ASTR 8500 (O'Connell) Spring 2020

Professional Development For
Astronomy Graduate Students

ASSIGNMENTS

There will be four assignments this semester. Only one will involve a written submission, but three will involve a presentation to the class using PowerPoint or the equivalent.

You should think of your participation in this course not just as a requirement to be discharged but as an opportunity to build a set of reference materials on the profession that will be useful to you, other UVa graduate students, and potentially to the larger astronomical community as well.

A. Future of US Astronomy, A Debate

Dennis Overbye, one of the best popular science writers, suggested in a recent New York Times column that US astronomy might be on the verge of "losing the universe" because it is unlikely to be able to compete directly with the European Extremely Large Telescope (39-m aperture) now under construction in Chile. Overbye's article is linked here.

To provide some context for the rest of the semester, we will hold a discussion and debate over the Overbye article during the January 28 meeting.

Students are asked to read the article and form themselves into two teams: one to argue in favor of Overbye's claim and one to oppose it. For definiteness, we will reformulate his claim as follows:

"US astronomy will be at a significant disadvantage in the next decade if it does not possess the largest optical telescope in the world."

Team members don't necessarily have to agree with the point they are defending, but everyone should have read Overbye and some of the supporting literature that can be easily found on the Web concerning the science cases and plans for the class of 20+ meter optical telescopes. You might read the public commentary attached to the article to get a feel for general opinion (some informed, some not) on the subject.

Teams should be roughly equal in size, and each should have an organizer who will take the lead in seeing that the various aspects of the case are covered by the team. No A/V presentations are expected.

Everyone is expected to take part in the debate, and teams should anticipate the main points of the other side and formulate rebuttals to them.

Note that a real-life version of this debate is now playing out at the highest levels of planning for the next decade of US astronomy in the ongoing 2020 Decadal Study.

B. Faculty Top-10 Advice

Working in teams of 2 or 3, students will interview as many faculty and senior researchers at UVa and NRAO as possible over a ~2 week period to obtain their best advice for graduate students in the form of the "top 10 things that grad students should know" in confronting their careers. Interviewees aren't obligated to offer you 10 suggestions, but they have been alerted to your visits, and we hope they will be happy to participate and will have thought about the topic ahead of time.

The teams will divide up the interviewees as desired. Each team will consolidate the advice they receive into a top-10 list, which they will present to the class in a brief (~8 minute) talk. The class will consider and discuss all the presentations and arrive at a final "top-10" consensus list.

We will need one (volunteer) student to act as coordinator and help groups pick interviewees without duplications, provide contact information, etc.

C. Proposal to the Virginia Space Grant Consortium

General considerations and advice concerning writing good proposals will be covered in a class presentation. As a realistic exercise, each student will develop and write up a proposal to support their ongoing ASTR 9995 research project in the form expected by the Virginia Space Grant Consortium Graduate Research Fellowship program. That will include writing a resume (or "CV"). Writeups will be submitted for grading. Each student will also present a brief (8-10 minute) summary of their proposal to the class.

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D. Presentation on Optional Topic

Each student will select an optional topic related to the course for a 10-12 minute presentation during the last third of the semester. I will provide a list of possible topics, but students can suggest others.

After presentations made under items (C) and (D), the audience will provide constructive feedback using written evaluation forms. Copies (PDF files) of presentations, including lists of resources, will be posted on the ASTR 8500 public website.

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Last modified December 2020 by rwo