Category: Career

AAS 219 Twitter Review: The Postdoc Job Market

by Jessica January 19, 2012

Continuing with my twitter review of AAS 219 sessions: The Astrophysics Postdoc Job Market – AAS Employment Committee This was a panel discussion where panel members included heads of postdoc fellowship programs and successful ex-postdocs who have moved on to faculty, research staff, industry, and education positions. Overall the discussion was interesting but rather open-ended. [...]

Tags: , , , , ,

{ 10 comments }

Category: Career Tags: , , , , ,

Read more →

Support Family Leave Policies for Grad Students and Postdocs

by Kelle December 21, 2011

In the interest of fully supporting the intellectual efforts of astronomy graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, Emily Freeland, Aaron Geller, Nick Murphy, Laura Trouille and the AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy have created a petition to encourage the establishment of family leave policies by Astronomy Departments and Fellowship Committees. Widespread adoption [...]

Tags: , , ,

{ 7 comments }

Category: Career, policy Tags: , , ,

Read more →

Minimize Unconscious Bias in Recommendation Letters

by Kelle December 7, 2011

‘Tis the season for recommendation letter writing and a friendly reminder of an important issue that letter writers, readers, and requestors should all be aware of. (Also see last year’s Recommendation Letter Writing Round Up.) While writing letters is a task that is generally taken with great care for all mentees, there are some things [...]

Tags: , , ,

{ 20 comments }

Category: Career, Links Tags: , , ,

Read more →

Professional Development at AAS 219 in Austin

by Kelle September 15, 2011

Updated Oct 10, 2011 with additional workshops and more details. The 219th AAS Meeting in Austin, TX from January 8-12, 2012 is coming up, and as a continued tradition, thanks to growing community involvement and NSF funding, professional development workshops, seminars, and special sessions will once again be offered. This year, more than ever! The [...]

Tags: ,

{ 1 comment }

Category: astro community, Career, productivity, scientific talks Tags: ,

Read more →

Maps of Astronomy Programs

by Kelle August 29, 2011

Dimitri Veras, a postdoc at IoA-Cambridge, has created maps of Astronomy institutions in the US, Canada, and Australia. Mousing over the symbols reveals the number of majors and grad students in the department and the population of the city the department is located in. The symbol meanings are different on each map, but the primary [...]

Tags: , ,

{ 14 comments }

Category: Career Tags: , ,

Read more →

Rumor Mill 2011–2012 is now open

by Jessica August 23, 2011

Astronomers are still social human creatures despite all stereotypes to the contrary. Thus the Astrophysics Job Rumor Mill is one of our most frequented pages on the AstroBetter wiki. We have started the new rumor mill for 2011–2012 and relegated the 2010–2011 page to archives. You shouldn’t need to update links as the page titled [...]

Tags: , ,

{ 0 comments }

Category: Career Tags: , ,

Read more →

Update on grad student unionizing

by Jane Rigby June 22, 2011

New developments over at NYU with larger potential impact:  an NLRB official says that grad students trying may actually be employees: In a decision issued last week, Elbert F. Tellem, acting director of the NLRB’s regional office in Manhattan, said the graduate assistants, practically speaking, have “a dual relationship” with the university that is “both academic [...]

Tags: , , ,

{ 0 comments }

Category: Career, policy Tags: , , ,

Read more →

Career Advice on Cosmic Variance

by Kelle May 27, 2011

A couple weeks ago on Cosmic Variance, Sean asked his readers for advice for scientists interested in pursuing a non-academic track: Soliciting Advice: Non-Academic Careers for Ph.D.’s The comments are chock-full of great ideas. The couple things I take away are: The need for science policy folks is greater than I thought. (But are all [...]

Tags: , , , ,

{ 2 comments }

Category: Career Tags: , , , ,

Read more →

Post-doc self-organizing [Ask AstroBetter]

by Jane Rigby May 11, 2011

“Could someone please summarize activities the postdocs have in your own institute, and ask the community to share their own initiatives?” Jane:  Sure!  At my institution, the postdocs run an astro-postdoc email list, a semi-regular lunch outing, and a new career seminar with speakers ranging from the deputy administrator of NASA to humble junior faculty [...]

{ 1 comment }

Category: Career

Read more →

Nature on PhD Overproduction

by Planck April 25, 2011
Thumbnail image for Nature on PhD Overproduction

The  journal Nature’s latest issue features The Future of the PhD as the provocative cover story. The Future of PhD special topic its own contents page, where you can see all of the articles in the series. Thankfully, few of these stories are behind the Nature paywall so they are all viewable online. They discuss [...]

Tags: , , ,

{ 11 comments }

Category: Career Tags: , , ,

Read more →

← Previous Entries