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Syllabus AST 185C - FALL 2007 Dinerstein, Wed. 2-3 PM, RLM 15.216A (Edmonds Lounge) Philosophy of this course: AST 185C is a professional development seminar for incoming graduate students in the UT Astronomy Ph.D. program. It consists of informal sessions with a variety of guest speakers - mostly local, but sometimes outside visitors as well - consisting of information, advice, and discussion. The idea is to try to address issues that are important to surviving and succeeding in our graduate program and in astronomy as a profession, but often don't come up in conventional courses. Ast 185C is a little bit different each time it happens. Topics: In the typical year, most of the "first-year" students in our graduate program are
new to UT. Therefore I usually spend close to half the semester giving overviews of the activities of the different
research groups, as well as introducing McDonald Observatory and other departmental resources. Since these
things aren't necessary this year, I would like to focus more on other things: the culture of astronomy and how
to navigate it; key organizations and resources, what is expected of you at various stages of your career; how
to optimize your chances of success - as well as the nature of the job market and strategies for eventually finding
the jobs you want. In some ways the job market in astronomy is constantly evolving, and it is useful to be aware
of these trends. For example, there are fashions in research fields (cosmology; extrasolar planets); there are new
kinds of professional niches ("firm" funding, as opposed to "hard" and "soft" money positions); and many postdoc
applications these days are essentially grant proposals.
What will we do in this class? I hope that you will try to attend regularly, unless you are ill or out of town for an observing run, etc. We may decide to cancel some meetings, or reschedule them for a different time and day, especially for outside speakers. Rather than asking you to give brief oral presentations, which is usually the only required work for Ast 185C, I propose that we collectively undertake an in-depth examination of the job market and how it is evolving. One possibility is to update the Career Path survey of graduates of UT's Astronomy program which I carried out in the late 1990's, with the goal of presenting the results on line, or possibly as a poster at the January 2008 AAS meeting in Austin. Books, Resources:
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