This grant will partially fund Professional Development Courses that will take place during the upcoming Winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society. The proposed activities include three half-day workshops and one two-hour seminar on these topics:
- Basic Negotiation - Emerging Leadership - Effective Visual Communication of Data - Oral Presentations (2 hour seminar)
All of the activities will be held during the main days of the meeting. While the funding requested in this proposal will only support the courses at the January 2011 meeting this proposal could be considered as a pilot as the intention is to have such courses as a regular feature at future meetings.
The Intellectual Merit of the proposal is to provide expert training in an array of non-scientific tasks that are crucial to the effectiveness of scientists and educators. Many astronomers have had little or no formal training in the topics that will be covered. For researchers that are also educators these courses will help in both aspects of their careers. The Broader Impact of the proposed work is to increase the effectiveness of all astronomers that participate is all of their various job functions which will directly promote the progress of science. The topics offered in the courses will likely have a large impact on young investigators and participants from underrepresented groups.
This project focused on enhancing early-career astronomers' skills and abilities in the area of professional development. A several workshops were organized at a major meeting in the astronomical sciences. Attendees had to pay a small fee to offset the costs of the event, while the bulk of the costs were covered by the grant from the National Science Funding (NSF). Although most funding from NSF is provided to support significant research, a tiny fraction of funding is given to projects or programs to enhance the success of American scientists in their careers. Such training, which can range from effective communication to leadership and negotiation (see our list of workshops below) serve to meet both of the merit criteria established by the NSF, namely, scientific merit and broader impact. Our workshops have scientific merit as they directly improve the skills and abilities of scientists engaged in research. By providing them enhanced skillsets, beyond simply their scientific capabilities, we improve US science directly by improving US scientists. The broader impact criteria is met by enhancing scientists ability to communicate better with the public and to perform better in their societal roles as scientific leaders. The workshops we organized were: "Basic Negotiation", "Emerging Leadership", "Effective Visual Communication of Data" and "Improved Oral Presentations". We gauged the impact of our workshops by surveying participants and have submitted a full report to the NSF. Because of the success of this effort, we have submitted another request to the NSF to carry out the workshops again and to enhance them based on the survey responses we received. This way we can ensure the funds provided are being used effectively and to the benefit of the United States and its scientific enterprise.
