AASWomen Newsletter for March 28, 2025

Cristina Roccati, item 7.
Credit: Manuela Callari

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of March 28, 2025
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Sethanne Howard, Ferah Munshi, Stella Kafka, and Ben Keller

[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. Sorry for the late newsletter. --eds.]

This week's issues:

1. AAS 246 Call for Abstracts
2. Gender gap in research publishing is improving — slowly
3. NASA Abandons Pledge to Put Women, Astronauts of Color on the Moon
4. How Priyamvada Natarajan got more women access to the Hubble telescope
5. Pioneering scientists who were first female Fellows of the Royal Society commemorated in new documentaries presented by Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock
6. 2025 TEAM-UP Together Scholarship Program applications open
7. How an 18th-Century Female Physicist Broke Boundaries and Inspired the Generations Who Followed
8. March 25 is Equal Pay Day
9. Seven Women You Need to Pay Attention to in the Realm of AI, Responsibility, and Tech
10. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
11. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
12. Access to Past Issues

An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/ at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.

The Telescopes for Teachers Program with Dr. Rachel Huchmala

Kimberly Mitchell, CSWA blogger, interviewed Dr. Rachel Huchmala, CSWA member and doctoral research fellow for Central Idaho Dark Sky Reserve STEM Network (CIDSRSN). They spoke about the Telescopes for Teachers program Rachel helped found with CIDSRSN. 

*This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

"Huchmala_Whirpool" taken by Dr. Rachel Huchmala using the "enhanced vision" mode on one of the telescopes on the Boise State Campus (ie with light pollution). 
Photo Credit: Rachel Huchmala

Kimberly: Tell me about the Telescopes for Teachers program. What is it, and how did you get involved?

Rachel: Telescopes for teachers is a program that I started here in Boise, Idaho, as part of a NASA Science activation grant that we have. This program has allowed us to purchase 50 robotic telescopes. They're the Unistellar eQuinox 2s. They're super easy to use. They're also very compact and out of the box. In ten to fifteen minutes, you can have your telescope up and running. So with these fifty telescopes, we then got fifty teachers across the whole state of Idaho, not just Boise involved, trained on the telescope, and now the telescope is on long term loan to their school, and so they have this resource to use in their classroom to support any Earth and space science that they're doing.

Kimberly: Okay, that's really cool. So how did you come up with the idea, “Hey, let's put some telescopes and some teachers together and see what happens?”

Rachel: Our science activation program is called the Central Idaho Dark Sky Reserve Stem Network. Our original outreach group was a group of undergraduate students that would go for classroom visits. However, using undergraduate students for these outreach events is really beneficial for a lot of reasons, but one of the big cons to it is that they are undergraduate students, most of the time physics students, which means they have quite rigorous course schedules. And so what we found was that a lot of our events ended up being stem nights, which is still good, right? But this then introduced the idea that if we're not doing classroom visits, if we're coming to the school at night, what's maybe a more exciting astronomy thing that we could do?  Through those kinds of conversations and meeting some of the teachers that had invited us to those STEM nights, we learned that one of the big disconnects in students really engaging in astronomy is that they can't touch it. It's not a tangible thing. 

So for us, it was like, what if we gave them telescopes? And so we had this idea, and in talking with collaborators and other people, we decided to make it kind of big and open to see how in this first year things went, so we knew how best to cater this program to what the teachers need. Because I think one thing that's been really important to me through this whole kind of creation process is that we're not telling them what to do, we're giving them a resource, teaching them how to use it, and then allowing the teachers to decide how to best use it in their classroom. 

And because we've taken this approach, that's also allowed us to involve teachers from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade. So we got this nice variety of teachers and the subjects they teach, how long they've been teaching, and the schools that they teach at. We have some urban teachers, mostly rural teachers, so we have people all over the place, and what it's allowed us to do is to learn ways that we can better support Earth and Space Science learning in the classroom, instead of forcing an idea on these already just oversubscribed, busy teachers. 

Kimberly: When did you receive the telescopes, and how did you decide who got a telescope?

Rachel: September 2023 we received notice that our grant was getting that extra allocation to purchase the telescopes. We ordered them in January of 2024, and they arrived in March of '24. We gave out our first ones in May, and our 49th and 50th telescope went out probably last September.

Kimberly: How did you choose teachers? Was that hard?

Rachel: It was really hard. There was kind of the idea that we had put forward something that probably wasn't going to work. I don't know why, call it imposter syndrome, or whatever you like. It was not entirely positive that this was going to get funded, and so when it did, we immediately had a bunch of issues kind of come to fruition that we didn't think through, because there was no point in stressing out about something that wasn't happening yet. In hindsight, maybe a little more planning on the front end (would have been good). But what we ended up doing was we were featured in a local news article that very quickly spread around the Treasure Valley. We put together a Google Form for teachers to express their interest. We had a couple of teachers that we knew, so we reached out to them first, and then this article came out, and pretty much overnight, we had 100 people fill out the form requesting telescopes. 

It was very rewarding to see an immediate response, like we're doing something that is needed and that our community is interested in. But then we were immediately oversubscribed. So we put together this ad hoc rubric. It grew as we went, but we started first by looking at the locations of the schools, so teachers that were outside of our immediate area, schools that would be a lot harder for us to serve with the outreach programs that we already had in place. Those teachers moved towards the top of the list just because we knew that was a way that we could still reach those communities, especially if we couldn't send our students out there. So our furthest teacher is about eight hours north of us here in Boise, all the way up in Coeur d'Alene, and then our second furthest teacher is about four and a half hours east.

Dr. Huchmala with all fifty telescopes in the Telescopes for Teachers Program.
Credit: Rachel Huchmala

Kimberly: How did you train those teachers?

Rachel: So we learned that the big disadvantage to these telescopes is that their batteries are internal and they're too large to go on a plane. This summer, with one of our undergraduate outreach students as my volunteer assistant, we packed up the Boise State motor pool van and we drove and we ended up holding ten workshops over the summer, each one about four and a half hours of classroom training and two hours of stargazing, if weather allowed, where we went over the basics of the telescope. These are the parts, and this is what the buttons do. How does this telescope compare to other telescopes? One of the really interesting things about these unistellar telescopes is that the model we have doesn't have an eyepiece. They're cameras. You're still getting a live image, but it's not like you walk up to the telescope and look through the eyepiece that a lot of people are more used to. However, this does make them much nicer to use in classrooms, especially with younger students, because you don't have to worry about students climbing up ladders or standing very still to look through the eyepiece. And they're more accessible because nobody has to climb up a ladder or be a certain height to see through it. We can just pass around the tablet, so in the end, it works out, and this also allows them to have really nice light pollution filtering. So even our teachers in our more urban areas have the capability to see the deep sky objects that our teachers in the darker areas are able to see. 

Kimberly: Have you heard back from teachers yet on what they've been able to do with their classes?

Rachel: A little bit. So it's very cold here in Boise right now. I think the high today is 24 degrees Fahrenheit. We have a few teachers that were already into astro photography before they started. Some of them really hit the ground running over the summer. The rest of them, I suspect, in the next couple of months, will start kind of hosting their first events, pulling them out at STEM nights. But we have a couple teachers that have just taken some incredible images with these unistellar telescopes. We have a couple teachers that have already contributed to citizen science campaigns that Unistellar runs. So that was another interesting way that we were able to get them involved is to provide this kind of new and exciting thing. I was recently granted a citizen science seed funding program grant, and what we're going to do is work to turn this Telescopes for Teachers program into a citizen science project specifically geared towards these teachers and their students.

Kimberly: And you’re naming your telescopes after women in astronomy and physics, right? Can you tell me about that decision process and who you chose? You don't have to name all fifty.

Rachel: I honestly don't think I could if I tried, but we wanted to bring something kind of fun into this aspect of the Telescopes for Teachers Program. And for me, it's always been important to learn about women, especially in physics and astronomy, because they're not always the ones that are front page in the textbook. What we ended up doing was deciding to give the telescopes a name so that we were able to track them better.  That led to the decision to name them all after historical women in physics and astronomy, which created very fun history book report kind of project for me and some of the students, combing through Wikipedia pages and the women in astronomy blog, resources like that. We had a couple of criteria. The main one was that we couldn't name one of our telescopes after a telescope that had already been named. So we don't have a Nancy Grace Roman, that's kind of the big one, and we chose all historical women. These are all women who have already passed away, but that made impacts to science that not only furthered our scientific knowledge, but also helped to break down barriers and make it easier for people like myself and the next generation of female scientists to have this opportunity to even be a scientist, in some cases.

Kimberly: Do you remember some of your favorite names that you used? 

Rachel: Yes. My favorite is probably the oldest one. Her name is Seondeok. She was a Korean queen, and when she became queen, she built an observatory in Korea. It's the first one. And basically her whole life, men were telling her that she couldn't study astronomy because she was a woman, and so when it became her turn to come into power, she said, “I'm going to build this observatory, and I'm going to do what I want.” That one is one of my favorites. One really interesting one that I learned about was Judith Love Cohen (aerospace engineer, Apollo Space Program). She's a little bit more modern, but she is also Jack Black's mom. I was listening to an interview with Jack Black, and he was talking about his mom, and I was like, “Wait a second!” So searching for these women kind of took over my life for a bit of time, but it was interesting, all the seemingly random places we found inspiration for doing this. 

Kimberly: You could almost do a book about it, the fifty telescopes you’ve named. Is there a place where that information is centralized? 

Rachel: On our website, we have a page called Meet the Scientists, and that's where all fifty of the women our telescopes are named after are listed. There's a PDF link to each of them with our little synopsis biography. 

Kimberly: Do you have any plans for possibly doing a second round? 

Rachel: We are working on a renewal proposal for our NASA Science Activation Grant for continued support and growth of the Telescopes for Teachers and other outreach programs here at Boise State University.

Kimberly: Very cool. Is there anything else you want people on the astronomy blog to know about what you guys are doing? 

Rachel: We send around a monthly newsletter to all of our teachers. We spotlight one of the astronomers and updates about events that we're doing on the Boise State campus and things to look at if you're new to stargazing. 

Kimberly: Thank you so much, Rachel.

Rachel: Thank you.

Find out more about the Telescopes for Teachers program from Boise State University and the Central Idaho Dark Sky Reserve STEM Network. 

"Telescopes On Deck" is an image of four of the Unistellar eQuinox2 telescopes set up on the Boise State University Observatory deck during a training session.
Photo Credit: Rachel Huchmala

AASWomen Newsletter for March 21, 2025

Vera Rubin, item 7.
Credit: Linda Davidson/The Washington Post

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of March 21, 2025
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Sethanne Howard, Ferah Munshi, Stella Kafka, and Ben Keller

[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. --eds.]

This week's issues:

1. Women in Astronomy: Space for Students - Elizabeth Apala
2. AAS Announces 2025 Election Results
3. AAS Policy Update (18 March 2025)
4. Call for SGMA Committee Members
5. A Century Ago, Pioneering Astrophysicist Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin Showed Us What Stars Are Made Of
6. What's Stopping Women From (Literally) Aiming for the Stars?
7. Alycia Weinberger: Vera Rubin Would 'Find It Fun' That Nvidia Named New Chip After Her
8. NSLC High School Summer Engineering Programs
9. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
10. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
11. Access to Past Issues

An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/ at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.

Women in Astronomy: Space for Students - Part 6

By: Libby Fenstermacher

In our popular Career Profile series, the AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy has compiled dozens of interviews highlighting the diversity of career trajectories available to astronomers, planetary scientists, and those in related fields. In a twist on this series, we video-interviewed students and recent graduates in astronomy and astrophysics to highlight their personal and academic career paths. The purpose of this series is three-fold. It aims not only to give a voice and exposure to those who are up and coming in the field but also to give feedback to the Astronomical community at large about the experiences of students who identify as women. The hope is that these interviews will not only share advice and lessons learned but will shed light on how to encourage and inspire more women, from various backgrounds and skill sets, to follow space trajectories and reach towards the stars. 

Below is our interview with Elizabeth Apala, an early career astrophysicist. After graduating with her master’s in applied physics with a focus on astronomy from Towson University in 2019, she worked as a senior research assistant at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Elizabeth is a member of the American Physical Society (APS) and serves as an adjunct professor at Eastern Oklahoma State College. A resident of Oklahoma and a member of the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, she is also involved with the Choctaw Nation’s YES program. This program, aimed at older teenagers and young adult tribal members, focuses on increasing social mobility by providing hands-on experiences through internships and work opportunities. Elizabeth believes that with grit and determination, anything can be accomplished and any goal can be achieved. Outside of astrophysics and her outreach work, Elizabeth and her family raise goats on their farm in Oklahoma. 

Watch the full interview with Elizabeth Apala on YouTube or read the interview below.

Photo: Elizabeth Apala

“I also want to see more support for women in our field having families, because there's a lot of negativity that women come up against when they want children, but also are scientists. And we shouldn't feel the need to choose one or the other. We're perfectly capable of being parents in any way, shape, or form and doing our jobs. We have enough love in our hearts for both. And we shouldn't feel guilty about anything that we do in our personal lives.”

Libby: Hi, everybody. My name's Libby Fenstermacher and I'm here today with Elizabeth, and she's going to tell us a little bit about her background in astronomy and astrophysics. So thank you so much for being here. Would you like to share a little bit of your background with us today?

Elizabeth: Sure. Hi, everyone. My name is Elizabeth Apala. I work at Goddard Space Flight Center as a senior research assistant, in the Astrophysics Science Division, I've been doing this for about four years now. I joined up in November of 2020, so we're coming up on my anniversary. Outside of that, I am a part of APS (American Physical Society), and I also work as an adjunct professor at Eastern Oklahoma State College. I'm fully remote, for my more significant roles. I am located in southeastern Oklahoma and have been here for all of my time working at NASA. I've been very thankful for that.  I was born and raised here in Oklahoma and so I have a very strong connection with this community and environment, especially as a Native American representing my Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes.

Libby: Awesome. What inspired you to choose a path in astronomy and astrophysics in the first place out there in Oklahoma?

Elizabeth: Well, of course in Oklahoma there's beautiful skies and a lot of really, really kind people. When you combine those two, I mean, you just want to be a part. So when I was about three years old in Head Start, I wanted to be an astronaut, as so many people in the field do. And after that, you know, I was thinking, well, is that really realistic? I had a parent that was in the military and he sadly wasn't able to be here a lot for my childhood. So I started looking around and I'm like, how do I combine the sky and my love for being able to stay around for my future family? And so I was just like, well, maybe I can be a fighter pilot, which would have taken me a little bit away. But that was where my head went. And I was thinking, meteorology, it's all about the sky. It's all about getting as far away as I could, you know, while still having my feet on the ground. But when I was looking into high school…my high school that I was entering offered an astronomy class and they also, with the help of the Choctaw Nation, my science teacher had gotten an observatory built for that school, which was amazing. It was a great, great gift and blessing. So I gladly jumped into that class as a freshman. I met my longtime mentor, Mr. Phillip Scott, and he and his wife took me under their wing. They made sure that I went to an astronomy camp that following summer. They helped my mom and my father, you know, get up enough money to send me on a flight to Tucson, AZ. And I met my first astrophysicist there. My mind was made up at 15 years old that that was what I was going to do. So I got my hands on that telescope at that high school and I got to do astrophotography and, you know, public outreach and, you know, just getting my feet wet in the whole field. And I just, oh, I loved it. I loved it so much. So I continued on. I got my bachelor's from East Central University in Ada, OK, and got my master's at Towson University to follow that. 

Libby: What an amazing path to hear. So amazing that you figured out what you wanted to do at such a young age and were able to stick with it. What about astronomy excites you and kept you attached to your path?

Elizabeth: Well, when I was very, very young, it was always because I wanted to be an astronaut. My parents took me down...we were on our way to Disney World and we had the opportunity to watch a space shuttle launch and we watched it and it was amazing and I clung on to that for a very, very long time. And the more that I started to learn about astronomy, you know, the more that I wanted to learn, I had that thirst. And I think that how I was able to keep on going with my dream largely falls on my mom. You know, she always looked for different ways of pushing me forward. I'm a first-generation college student, the first college graduate in my family. And so while my family didn't exactly know what I was doing, I had a lot of support and with my mentor meeting him when I was fourteen via e-mail, cause I wanted to be part of the astronomy club so badly and you know, taking that class and trying to figure out, you know, the next steps from there. I mean, I always had that fuel that I could gain from either family or Mr. Scott or even his wife, his daughter. So yeah, it just made it to where I could actually grasp something. You know, some people, grow up around Houston or DC or Greenbelt or all around these NASA sites and some people grow up around a lot of museums. I grew up around farms so I couldn't draw on the community per se and there was a point in my life where I was just like to be in astronomy means to be an astronaut. That's it. But you know, the world tends to open up the more you have support and the more you want it. So I was able to draw on that knowledge and the want to keep my passion alive.

Libby: I had a similar relationship to space living in Oregon because there are no NASA centers around here. And so it's kind of this ambiguous idea of what it is like to work within space and what it all means. And so I think there's a lot of hidden talent in these areas and in these states that are removed and not surrounded by it that can be tapped into.

Elizabeth: Yeah, totally.

Libby: So what about astronomy do you find challenging and what have you done to overcome these challenges?

Elizabeth: Well, I think that the hardest part about astronomy is probably the size of the field and it's a small field and so you know we have to work harder to try to get our foot in the door sometimes because it can get really competitive. I think that how I try to push through that is to make meaningful connections to one person that could lead to another person. You know, it may be a slower route to take. But that's similar to how I got through with Goddard and into my job there. I started with a connection when I was in grad school, my first year in my master's program and I was able to go and watch the interns present their research and the girl that I talked to, she's now retired, but she was just like, hey, I'll give you a tour. And so I did my research and I really liked this girl named Amber Straughn, Dr. Amber Straughn. And I was just like, you know what? One day I would love to work with her. So I plopped into her office. Right in front of her as a grad student. You know, I didn't know what I was doing, but I was just like, hey, let's work together. Let's do this right now. And she's like, she's like, no, I don't have anything right now, but maybe later. Lo and behold, her and Dr. Rita Sambruna, they're the ones who are my bosses right now. So, I was able to get my foot in the door like that and there are so many people in our field that are so kind, so kind. And I just, I appreciate that mentality so much because we're not a proud, cocky kind of group. We're a very caring group of individuals that just love science. We're just a bunch of nerds. We just want, we just want to do science. And I'm very, I'm so happy that we have that in our field. So yeah.

Libby: I feel like a lot of it has to do with the international aspect and the size of the community. Everyone has to work together across the globe towards these common goals and it creates this kind of like cosmic consciousness in a way.

Elizabeth: Yes, yes, I love it. I love it.

Libby: I've loved every one I've met so far within the astronomy and astrophysics communities too. So great job community for being inclusive.

Elizabeth: Yes.

Libby: What do you think is a common misperception about astronomers and or astronomy/astrophysics as a discipline and educational path? Loaded question.

Elizabeth: This is probably my favorite question. OK. Everybody that you tell, Oh yeah, I'm an astrophysicist or I'm a physicist or I'm an astronomer, whatever you choose to label yourself in the field as your number one response is going to be, oh, that sounds so hard. You must be so smart. And I'm like, no, no, it doesn't take a genius to join the field. It just takes somebody that wants to be in the field. That's it. You know, I think that a lot of people, they just get scared off because, you know, when you think of physics, you think of mathematics. And it's true. Mathematics plays a heavy part in the field. But there's so much you can do outside of being a heavy theoretical, you know, astrophysicist doing heavy coding modeling. There's so much more to the field than that. It makes up some of the field, very true, but you don't have to be a genius to do what you want. You know, there's a big, strong statement. There are huge statements that you can make when it comes to grit. Grit, and determination. That is the most success-driven thing that you can ever have. It's not about being born a natural genius. It wasn’t like that. I struggled a lot. But you just have to have that grit and determination and you can go so far and you know it is so much more than just our field. It's anywhere. So yeah, that's something that I try to stress. 

Libby: It's really wise knowledge to pass on and great advice. And I think that is a massively common misperception that I've heard in the field is that of the lone genius.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Libby: And I think a lot of that comes from the history of the field in general and you know how it was formed in the first place, the lost vestiges of the past. But so bringing it to the present day, what are you currently working on right now?

Elizabeth: Well, right now I'm working with the Choctaw Nation with their YES program. It's for individuals that are 16 to I do believe 21 or 22. So it works with later high school students and early bachelor students and they fund tribal members to get jobs somewhere for an internship time frame. So that we enter the field and know it with a little bit of experience. But I'm trying to work with them and bridge them to NASA Goddard right now. Because there are a lot of scientists who are willing to take on students but just don't have the funding to pay. And so I'm trying to bridge that gap so we can have more minority representation, especially in our Native American population because we just don't have it. I know I'm one of very few scientists that are Native American in the field and I just, I really want to make sure that other Natives know that they can do this.

Libby: Yeah, I strive for that to happen as well. That's why I searched for you for this interview because there are few and far between indigenous Americans within the field. And in order to have diversity in what we can find out and learn, we need to have diversity of people. So I fully support you on your path forward. And I think that's just so awesome that you're looking for a way to bridge that gap with Goddard. That's really neat. So what are your near future plans?

Elizabeth: Well, right now, due to budget cuts, I am looking for new positions so I can continue my efforts in astronomy. My contract is expiring December 31st, sadly, but hopefully, I won't be gone for too long. But as my plans are right now, I will continue to work with APS. And teach, you know, as an adjunct at my local Community College and just see how the wind blows me and where I can help out. Because, you know, in the end, my biggest goal is to help people out, especially the younger folks, to, you know, achieve their dreams in the field.

Libby: So what are your aspirations with all of this? Where do you see yourself when you're like 80 years old?

Elizabeth: Well, by 80, I hope I'm retired.

Libby: I hope so too.

Elizabeth: But for as long as I live, I hope to just be able to do outreach. As long as I'm helping people in the field, my goals are being completed. You know, if it wasn't for Mr. Scott, back in high school, when I was, it wasn't even when high school even started. It was the summer before. If it wasn't for him, you know, guiding me through to the camp and, you know, introduced me to how to work a telescope and interact with the community. I wouldn't…I wouldn't be anywhere, near what I am now. And so if I can be somebody else's, Mr. Scott…Oh, I would be so proud of myself. You know, my life goal would just be complete.

Libby: That's beautiful. Speaking of Mr. Scott, what is the most important guidance that you think he gave you along the way?

Elizabeth: Oh, my gosh, that's such a hard question. He's still active in my life. I go over to his house and have dinner with him and his wife. They were at my wedding. But, I think that him just taking my phone calls, you know, and talking to me as I had, minor lapses during grad school or even undergrad, I think that was the biggest thing because he knew that I could do it and as long as I had somebody in my corner like that, that helped a lot. He believed in me and he sees me as like his daughter. His daughter's name is Emily and I thought that it was so amazing and I'm so blessed to be able to be compared to her because she was a firefighter, volunteer. She was fighting cancer, OK? She was going through chemotherapy actively. She saw a house burning down and she ran in there. And she took a man out of there, saved his life. And you know, she loves astronomy as well. She actually went to the same undergraduate institution that I did. But to be compared to somebody like that, that's enough to keep people, you know, on the up and up.

Libby: I think he sounds like an amazing mentor and just a friend in general. What advice would you give to someone considering a trajectory similar to yours?

Elizabeth: Oh, you know, no matter what, where you're at in the field, there's always going to be somebody that says you can't, right? There's always going to be like, oh, that you're taking on too much. You scored this and that on XYZ exam or whatever. Don't take them too seriously. Because you will often outgrow the naysayers and there's no reason, there's no reason for them to be that way. But if you can kind of use that to fuel your success, then I suggest that that's how you do it. Because you know, at one point I had a naysayer. That said, I couldn't do it, that I would collapse. And this was when I was in high school. A person that worked at my high school went up to my mother and said, you're putting too much on your kids. They're just going to burn out. They're not going to be anybody. You need to stop… because I wanted to take concurrent classes at my local Community College. I drove by her house, I know where she still lives, and every time I see her house, I haven't seen her face since I graduated. But I think… I proved you wrong. You'll never know. But I did more than what you thought. And that's going to happen a lot in anybody's life. You know, you just kind of, find that fuel to guide your destiny, you know?

Libby: It seems like what she provided for you is that combination of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. You know, like she like started a fire within you that you were able to just like, go forth and rock.

Elizabeth: Yes. I was just like, you know what? I'll prove you wrong. Yes.

Libby: Sometimes we have to have those little gnats, right? But yeah, it seems like you might have been victim to a lot of unconscious bias at a young age, and that's very common for women, especially women in STEM to experience. So what would you like to see? What changes would you like to see for women in astronomy going forward?

Elizabeth: I always, always will advocate for more women in astronomy. I just think as long as we can be as diverse as possible, we can support each other in as many ways as we can in science and anything else. And I also want to see more support for women in our field having families, because there's a lot of negativity, I feel like, that women come up against when they want children, but also are scientists. And we shouldn't feel the need to choose one or the other. We're perfectly capable of being parents in any way, shape, or form and doing our jobs. We can, we have enough love in our hearts for both. And we shouldn't feel guilty about anything that we do in our personal lives. 

Libby: Absolutely. There's a lot of research out there about the stigma of motherhood for women in STEM. And about how it affects the attrition of women in STEM. Many women, especially in astronomy, leave mid-career due to those societal pressures. So definitely things need to change in that direction. And things like, you know, in-house childcare, that's one thing that could be done. There's a lot of good research in the mix on that. I suggest everybody out there take a look at it. So we're going to take a little curve ball here. What's your favorite movie or TV show?

Elizabeth: Anne of the Green Gables All the Way, with Megan Follows. That one from the '80s or nineties. 

Libby: OK, I remember watching that when I was a kid.

Elizabeth: Yes, it is my favorite. It's my favorite book series. It's my favorite movie. Well, it's kind of like a movie series trilogy. I just love it. And so many times, you know, you read the book and the movie, it doesn't live up to it. But the movie, the movie actually lived up to it. So it's my comfort food of movies.

Libby: I think I'm gonna have to put that on the screen one of these mornings soon. Just take a relaxing day and go out to the pasture.

Elizabeth: Yes. I just love to curl up with like a sweet treat, maybe some popcorn with some M and Ms in it with some hot tea and just nest on the couch watching my Anne of Green Gables.

Libby: So cozy and the perfect way to end any week. Well, this has been such an awesome interview. Thank you so much for being here. Can't wait to share your story and to keep tabs on where you end up in your journey. Keep on doing that outreach and just being you. And yeah, is there anything else that you'd like to add before we get off?

Elizabeth: No, I don't think so. I'm just so happy that we were able to connect and do this interview. I think that this has been really, really fun.

Libby: Yeah. Thank you. Well, have a great rest of your day and I will make sure to get ahold of you soon.

Elizabeth: Sounds good. See you later.

AASWomen Newsletter for 14 March, 2025

Imposter Syndrome

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of March 14, 2025
eds: Jeremy Bailin, Sethanne Howard, Ferah Munshi, Nicolle Zellner, Stella Kafka, and Ben Keller

[We hope you all are taking care of yourselves and each other. --eds.]

This week's issues:

1. Crosspost: Chasing the Stars: Women Astronomers at the University of Wisconsin
2. 2025 NASA Planetary Science Summer School Applications Due March 18, 2025
3. Imposter Syndrome Isn’t a Personal Flaw. It’s a Systemic Issue
4. Female Science Stars to Follow in 2025
5. NASA Science - SMD
6. NASA OSTEM News
7. Update to NASA Science Advisory Committees
8. AAS Issues Public Policy Guidance and Action Alerts for AAS Members
9. Seven Women Who Changed Astronomy (2025)
10. Conversations on Careers Outside Academia (COCOA)
11. Save the date: Physics & Astronomy Faculty Teaching Institute: June 25–28, College Park, MD
12. e-z-science Women in Astronomy
13. Trajectories in Astronomy, in the Specific Case of Chile
14. Maximizing American Talent by Advancing Women of Color in Academia
15. Status of Women in Astronomy: Still a Long Way to Go
16. Behind every great woman in science, there’s another great woman in science
17. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter
18. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter
19. Access to Past Issues

An online version of this newsletter will be available at http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/ at 3:00 PM ET every Friday.

Chasing the Stars: Women Astronomers at the University of Wisconsin

Eds Note: We are delighted to offer an excerpt from Chasing the Stars: How the Astronomers of Observatory Hill Transformed Our Understanding of the Universe by James Lattis and Kelly Tyrrell, published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2024.

Women in Astronomy

Women’s participation in astronomy has always been constrained by the social conventions and norms of wider society, many of which limited women’s access to education itself. 

Initially, women were considered by many male astronomers to be unsuited for the “physical hardships” of long nighttime hours at the telescope, not to mention academic life more generally. But norms and conventions shifted rapidly in the United States after the Civil War, and female students were becoming more common on college campuses by the time Washburn Observatory came along. 

Despite critics who argued that rigorous study would adversely affect a woman’s health or that women would distract men from their studies, female students across the nation grew in number, and the University of Wisconsin was among the more progressive in bringing women to campus. John Bascom was important in this as university president because he believed in equal access to higher education and academics for women. 

Edward Holden was also very supportive of women who were interested in astronomy and employed several students not only for computation but for significant work with the observatory’s new instruments. Among the most notable are Alice Sanborn and Alice Lamb, who published their work under their own names in the Publications of the Washburn Observatory between 1883 and 1886. 

Edith Flather worked as a computer, or coder,
at Washburn Observatory in the 1950s and ’60s. 

Computation was a highly skilled activity. Women’s skills were equal to men’s, Joel Stebbins remarked, except “usually the women are neater and just as accurate.” However, before roughly the middle of the twentieth century, women who sought astronomical careers beyond computing were, with rare exceptions, limited to the handful of positions at small observatories at women’s colleges, where they succeeded as practicing astronomers in defiance of biases. As happened with Lamb, social forces pressed many young potential astronomers, as Stebbins put it, to be “converted into matrimony,” rather than pursuing careers in science. 

After Holden’s tenure, there seem to have been very few women employed at Washburn Observatory outside of the traditional roles of clerical help and computation. Before the 1960s, it was rare for the University of Wisconsin to award graduate degrees in astronomy at all. However, of the three graduate degrees awarded in astronomy in the first half of the twentieth century, one was a master of arts awarded in 1932 to Alletta Esther Beddoe. 

While little remains about her in the historical record, Beddoe’s hometown is listed in the university’s 1932 commencement booklet as Springdale, Arkansas, and she received her bachelor’s degree in 1930 from Carleton College, in Minnesota. Stebbins writes that Beddoe was working at Washburn during the summer of 1930, and he recommended her for an out-of-state tuition remission scholarship. Admissions forms from both 1930 and 1931 show her enrolled in a master’s program, but, though the booklet lists her degree as astronomy, it does not mention her thesis title, and the nature of her work at Washburn remains obscure. 

Betty Louise Webster looks through the
 eyepiece of the Washburn refractor. 

It wasn’t until the fall of 1966 that Washburn Observatory employed its first female PhD astronomer on staff. Betty Louise Webster (1941–1990) came to Wisconsin from Australia for her postdoctoral research, specifically because it was the best place to advance her research in photoelectric photometry of planetary nebulae, a specialty of the university’s Donald Osterbrock. An article in the Capital Times in 1967 shows how far views about women in observational astronomy had come: “Astronomy presents no special handicaps for women, least of all observations with the big telescopes, as Miss Webster sees things.” 

Women began to account for a significant portion of advanced researchers in astronomy in the early 1960s, and Wisconsin was part of that trend—about one in four graduate students were women. The first woman to earn a doctorate in astronomy at the University of Wisconsin was Natalie Satunas in 1964. Next, in 1967, came Susan Simkin (1940–2021), who became the first woman tenured in the Astronomy Department at Michigan State University, and Laura “Pat” Bautz (1940–2014), who spent much of her career at the National Science Foundation. There, Bautz eventually held the position of director of the Division of Astronomical Science, and she also served Wisconsin as a member of the Astronomy Department’s Board of Visitors. 

Faculty appointments of women in astronomy began to pick up beginning with astronomer Linda Sparke, a specialist in the dynamics of galaxies, who became a University of Wisconsin professor in 1989. Three decades later, roughly half of all PhDs awarded in astronomy at UW–Madison and elsewhere go to women. Their potential was overlooked for far too long. 

Female grad students in the UW Astronomy Department, May 1963.
Back to front: Susan Simkin, Laura Bautz, Bernadette Londak, and Natalie Satunas.

Reprinted with permission by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press © 2024. All rights reserved. Chasing the Stars is available for purchase from the Wisconsin Historical Society online store at https://shop.wisconsinhistory.org/chasing-the-stars. It can also be found at booksellers near you.

All photos are courtesy of the Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin–Madison, reprinted with permission.