Last week I went to a reunion for Harvard astronomy PhD graduates. This was kind of an unusual event — Harvard does lots of reunions, but they are usually for people who were undergrads there, and whom the university hopes will donate lots of money. The astronomy department was also attempting to raise money from this event, although one might think that soliciting scientists would be fairly futile. (Certainly my initial reaction to getting a fundraising letter was that surely Harvard astronomy professors could write grant proposals, just like the rest of us academics.)

You might find it interesting to know, however, that people with PhDs in astronomy from Harvard are not all astronomy professors, not by a long shot. There is a complete list of all alumni here, and you can see that there is a variety of careers, from professor to medical doctor (!) to lawyer (!!), with quite a number of people now working in the financial industry. Presumably the fund-raising effort was aimed more at these folks.

At the reunion itself I shook hands with an astronaut, rubbed elbows with a Nobel Prize winner, and caught up with classmates who are now Harvard and MIT professors. I also talked to many of my colleagues who (like me) fill out the fainter end of the luminosity function. I think most of us are happy in our fields, even if there is the occasional pang when our mothers ask us why we’re not famous too.

The two panel discussions covered the hot topics in astrophysics — cosmology and exoplanets — and featured both alumni and profs. I found both to be a bit bittersweet, with justifiable excitement about recent accomplishments but worries that we might not be able to follow up on this excitement. Nobody, even rich Harvard astronomers, is without funding problems, it seems; as I have opined here before, we may have to get used to doing more with less. On a grander scale, Frank Shu noted that the Fermi paradox  is a deep mystery and possibly does not bode well for the future of human civilization. Geez, just as we figure out all of cosmology, our descendants won’t last long?

At this particular reunion, two groups were represented that are not ordinarily at a reunion: current astronomy professors—not all Harvard alumni, although there are many—and current grad students. I was interested to see that the current grad students seem to be just as concerned about future jobs in astronomy as students I have seen elsewhere. The faculty didn’t seem to be particularly worried about this and it’s also interesting to note that the size of the grad student  class has expanded by about a factor of 2 since I started in 1995. This PhD-training-versus-jobs disconnect is something that I plan to talk about more here; it was addressed nicely in a recent Globe and Mail op-ed piece.

All in all, it was an interesting day, providing a nice snapshot of how the field of astronomy has changed over the past few decades and ideas about where it will possibly go in the future.  Actually I find it pretty difficult to imagine what the field will be like in 20 years; I wonder if this blog post will still be around then for comparison!

Last week I went to a workshop called “Take the Final Step” which was designed to help and encourage female science & engineering professors to apply for promotion to professor. For people who don’t know what this means, at most North American universities there are 3 ranks of professor. Assistant professors are the newbies, who don’t have tenure. Associate professor is the rank that usually goes along with getting tenure. Then “professor” (or “full professor”) is the highest rank.

It’s pretty obvious why assistant professors want to become associate professors: in  general, it’s an “up-or-out” situation: you either get promoted or you are looking for another job. But “why would anyone want to be a full professor?” is a question often discussed around the dinner table at my house. At some universities, the promotion comes with a pay raise. At many, being a full professor is a prerequisite for holding higher academic positions or committee memberships. At most places it’s some kind of recognition that one is known and respected in one’s field.

In lots of science and engineering fields there are very few women full professors. Our department has just one, and lots of physics departments don’t have any. Even in astronomy, which has a much higher percentage of women compared to physics, I saw a recent data point [can’t find the reference] saying that the fraction of full professors who are women is only about 11%. Part of this is a time lag (roughly 15 years from PhD to full prof) combined with lower participation by women in the past, but that’s not the whole story. In general, women tend to spend longer as associate professors than men. They’re less likely to request promotion and more likely to be told they’re not ready. The Council of Canadian Academies recently did a report on this topic which covers all of academia, not just science and engineering.

The workshop was geared to answering practical questions: what are the criteria for promotion? [“Excellence”, apparently. Universities aspire to be like Lake Wobegon, where all the students and all the faculty are above average.] How to acquire an international research reputation? [Go to the right conferences, among other things.] How to manage a lab’s worth of techs, post docs and students? [Pick the right people to start; set clear expectations.] How to balance research with teaching and service? [Might as well focus on research; sad to say, not many people get promoted on the basis of teaching.] How to navigate academic politics? [with your eyes open.] How to balance the rest of your life with a job that can be all-consuming? [No one had a good idea for this one, sadly.].

I thought about it and realized that I was taught by exactly two female profs over my entire undergrad and graduate career. Not exactly a ton of role models. So it was inspiring to see the many speakers at this workshop who were female (full) professors. A few of them brought their “promotion dossiers” for us to look at, and they were impressive.
But the professors themselves made strong claims that they weren’t superhuman, which I think is also important to know.

The take-home message from the workshop was that promotion to full professor is certainly not impossible, but it doesn’t just happen — it takes thought and planning. But it should be within our grasp, and we owe it to those who will come after us to at least try.