Thursday, May 2, 2024

AAS Committee on Employment and You! Services and Recent Updates

By Luisa Fernanda Zambrano-Marin, Emily Mason, Chelsea Sharon, and Julia Kamenetzky



The AAS Committee on Employment is here for you! What will you do for work once you complete your degree? How far up in the degree ladder are you interested in going? What branch of work would you want to go into? Here is a summary of what we have been up to this year to help you answer these questions and more!


The AAS Committee on Employment has been quite active updating our online resources and providing training to AAS members. We are composed of fourteen passionate members, led by Julia Kamenetzky from Westminster University; our charge is to


facilitate the professional development and employment of astronomers

at all career stages and on all career paths, and

to promote balance and fairness in the job market


Our most visible activities for the AAS community are workshops and splinter sessions at the winter AAS meetings. This year kicked off with the popular How to Give Great Presentations workshop, led by Rob Coyne and Kavitha Arur at the AAS 243 Winter meeting in New Orleans. Next came Beyond Academe, an awesome event showcasing diverse career paths beyond the traditional academic track. We had a panel discussion featuring NASA scientists, science communicators, and more, who painted a vivid picture of the possibilities for careers beyond academia. The roundtables, where 75 participants were guided by 20 expert facilitators, dove into specific career paths in an engaging exchange of ideas. The committee also sponsored the Software & Data Carpentries Workshops and the Astronomers Turned Data Scientists Splinter Session.



AAS Committee on Employment members (from left to right): Kavitha Arur, Quyen Hart, Julia Kamenetzky, Rica Sirbaugh French, and Amit Vishwas at the Beyond Academe Roundtable Discussion event at AAS 243 in New Orleans. Photo credit to Diane Frendak.




Our committee also works behind the scenes to support AAS members. The committee joined forces with AAS staff to provide feedback and suggestions for the revamp of the Job Register webpage, ensuring clarity and ease of use for both employers and job seekers. Members Emily Mason and Dave Principe have been conducting detailed textual analysis of job postings, in addition to our annual quantitative analysis of postings. 


We kept on with the redesign and update of the list of resources available at the AAS Career Resources webpage including the Academic Career Advice page! Updates to more resource pages will be available shortly. For a summary of the resources available to job seekers and those in charge of hiring (including resources to help ensure an equitable and fair search process) see Chelsea Sharon’s post on the AAS Digest


Collaboration is key. We actively engage with other AAS groups, such as the Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy and the AAS Education and Mentoring Specialist Tom Rice, fostering knowledge sharing and identifying areas of common interest. Additionally, we joined forces with the Beyond Academic Careers Advisory Committee (BACAC), aiming to amplify their collective impact. AAS Committee on Employment members also serve on the Meetings Task Force, the Early Career Engagement Task Force, and the AAS Workshop Task Force


Looking ahead, our main projects are to continue with popular workshops at AAS meetings. We plan to

  • introduce a new Project Management workshop,
  • nurture collaborations with BACAC and other AAS committees and task forces,
  • keep analyzing job data,
  • improve website access to career resources, and
  • support international students' and employees’ special concerns.


The AAS Committee on Employment continues to support astronomers’ career aspirations worldwide. We seek to empower individuals at every career stage, foster collaboration, advocate for transparency within the field, and pave the way for a brighter future for the astronomy community.

Thursday, April 25, 2024

Cross-post: New study highlights what women in STEM want

By Cindy Barth


Women Professionals
Ellie Heo | Daily Trojan
A new survey of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields finds that despite the fact that nearly 2 in 3 millennial, Gen X and Baby Boomer women working in STEM said they have seen gender equality improve during their careers, a number of long-standing challenges persist for most.

Among them: unconscious bias, workplace culture, and leadership and pay gaps. 



Read more at

Read the journal article at



Eds. note: In 2020, Kerry Couldridge, Commercial Partnership Manager and supporter of Code First Girls and Closing the Tech Diversity Gap, also wrote about what women in STEM want. She notes that "[e]mpowerment speeches and events are great for inspiring, motivating and bringing women in STEM together..." 

Read more at

Thursday, April 18, 2024

Women at NASA Support Human Spaceflight

By Nicolle Zellner

NASA logo


On April 12, the United Nations celebrated the International Day of Human Spaceflight in honor of Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet citizen. who conducted the first human space flight. This historic event opened the way for space exploration for the benefit of all humanity.

NASA has been the leader of human spaceflight in the United States, and women at all of the NASA centers and facilities have worked - for decades - to support those efforts. Here are just a few of them.

Teresa Kinney, NASA's first female chief engineer at the agency's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), is one of the managers working to put the Gateway lunar space station together in orbit around the Moon later in the 2020s. She says, ""If everybody thinks alike, you're not thinking about the problem correctly."

Read more at

https://www.space.com/nasa-1st-female-chief-engineer-gateway-moon

Kari Alvarado, is the lead management analyst and Dryden Aeronautical Test Range (DATR) asset manager at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, CA. Her advice? Never compare yourself to others. Only compare yourself to you and your own potential."

Read more at

https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/armstrong/womens-history-month-meet-kari-alvarado/

Gwendolyn Wheatle currently serves as the Administrative Assistant for the Office of STEM Engagement at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA. What started as a temporary, three-week clerical position supporting the Office of the Chief Scientist has blossomed into a 38-year career at NASA. She reminds us that you don’t have to have a degree in engineering or science to hold a position at NASA - no matter your degree, background, or experience, there is a place for you.

Read more at

https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/langley/langley-celebrates-womens-history-month-gwendolyn-wheatle/


Learn more! Women are making history at NASA every day, as the agency continues to drive innovation and push the envelope. Learn more at https://www.nasa.gov/women-at-nasa/.