Daniella Roberts, our group member measuring satellite luminosity functions statistically with Hubble Space Telescope data in collaboration with Dr. Anna Niereenberg, has won an OSU ASC Travel Award to attend SACNAS 2019 this fall. Congratulations, Daniella!
Month: April 2019
Pro tip #4: It takes a village to mentor a person
You need a mentor. Scratch that, you need more than one mentor. Regardless of whether you are a student, a postdoc, a faculty person, a very senior faculty person, a manager, an employee, a parent, you need a village of people to help navigate your way through your career and life.
There are always things you need to learn. You will always need feedback. There is no one person who can give you everything you need. It is important to have your bases covered.
It is often hard to figure out who these people might be for you. I am truly fortunate to be at a giant university with a huge number of colleagues I trust to go to for advice. I also reach out to many people outside of my institution. I have friends I can lean on, and a supportive family. But it can be very difficult to find your village, to find people you trust.
This is where I give advice to people who should be mentoring you: Hello, Slightly or Very Much More Senior Person: find those people around you who could use some aspect of your accumulated knowledge. Reach out. Don’t force any advice, but signal that you are open to talk. That person may be geographically distant, or down the hall. Be genuine. Be open.
Coming back around to you: if you are at a university, there are often pockets of people around you can consult for specific things. At my university, we have a center for people who want to learn how to teach better. For students, we have writing centers. We have therapists. There are people whose job it is to help you. The issue with my university is size, in that we have so many centers that it can be difficult to wade through the list and identify the right one, or to even realize that some services exist.
I am constantly finding myself in situations I don’t know how to deal with. I am always grateful for the people who give me solid advice.
This day’s post is inspired by a number of people who have provided wise counsel at key moments in the past couple of years. In particular, shout-outs to John Beacom, Julianne Dalcanton, Andrew Heckler, Manoj Kaplinghat, Paul Martini, Todd Thompson, Risa Wechsler, and Beth Willman. There are many more people to whom I owe debts of gratitude. Thanks!
Pro tip #3: Keep trying to be a good person
Science is a human activity. The universe cares not if we study its splendor. Humans study facets of the universe because we are curious, and because some of the things we find have great practical value. Fundamentally, science is done by humans for humans (and perhaps also for our animal and plant friends). As such, much of making scientific progress involves interaction with fellow beings.
Human strengths and foibles play as much a role in science as in any other context involving more than one human. This may be a surprise to some people. A popular stereotype is that science is done by introvert loners who totally shy away from contact with others. While some scientists fit part of the stereotype (hello, fellow introverts!), this is not actually how we make progress by and large. It takes a village to investigate the universe. Humans must interact to perform science.
A popular stereotype some scientists hold about themselves is that they are totally data-driven and objective. This is not true. Scientists hold the same types of biases that everyone else has, and are driven by the same emotions as non-scientists. We have the same kinds of problems, and react to them in the same way, as non-scientists. We are products of our culture. We are human.
This means that how we do science is affected by our humanness. We can act with great kindness to each other, work collaboratively to solve problems, and solve problems that are important to our society as a whole. But we can also use our humanness to tear each other down.
This tearing down happens a lot, unfortunately, and tends to be aimed at those people who don’t have power. A lot of bad (whether actively intentionally bad or unintentional badness—if you’re on the receiving end, it really doesn’t matter if the other person “meant” to be bad to you or were unintentionally bad. Bad is bad) behavior occurs when people fear loss of status, and they take it out on people they perceive as threatening to rise up in the power hierarchy. So, a lot of in-group/out-group dynamics.
In physics, this has always meant that women and gender minorities, Black and Brown people, those with non-straight sexual orientation, , those coming from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, people with disabilities, people from non-Western countries (with only a few exceptions), and especially people lying at the intersections of those identities, have been kept out. Or heavily encouraged to leave. We also see it play out in the academic hierarchy, where faculty act as gatekeepers and power-holders over students.
It will take a major cultural shift and systemic change to change this. We have to have a new set of values, to not perpetuate bad behavior and instead foster a culture of actual real inclusion.
For me, change starts with myself. I try to create space for people. I try to advocate for those who have less power than I. I try to do better and be better. I try to create change in my corner of the universe. I fail often. I ask for grace, and I try again. There is a long way to go, but I want to keep being better and making my field better, and hold myself accountable in a results-based framework. I think about things in terms of research outcomes: intent doesn’t matter if your intent doesn’t match your outcomes. So, I keep trying.
Congratulations to Amy Sardone!
Congratulations to visiting graduate student Amy Sardone on winning an NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship! Amy is currently finishing her PhD at West Virginia University, exploring the cool hydrogen gas content (out to the virial radius!) of nearby galaxies as part of the IMAGINE survey. She also wrote a really nice paper on the HI content of the mysterious galaxy NGC1052-DF2. We expect more great things from her. Congratulations again!