Astronomy in the United States: Workforce Development and Public Engagement

ASTRONOMY IN THE UNITED STATES: WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT AND PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT

CHRIS IMPEY University of Arizona Steward Observatory 933 N. Cherry Avenue Tucson AZ 85721, U.S.A. [email protected]

Abstract. Astronomy workforce development and public engagement in the United States are described. The number of professional astronomers has grown by about a third in the past 25 years, to about 4000. Only one in four are faculty in an academic setting; the rest work in a wide range of public and private research institutes. PhD production has remained steady at about 200 per year. Women account for roughly half of BSc degrees and a third of PhD degrees, but their participation declines to about 10% at the level of full professor. Minorities are underrepresented by a substantial fac- tor at all levels of the profession. In terms of public engagement, astronomy has unique advantages associated with its visual appeal and the large and active amateur astronomy community. The are 1400 public planetaria in the U.S., with another 110 in schools and universities. Astronomers have made good use of new media such as blogs and podcasts and social networks, but the biggest impact has been in the area of citizen science, where people with no technical background contribute directly to a research project by, for example, classifying galaxies. The International Year of Astronomy and the remarkable success of the Galileoscope have inspired large numbers of people to appreciate astronomy, contributing indirectly to the professional vitality of the ﬁeld.

1. Introduction

Astronomy has a singular status among all sciences in the awareness of the general public. Throughout its long history it has been twined with culture 78 CHRIS IMPEY through stories told about stars and planets, and it has been embedded in daily life through its importance for navigation and time-keeping. From the time of the Copernican Revolution, astronomy has shaped our sense of our place in a vast and ancient universe. In the modern age, astronomy is one of the most vital sciences, with discoveries spurred by sophisticated space observatories and large new ground-based telescopes. Part of its popularity is its instant visual appeal; images from the Hubble Space Telescope have attained iconic status around the world. Astronomy is simultaneously big and small sciencecutting edge facilities cost billions of dollars, but CCDs are cheap enough that a legion of amateur astronomers participates, and they can generate publishable research. The public feels ownership over the subject in a way that benefits the profession and its practitioners. This article will give an overview of the development of an astronomical workforce and the modes by which astronomers engage with the public. Space is too limited for details, which can be pursued through references at the end. The focus is the United States, but professional astronomy is a highly collaborative “village” of 10,000 people, with projects and meetings drawing from many countries. The same is true of public engagement. The ubiquity and reach of the Internet, and the rise of English as the dominant second language, mean that astronomy outreach can be truly international. The US community goes through an important process every ten years called the Decadal Survey (National Research Council 2010). Sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences, each decadal survey harnesses a broad swathe of the community in preparing a report that summarizes the state of the profession and sets funding priorities for the succeeding ten years. This type of high-stakes consensual exercise is rare in any scientific field.

2. Workforce Development

The world does not have, and probably does not need, a large number of astronomers. The economic benefits of astronomy are largely indirect and the “currency” of the field is primarily intellectual. In challenging economic times, it can be difficult to defend investment in work that is motivated by expanding the understanding of the universe we live in. Yet it is a pursuit that exemplifies our capacity for abstract thought and separates us from all other species on the planet. At its best, astronomy is both inspirational and humbling.

2.1. DEMOGRAPHICS OF ASTRONOMERS

The best gauge of the number of professional astronomers in the US is the count of full members of the American Astronomical Society. This has risen from just under 3000 in 1984 to 4000 in 2009 (Fig. 1). There are

Figure 1. Membership of the American Astronomical Society from 1984 to 2009, in- cluding members inside and outside the United States. Growth was 33% during a period when the US population increased by 25%. (Courtesy Kevin Marvel and the AAS) also 1000 junior members, typically astronomy students, and 2500 “other” members, consisting of an assortment of teachers, professionals in related fields, and amateur astronomers (American Astronomical Society 2005). This total probably grows to 9000 if others who do not necessarily self- identify as astronomers, such as relativists, cosmologists and astro-particle physicists, are included. Globally, the International Astronomical Union has a membership of 10,000, roughly a quarter of who are from the US. Most astronomers work in academic settings and their jobs involve a mix of teaching and research (Fig. 2). Then come research institutes associated with universities and observatories (e.g. CARMA, Carnegie, CSO, LBT, Kavli, Keck, SAO). About one in six astronomers either works for the government (NSF, NASA, NRL, USNO) or in federally-funded research and development centers operated by NASA (e.g. Ames, Goddard, Kennedy, JPL, Marshall) or the NSF (Gemini, NAIC, NSO, NOAO, NRAO, NSO). The non-profit category includes old and illustrious planetaria (Adler, Grif- fith, Hayden), and there is a smattering of astronomers in industry and the military. Among the large cohort of academic astronomers, many are on soft money or have adjunct faculty status so have little job security. Aca- demic astronomy suffers from the constrained resources that hamper public universities all over the US.

Figure 2. Employment in astronomy and closely related fields, from a random sam- ple of 705 member of the American Institute of Physics and affiliated societies. UARI’s are University-affiliated research institutes like NASA centers and National Observato- ries. FFR&DCs are Federally-funded research and development centers like JPL and Los Alamos Laboratory. (Courtesy Rachel Ivie and the AIP Statistical Research Center)

2.2. THE TRAINING OF ASTRONOMERS

Astronomy is a relatively small academic field. Between 1997 and 2006 the number of astronomy BSc degrees doubled from 170 while PhD degrees were steady at about 200 per year (Fig. 3). By way of comparison, the 350 BSc and 200 PhD degrees in astronomy awarded in 2006 is far less than the 16,000 BSc degrees and 3700 PhD degrees in other physical sciences or the 90,000 BSc degrees and 7700 PhD degrees in life and agricultural sciences (National Science Foundation 2011). Astronomy has close ties to physics so these numbers are underestimates, since students can pursue physics degrees with a specialization in astronomy. About 3/4 of these graduates are US citizens or permanent residents and 90% stay in the US after graduation (Ivie 2010). The next part of the standard career path has benefited from government investment in major research facilities over the past twenty years. After the PhD, most astronomers look for a postdoctoral fellowship or a fixed-term

Figure 3. Astronomy degrees earned in the United States from 1997 to 2006. Masters degrees include those earned en route to a PhD The rise in Bachelors degrees was caused by physics departments adding the option of a double major. (Sources are the NSF for the PhD, the National Center for Education Statistics for the MSc, and the AIP for the BSc) research position. Using the metric of positions advertised in the AAS Job Register, the number of such positions has doubled in the past ten years 2 and /3 of all PhD recipients take such a position (Fig. 4). Eight years after PhD, 85% of astronomers have long-term or permanent jobs, half in research and half in administration or teaching. In the US there are 1700 faculty positions, with 35% in astronomy departments and 65% in physics departments. Assuming no growth in that sector and replacement after 35 years, that implies there will only be academic employment in the future for 1/4 of astronomy PhD recipients (Ivie 2010). On the other hand, the unemployment rate for people with degrees in astronomy and astrophysics is very low, about 1% (American Astronomical Society 2005).

2.3. DIVERSITY AND DIVERSIFICATION

Astronomers are still mostly male, white, and relatively old, although there are trends making the profession more diverse. There has been slow and steady success in attracting women into astronomy, with a rise from 10% to 30% in the percentage of women receiving BSc degrees from 1966 to 2001 and a rise from 5% to 22% of women receiving PhD degrees over the same period (Fig. 5). Gender parity is much better than in physics but markedly worse than in biology. The American Institute of Physics workforce surveys show the diminishing fraction of women through the ranks of astronomy, from 45% with MSc degrees and 28% with PhD degrees

Figure 4. Data from the American Astronomical Society Job Register, showing the number of postdoctoral (red), faculty (green/yellow), and research (blue/cyan) positions advertised from 1992 to 2008. After 2002 the shaded regions of the histograms show the portion of the jobs that were in the US Faculty positions are divided into tenure track (green) and non-tenure track (yellow) and research positions are divided into research (blue) and support (cyan). (Courtesy Kevin Marvel and the AAS) to 28% assistant professors and 11% full professors (quoted in Kinney et al. 2011). Under-representation of minorities is even worse, as they form 25% of the US population but only 2-3% of astronomy PhD recipients and under 1% of faculty (American Institute of Physics 2011). Moreover, the number of minority PhD awards has not changed in 25 years (Fig. 6). On gender, there is at least a sign that the pipeline is ﬁnally inching towards parity. The fraction of women in the most junior cohort of the AAS, 18-23 years old, is now 60% (Marvel 2009). Alongside diversity, the astronomy profession must adapt to a changing work landscape by diversifying. It is already the case that a majority of PhD astronomers do not work in academia or in research labs. Pressure on funding will grow since most comes from the small discretionary part of the federal budget; the success rate for individual investigator grants from the Astronomy Division of the NSF has dropped from 50% in 1990 to 25% in 2010 (Ulvestad 2011). Some of this diversiﬁcation is happening because

Figure 5. The percentage of astronomy degrees earned by women from 1997 to 2006. Explanation and sources of data are as for Fig. 3.

Figure 6. Percentage of doctoral degrees awarded to under-represented minorities. (Na- tional Science Foundation Survey of Earned Doctorates)

© 2012 Venngeist 84 CHRIS IMPEY of central roles of data handling and computation in modern research. Any skills in these areas play into job growth associated with the data-intensive projects such as SDSS and LSST. Science policy and project management are other career niches open to astronomy graduates. There are also new opportunities for astronomers trained in education and pedagogy to help address low levels of US science literacy, as noted in a recommendation of the Astro 2010 survey (National Research Council 2010). Science literacy is tracked by the NSF in biannual surveys with an instrument that includes several astronomy questions (National Science Foundation 2010).

3. Public Engagement

Astronomy has unparalleled power to capture the imagination. It starts with an awareness of planet Earth, one of what may be a billion habitable worlds in the Milky Way galaxy, whose manmade structures and divisions melt away when seen from the perspective of space. In many branches of science, there is a high barrier to public appreciation because of the ediﬁce of formal knowledge required to appreciate research results. Astrophysics is also an intimidating discipline, but astronomy can leverage the visceral impact of a Hubble Space Telescope image of the Eagle Nebula or a WMAP panorama of the infant universe.

3.1. TRADITIONAL MODES

The science museum is not dead. Despite the surge in online modes of engagement with information, the traditional science center has kept pace by oﬀering more hands-on experiences and using cutting edge technology like immersive visualization and personal handheld museum “assistants.” People only spend 10% of their lives in formal education settings, but in the US in 2008, 60 million people were served by 350 science centers and museums. Another 14 million students attended as part of school groups (Bell et al. 2009). About one in four Americans visit a science center each year, a rate lower than libraries, zoos or general museums, and one that depends strongly on level of education (Fig. 7). Almost a half of these science centers include planetaria and there are a total of 1400 across the country, plus another 1100 located in schools and universities. Most are small; only 70 have dome diameters larger than 15 meters (Fortson & Impey 2009). An increasing majority now use digital projection. Traditional media are not dead. The National Science Foundation tracks the way the American public gets its news and science information, and while the Internet almost trebled as a primary source of science and technology information between 2001 and 2008, eclipsing magazines and newspapers in 2003, it still lies signiﬁcantly below television (Fig. 8). Print science

Figure 7. Percentage of members of the public who attended particular institutions at least once in 2008. The science museum category includes planetaria. Data is divided by highest level of education. (National Science Foundation’s Science and Engineering Indicators 2010) journalism is in retreat as newspapers retrench, reducing science coverage and laying oﬀ writers (Brumﬁeld 2009). One barometer for astronomy is a drop by 50% from 1998 to 2008 in the attendance at AAS winter meetings of member of the traditional press (Fortson & Impey 2009). New media

© 2012 Venngeist 86 CHRIS IMPEY outlets for science have risen, but not enough to compensate and there are natural concerns over accuracy and consistency of coverage (e.g. de Cemir 2010). A generation of American astronomers was inspired by Carl Sagan’s seminal TV series Cosmos in 1980. Astronomy continues to have a strong presence in TV programming on cable stations, in a steady string of IMAX movies, and in Hollywood’s continuing infatuation with space themes, which includes ﬁve of the top ten grossing movies of all time.

3.2. INTERNET AND NEW MEDIA

Among Americans under the age of 30 the Internet is already the primary source of science information and that will soon be true of all Americans (Horrigan 2006). Astronomy has ridden the “wave” of the Internet very well, as the number of Internet users has more than doubled in the past decade. Astronomy features in 8% of the top 100 blogs and 24% of the top 50 podcasts. There are six online forums about astronomy with over 10,000 members, topped by Bad Astronomy/Universe Today, with nearly 50,000, followed by Cloudy Night with 30,000 and Astronomy.com with 28,000. No astronomy web sites make it into the top 1000 most popular; NASA’s main site comes closest, with an Alexa rank of 752 in June 2011 and 9 million unique monthly visitors. It is impossible to reliably estimate but it is likely that the largest online access to astronomy occurs from a subset of the 350 million people viewing Wikipedia articles each month. Corporate heavyweights Microsoft and Google have spurred engagement with astronomy, the former via an application called World Wide Telescope which facilitates the creation of scripted tours of the sky and astronomical objects, the latter via instant access to maps of the night sky, the Moon, and Mars. Social media have also been important in spreading astronomy. Face- book and MySpace have 500 and 13 groups respectively using astronomy as a keyword. However, only ten of these groups have more than a hundred members, and while Facebook users install 20 million apps a day, only 14 astronomy apps are available. On Flickr, the most popular photo sharing site, there are about 1000 groups dealing with astronomy, hosting 85,000 photos. Overall on the site there are roughly 3 million photos dealing with astronomical themes. YouTube is the dominant web site for sharing video content, adding a days’ worth every minute. About 20,000 videos have a keyword of astronomy and there are 45,000 playlists with astronomy as a keyword. As of 2009, only 27 of these videos had 100,000 views (all the data in this section comes from Cominsky and Gay, quoted in Fortson & Impey 2009). Like other scientists, astronomers are still learning how best to operate in the rapidly-evolving new media landscape.

Figure 8. Primary source of information for the public about current events and science and technology from 2001 to 2006. Based on usage patterns, the growth of the Internet as a source of science information continues a steady rise. (National Science Foundation’s Science and Engineering Indicators 2010)

3.3. THE CITIZEN SCIENTIST

Astronomy has been in the vanguard of a movement called citizen science, where members of the public are harnessed as volunteers to do research

Figure 9. Number of users registered with htt://www.zooniverse.org/ since the launch of the ﬁrst project, Galaxy Zoo, in 2007. Not all registered users classify, and not all classiﬁcations come from registered users. Large or rapid jumps in numbers are associated with launches of new projects and associated media coverage. (Courtesy Chris Lintott)

(Hand 20101). They might make observations, analyze data, or do computer reductions or simulations, in every case under the guidance of scientists or within a framework defined by scientists. SETI@home was the first project to engage the public in scientific analysis, in this case the search for radio signals from intelligent aliens, but the public’s role was essentially passive, with their desktops harnessed in a massive distributed computing project. Galaxy Zoo is more indicative of the future of citizen science (Fig. 9). In just the first two years of this project, 250,000 volunteers carried out 100 million classifications of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, with an accuracy and reliability that was, in the aggregate, equal to the efforts of professional astronomers (Raddick et al. 2009). By drawing the public into the enterprise, projects like Galaxy Zoo, and its extension into other fields, called Zooniverse, help to increase the understanding and acceptance of astronomical research.

1See also the speciﬁc chapter on citizen science (by Christian et al.) in this volume. (Ed. Note)

Figure 10. Total NASA budget for Earth and Space Science Education and Public Outreach from 1997 to 2009. The blue Support wedge is Science Mission Directorate personnel costs and other support costs. ES is Earth Sciences and SS is Space Sciences. (Courtesy NASA)

Public engagement in astronomy got an enormous boost in 2009 with the International Year of Astronomy, which celebrated the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s ﬁrst observations. One of the most inspired spin-oﬀs from the IYA was the Galileoscope, an improved version of his original spyglass made with modern materials. Over 100,000 Galileoscopes were sold in 2009 and more generally the IYA improved the already-strong relationship between professionals and the 250,000 amateur astronomers in the US CDDs have become powerful and cheap enough that dedicated amateurs contribute in many research projects. Education and Public Outreach (EPO) have federal government support as well, spurred by NASA’s decision to dedicate 1% of the cost of all space and astronomy missions to these activities (Fig. 10) and NSF funding at a level of 6-7% of the total for research grants. NSF’s “broader impacts” criterion for merit review of proposals has contributed to a sea change in attitudes. Many professional astronomers are committed to public engagement in their work.

4. Summary

Astronomy is in a golden age of discovery, with progress on everything from the demographics of exoplanets to the state of the universe in the ﬁrst tiny fractions of a second after the big bang. Despite its vitality, the profession

© 2012 Venngeist 90 CHRIS IMPEY is unlikely to grow in the United States due to the increasing cost of facilities and large projects and the pressure felt by universities to cut costs and teach more efficiently. Training in astronomy should be complemented by technical, educational, computational and managerial skills, to allow graduates a greater range of career options. Astronomy is held in high regard by the public, which indirectly benefits the profession overall. The most exciting ways to increase public engagement involve social media and citizen science on the Internet. Low science literacy is a significant societal problem and astronomers have an opportunity and an obligation to help raise the science awareness and understanding.

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge Lucy Fortson, my co-Chair on the Education and Public Outreach Study Group of the Astro 2010 Decadal Survey, and the other members of the group: Carol Christian, Lynn Cominsky, Mary Dussault, Rick Feinberg, Andy Fraknoi, Pamela Gay, Jeﬀ Kirsch, George “Pinky” Nelson, Bob Mathieu, Ed Prather, Phil Sadler, Keivan Stassun, and Sidney Wolﬀ. Our rich discussions shaped my thinking on the best way to reach the public with astronomy. Thanks also go to Jim Ulvestad, Chair of the Demographics Study Group, for sharing information from his part of the Astro 2010 process, to Kevin Marvel for demographic data gathered by the American Astronomical Society, to Rachel Ivie for the results from surveys for the American Institute of Physics, and to Chris Lintott for data from the Zooniverse projects. I am grateful to colleagues too numerous to mention for conversations on education and outreach at various AAS, ASP, IAU and other meetings. I acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation through a CCLI grant and the Aspen Center for Physics, where much of this paper was written.

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