Issue of June 28, 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:
1. Seeking AASWomen editors, Women In Astronomy blogger-in-chief
2. Career Profile: From Physics Faculty to Director of Undergraduate Advising
3. Meet 2 Innu women trailblazers in astrophysics and land guardianship
4. Astrophysicist Amber Miller New Hewlett Prez
5. Radical women-only hiring policy improves diversity at Dutch university
6. Job Opportunities
7. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
8. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
9. Access to Past Issues
An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/ at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.
1. Seeking AASWomen editors, Women In Astronomy blogger-in-chief
From: CSWA via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com
The American Astronomical Society (AAS) Committee for the Status of Women in Astronomy (CSWA) is seeking volunteers to help in some of our public communication roles.
AASWomen Editor: Editors collate submissions from the community, and also seek out recent news items that are of interest to our community, for the weekly AASWomen newsletter. Each editor is responsible for an average of one newsletter per month.
For access to past issues for reference, see http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/search/label/AASWOMEN
Women In Astronomy blogger-in-chief: The WIA blogger is responsible for maintaining the blog, which typically means one post per week on a topic of interest to our community; these are a combination of original posts, crossposts from other sources, and guest-written posts.
To see examples of recent blog posts, see http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/
The blogger-in-chief would preferably also join the CSWA; the AASWomen editor does not need to be a CSWA member, but people interested in the role might also be interested in joining the CSWA. We also encourage applications to join the CSWA from other interested members of the community — see https://forms.gle/4t2k63RZDyMaKgLB8.
For more information, or to volunteer, please email Jeremy Bailin [jbailin_at_ua.edu] and Karly Pitman [kpitma1_at_gmail.com].
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2. Career Profile: From Physics Faculty to Director of Undergraduate Advising
From: Nicolle Zellner via womeninastronomy.blogspot.com
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, etc. The interviews share advice and lessons learned from individuals on those paths.
Below is our interview with Dr. Monika Kress, the Undergraduate Advising Director in the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. She has been in this position since 2023, after following a fairly linear academic career path, from PhD to two postdocs, with a little bit of adjuncting to get teaching experience while doing the postdocs. She most recently served as a tenured faculty member in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at San Jose State University (SJSU) for 19 years, including five years as department Chair.
Read more at
http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2024/06/career-profile-from-physics-faculty-to.html
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3. Meet 2 Innu women trailblazers in astrophysics and land guardianship
From: Jeremy Bailin [jbailin_at_ua.edu]
By Edzi’u Loverin
Laurie Rousseau-Nepton says she wants to understand the very large and the very small, and that’s why she became the first Indigenous woman in Canada to earn a PhD in astrophysics. Rousseau-Nepton received her PhD in 2017 from Université Laval in Quebec City. She said that at the time she wasn’t aware she was the first Indigenous woman in Canada to do that.
But she said she did realize that ancestral knowledge from her community was missing in the study of the stars.
“I made it a quest to find it back, to retrieve that knowledge and reconnect it,” Rousseau-Nepton said.
On that quest, she found a story that showed evidence of her Innu ancestors observing solar eclipses.
“I started looking and found a beautiful story about eclipses and those stories really highlighted the fact that our ancestors really had a deep understanding of those phenomena, and to me it was like, eye-opening. I wanted to know more.”
Read more at
https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/innu-science-women-trailblazers-1.7238537
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4. Astrophysicist Amber Miller New Hewlett Prez
From: Jeremy Bailin [jbailin_at_ua.edu]
By Kevin Marek
The Hewlett Foundation has named Amber Miller as its new president. The selection of Dr Miller is a paradigm-changing move; she will be the first woman and the first scientist to hold the position, and she represents a new generation of leadership for the foundation. She will take up her responsibilities at the beginning of September.
Dr Miller is an astrophysicist who is currently Dean of The Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California. In her role, Dr Miller oversees a staff of over 2,000 faculty who teach a wide variety of subjects. In addition, she previously served as Dean of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University.
Read more at
It IS Rocket Science: Astrophysicist Amber Miller New Hewlett Prez
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5. Radical women-only hiring policy improves diversity at Dutch university
From: Jeremy Bailin [jbailin_at_ua.edu]
By Cathleen O’Grady
A Dutch university’s controversial policy to close the gender gap by temporarily allowing only women to apply for certain roles appears to be paying off.
In 2019, the Eindhoven University of Technology (TUE) announced that for the first 6 months of recruitment for permanent academic jobs, only women applicants would be considered. Now, the university—which specializes in engineering science—has found that in the first 5 years under the new policy, half of new recruits were women, compared with 30% previously.
The results, released earlier this month, are promising, says Yvonne Benschop, an organizational behavior researcher at Radboud University who specializes in workplace diversity. They “debunk old myths about women not being interested or qualified” for particular roles, she says.
Read more at
https://www.science.org/content/article/radical-women-only-hiring-policy-improves-diversity-dutch-university
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6. 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#howtoincrease
– Lecturer or Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ
https://aas.org/jobregister/ad/454cc9c3
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7. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
To submit an item to the AASWOMEN newsletter, including replies to topics, send email to aaswomen_at_lists.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.
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8. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
Join AAS Women List through the online portal:
To Subscribe, go to https://aas.simplelists.com/aaswlist/subscribe/ and enter your name and email address, and click Subscribe. You will be sent an email with a link to click to confirm subscription.
To unsubscribe from AAS Women by email:
Go to https://aas.simplelists.com, in the “My account and unsubscriptions”, type your email address. You will receive an email with a link to access your account, from there you can click the unsubscribe link for this mailing list.
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9. Access to Past Issues
http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/search/label/AASWOMEN
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