academia, but this one has to do with the attraction between two humans (cf Figure 1 above for a succinct description). The problem arises when one or both individuals are academics seeking post-graduate job positions. The problem, in a traditional sense of the word, is related to the fact that academia has been honed and perfected over the centuries to accommodate only a specific type of coupling. If you are an academic and in a relationship, there is a closed-form solution to the two-body problem if and only if the partner/spouse is not also an academic and has the ability/willingness to move every 2-3 years over the next six years while academic partner takes various postdocs and/or other job positions. Personally, I was fortunate to find this "solution." Most do not.

Conferences for Undergraduate Women in Physics

This weekend, nearly 1000 undergraduate women in physics gathered in 6 locations around the country for meetings to encourage and support young women advancing in physics (we were told that 987 undergraduate women were attending).  The AAS/CSWA was a co-sponsor, along with the APS CSWP, which provided superb organizational and logistic support to the conferences -- see the APS conference website.  I attended the Northeast Conference at Cornell; CSWA member Michelle Montgomery was a faculty lead for the Southeast Conference at the University of Central Florida, and Meg Urry was a speaker at the Colorado School of Mines.  They and others will agree that this was an inspiring event for everyone who attended.

To put the numbers in context: each year about 6300 physics bachelors degrees are awarded, about 1300 of which go to women.  Most of the student attendees were sophomores through seniors.  About 1/4 of all the women in the US who will earn bachelors degrees in the next three years attended the conferences!  Congratulations to all of the organizers and to the national organizing committee for this impressive outcome.

In addition to having a common format, the conferences held a single plenary session with Margaret Murnane in Colorado; her talk and the Q&A from all sites were webcast.  Dr. Murnane talked about her career path and how she had resolved the two-body problem; she gave great advice including the importance of persistence.  The plenary session also showed attendees just how large the numbers were as the cameras switched from school to school during the Q&A session.  There is strength in numbers!

This was my fifth NCUWP conference, and the best one yet.  Students from small and large colleges, from Maryland to Montreal and from Ohio to New Hampshire shared their enthusiasm and energy with each other and with the handful of faculty in attendance.  I was inspired by the student research presentations, by the realization of many students that their dreams of a career in physics are achievable following the examples set by many before them, and most of all by the one-on-one conversations with students.  To any faculty member who has struggled with the difficulties of increasing the numbers of women in physics, I say go -- next year apply as a recruiter or panelist.  It will be an inspiring, energizing way to begin your year.

Where are the women professors? Unconscious gender biases

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 his blog.

I started out this series with a simple axiom: men and women are equally capable of succeeding as professional astronomers. I then made the observation that women are underrepresented in faculty positions compared to the percentage of women graduating with PhDs. What could cause such a deficit? One possibility is unconscious bias in the minds of those hiring professors. Let's check out the evidence.

One of the great triumphs of the progressive movements of the 50's and 60's was the removal of discrimination from the realm of acceptable societal behavior, at least for women and racial minorities. (Today we are witnessing a similar struggle against discrimination of the LGBTI community. More on this after I attend my Caltech Safe Zone training next week.) The end result of these progressive victories is the end of overt sexism and racism (mostly).

Guest Post: Eliza Kempton on Support for a Working Mom with Facebook

Eliza Kempton has recently started a job as an assistant professor of physics at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa.  Her research is on the atmospheres of extrasolar planets, focusing on low-mass planets known as super-Earths.  Eliza is also a new mother of a 6-month-old baby.

A couple of weeks ago, the reality of being a working mom finally hit home.  I started in a tenure track position this fall at a fabulous liberal arts school.  My students are amazing.  My colleagues are friendly and supportive.  The institution provides a million avenues for mentoring, teaching support, and research support.  I’ve never been so busy in my entire life, but I love my new job.  I am also a new mom.  I am lucky to have a rather laid-back daughter... but she is still so little.  She is growing very fast, and if you blink, you miss her taking on a new milestone or doing something funny that we’ve never seen her do before.  I swear, each week she seems like she’s an entirely new person.

Like any working parent, I struggle with balancing work and parenting, but the pressure on women can be so much more severe because of the pressure that society puts on us and the pressure that we put on ourselves to “do it all”.  This really hit home recently, when I faced my first day of not being at home to put my daughter to bed.  We had a dinner at work and a weekend retreat to kick off a grant that we just received to support our intermediate-level science students as they make the bridge from freshman-level courses into the more vigorous upper levels of their majors.  It is something that I am deeply interested in, and I knew I wanted to attend the weekend events.  But on Friday night, as I mulled over the realization walking home that I had not seen my daughter at all that day, and I was going to spend half of Saturday (usually my only real non-work day to hang out with my family) at the retreat, I started feeling sad and guilty.  I knew I wanted to attend the rest of the retreat on Saturday, but I also felt that I should be... no, I *wanted* to be... at home with my daughter!  Ah, the conundrum of trying to have it all.

I did what any social-networking saavy woman in the 21st century would do.  I reached out to my friends on facebook.  My post, and the many supportive responses I received from friends and colleagues, are below:

Two Body Problem

I'm not actually a huge fan of talking about the two body issue - the question of finding two jobs for both members of a couple, that is, not the college physics orbital dynamics problem. Unlike the physical problem, there is no one-size-fits-all analytical solution to the two body issue in employment.

The two body problem often refers only to dual academic couples. Certainly, a good many scientists are married to fellow academics. In some ways, this problem is the most straighforward to solve, since it involves a single employer: the university. But universities can be large or small, public or private, urban or rural, all factors that can impact their ability to accommodate a dual academic couple.

Because two body issues are so diverse and different, perhaps it is worth talking about them in terms of specific anecdotes and individual solutions rather than trying to define prescriptive remedies. So here I'll talk about my own search for a solution to the two body problem. The decisions we've come to have been a result of much talk and discussion and negotiation and soul-searching. So I am not looking for further suggestions or advice, but simply want to lay out our scenario and the various factors that have played into it.

My new job will be in a small department in a small college town in a sparsely populated state. My husband is not an academic. The nature of his field is that when he posted his resume on Monster.com, he immediately got swamped with phone calls from the greater metro area of where we currently live, but not a one from where we plan to move to. When he did get a phone interview at a company an hour from my new job, they wanted him to start the next day. As it stands, we are moving in less than two months, but he still has yet to find a job. However, the time scale between applying for a job, getting an offer, and starting the new job is a lot shorter than the academic cycle, so we aren't too worried.

It does, however, leave us with some amount of uncertainty as to where to live. Telecommuting is not really on the table. The best concentration of jobs appears to be about two hours away from the university, so we are splitting the difference by buying a house in a city an hour away from the university. Fortunately, the city has other features to recommend it to us. However, it will likely mean that both of us will have hour long commutes.

This whole exercise of negotiating where we buy a house (down to which side of the city we'll live!) has given me a lot of insight into why the two body problem can be such an issue when departments are trying to hire women. If my husband had been an academic, the university might have been able to find a position for him. Since he is not, however, there was not much they could do to help. There simply aren't companies in this small college town where my husband would fit. In an urban area, this would be much less of a problem. I had thought that my husband's job was pretty portable, but it turned out to be less portable than I thought. If my husband and I had not be able to compromise, if his job were less portable, then it might really have come down to a choice of career or family. And who knows, another woman might have left the pipeline.


-by Hannah

Post-Valentine's Day Heartache

I have no regrets for having had my kids during grad school. As I wrote previously, now that they are in their elementary years, parenting has gotten so much easier.

This isn't to say that there aren't perils. I don't mean the mere sick day here and there or cobbling together day care for the summer or random days off from school. I'm talking real heartbreak.

It is the nature of an academic career that it is a nomadic life. You get your PhD and you move. Three years later, you finish your postdoc and move. Repeat until you land a permanent position. Given that the average time until this happens is at least six years, and is probably even longer these days with the poor economy, it's an awful long time before you can really settle down.

The two-body problem is hard enough. When you have kids, it becomes an N-body problem, which is known to lead to chaos.

I've been fortunate in being able to spend all of my postdoc years in the same area, so I haven't had to move since for the last seven years. But now I am facing the prospect of moving clear across the country to another state. For my astronomer friends, this is par for the course. Our turbulent career paths aggregate us together for a short time before the next eddy disperses us again, only to form new aggregations elsewhere. We are sad to part, but know that we'll see each other again, if only at the next AAS Meeting.

When you have kids, though, you become a part of the local community. You become invested in the local schools and their PTAs. You make friends with the parents of their friends. You sign them up for team sports. You might even start taking karate lessons along side them. You become involved in scouts, and your spouse becomes a scout leader. When the other parents hear that you're looking for jobs on the other side of the country, they tell your spouse, "I know it's the best for her career, but we really don't want to lose you! Don't tell her I said that."

I have made very good friends here, friends that I can't count on seeing again at conferences. My kids and husband have made friends here, too. We have become a real part of the community here. Now that moving away is becoming more and more of a reality, it's become more and more heart-wrenching.

I know that given the job market out there, I should be grateful just to have the opportunity to stay in astronomy. It's just that it doesn't come without some personal costs.