STRIKE 4 BLACK LIVES

This blog post is not to signal anything. I am putting this here so I can remind myself.

The call went out a week ago for a strike of higher education. I went on strike in grad school once and I know it did not impress The Powers That Be.

But this strike is smart: a commitment to read and educate ourselves and to commit to improved practices in the future. And we can commit a Day to plan and take action.

https://www.particlesforjustice.org

The initiative is by Dr. Brian Nord, a very respected physicist and machine learning expert and Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a cosmologist and long-time voice on social justice matters in STEM.

see the NYT article about it here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/10/science/science-diversity-racism-protests.html?smid=tw-nytimesscience&smtyp=cur

And I am glad to see some of my colleagues from UoL on there. As a University, it certainly has committed visibly towards justice. So this is for myself and the Physics Department. How can I help clean up my corner?

I am starting here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a-lzdtxOlWuzYNGqwlYwxMWADtZ6vJGCpKhtJHHrS54/mobilebasic?fbclid=IwAR2Lq-yVBWPPo03J68KaxbzosGyP8bzrrgBsdSqii-wbY2U6gSfN1jS-uho

some more reading I've been doing today:

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/724918/

https://medium.com/space-anthropology/diversity-is-a-dangerous-set-up-8cee942e7f22

And Dr. Tana Joseph has a video talking about decolonization in SA;

https://vimeo.com/414809354?fbclid=IwAR2fHOQiXAfvorke1xrKzhiVssjHDq9veKbD4Tkpf_TEIfBUmp9Mu22wemQ

There are some clear actions that I can take. Starting off: the Louisville Bail fund.

https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/louisville-community-bail-fund?source=twitter&

Protests continue here in Louisville for Breonna Taylor and David McAtee and the Bail system is one more element of a twisted system. Put some money where my opinions are.

Vote
2.4 years to go before I can...but who's counting?

Back to UoL Physics. Louisville is 15% black and 5% Hispanic. These numbers are not reflected in the department. We do not have representation of these groups in the faculty and we are unlikely to get any with hiring freezes and increased reliance on adjuncts. I am not in a position to do anything about that right now but I'll see if Dr Brown who is a Dean and a co-signature on the strike, has any thoughts.

So.

Goal: get a representative number of black and hispanic students in physics and astronomy and make sure they feel valued and part of it.

Issues: 
- structural racism in almost any facet of society
- loss of students from high school to Uni
- Perceived lower preparation for Uni Physics levels.
- lower participation of BIPOC in Physics.

The lack of students that major in physics at UoL due to the last two point seems closest to home (and most directly my responsibility). So that is a place to start.

Assets:
- SPS chapter, full of active and enthusiastic students. Small but sociable.
- The Louisville Astronomical Society. Both can help me organize public events. Trick will be to make sure to include all in the advertisements.
- The Bullitt Lecture. I am the organizer. Look for a more diverse lineup of speakers. Advertise to broader community.
- Planetarium. Lovely space for outreach. Costs money though. Knowledgeable people and a mobile planetarium as well.
- UoL community partnership with West Louisville
https://louisville.edu/communityengagement/signature-partnership-1
- Absolutely no money for this whatsoever. Add this to grant applications.

I'm already involved with science classes at one school. Easy, the kids go there. that is the kind of low-hanging fruit I will gladly keep doing. Add some inclusive element to activities I or the University do anyway. New initiatives seem to be discouraged.

Stuff I can do:

Low bar:
- organize with SPS events to include everyone on campus. Make sure that these are open and advertised to all. Go with SPS to African Studies department? And I mean sit in and listen.
- LAS events on campus.
- Student research opportunities (paid). Make sure I add at least one a year to every grant. Reorganize this as an advertised group project?

Mid-height bar:
- Organize Planetarium shows for schools in West Louisville. This proved surprisingly tricky with just the one school. Something to explore with the Planetarium people and the community engagement project. See if PTA can fundraise for this. The mobile planetarium is cheaper (525$ per school or $7 pr student for main planetarium plus bussing.)
- engage with West Louisville Community partnership. Seems not much has happened since 2017, the year I got here.
- Fix up the dome on top of the building for open nights. On-campus is much more accessible for everyone.
- Spanish language Planetarium shows. I mean surely...nope.
- A Bullitt Lecture Speaker that isn't a Senior White Dude. Goals for 2021/22 I'm afraid (this year's has to be cancelled).

High bar:
- explore again about making UoL a Bridge Program. When I asked earlier it was promptly shut down but this is worth exploring and pushing for. There are programs at Ohio State, Indiana and Vanderbilt.
- Push for BIPOC faculty. volunteer for the next search committee? >>18mo? I mean we are two professors short in our department.
- Summer camp. Can the university support such a program? As part of a undergraduate Bridge program?


I'll set an alarm to alert me in November (after Fall semester which promising to be full of distractions) and check if I made any progress.

Science in the time of Quarantine

I have a few tells. To me they are very obvious. They surface when I am stressed/anxious/under-pressure/overcaffienated.

I have them all right now. This is not normal. I am not "working from home", I am sorta trying to do work while a whole mess of other stuff is happening. Which is fine. I wrote an email explaining to the students that my main goal now was to wobble in for a landing with the semester with the class. Do what we can when we can and sorta hope things will be ok.

That doesn't mean I haven't been doing some research related things. But out of order, probably badly or sorta ok but f*ck it this will have to do. Things were almost derailing already before spring break. I got a bunch of HST proposals in (because of course) but not every one of them got a last polish. fine.
I am submitted proposals where I can but sometimes it won't be a nice looking as my best work. It may not be. There is some stuff going down. The kids are home from school for weeks now and may go completely feral in Minecraft. Popping into the store feels like a heist from Mission Impossible. It's weird.

So while I still feel the pressure to produce (will the powers-that-be take this into account for tenure, at the moment they say they will but how?) and I sorta am? But focus has gone out the window. Doing the right project at the right time? In order? Ha! I just randomly grab A Thing and hope I don't get too distracted till its done.

Telescope proposals (all delayed, all for telescopes currently shuttered), funding proposals (hmmm what will the Federal budget look like when these get reviewed?) and papers (how am I paying for all these?). all the while working with people who are also just trying their best at home.

So I got some stuff done. To counteract some of the anxiety I am having. I don't expect others to. Please grade accordingly.

Networking

I loathe the term networking. Not as much as “synergy” mind but it’s close. Yet the activity itself is vital to a scientific career and the shortest path for most of us to breathing into a paper bag.

Bob Williams, our Bullitt Lecturer had some interesting insights into the social mechanisms of science. He was adamant that a personal interaction is the gold standard. One-on-one science discussion and interaction. I agree. But he also correctly identified that this has a ludicrous onus on people and (thanks to airmiles travelled) environment.

So how to supplement or replace it? I suspect supplement. I use Twitter in part for this. Engage in new things that people have done is okay but it lacks a little in depth of interaction. A big plus can be that you had a mild interaction over Twitter and so IRL introductions become a little lower threshold? On the downside, friend-on-Twitter is less familiar than people (e.g. me) tend to think. 

Like most astronomers of his generation you can best reach Bob best via email. Something he checks and responds to religiously. But that is hardly true for more recent generations (ahem eg students). Skype or google hangout or Zoom can certainly replace a lot. Especially for committee meetings for example. 

So interact initially in person and keep up and active over electronic means as may be appropriate. Vague but then again it’ll be different person to person. In academia, no one checks linkedin, but outside it's a vital tool. You may even have to pickup the phone, dial the number and talk that way. 

The issue remains unresolved. In part because science is a mix of personal and generational preferences in communication. Key remains to take initiative. Junior people to contact the expert they want to talk to.

Workflow

Do you have a system for new todo items? I do. Sort of. One is implemented as part of inbox 0. And I know that that’s not really helping with the actual amount of work but that has helped me tremendously with the anxiety over missed items. Email remains “a system where anyone in the world can add todo items” (K. Mack, somewhere on Twitter).



But I still make paper todo lists. That’s partially motivational: feels good to strike off items. Those are for single days or the week maybe. Ideally they’d be organized by energy-I-have-left and urgency. I also have one on my phone. So it’s a bit of a mush. All of them have drawbacks (lost paper, I don’t check my phone todo list).

I was thinking of this since we’re mid-semester and the pile is growing out of control. This is the hardest thing to accept: the amount of work will inevitably grow beyond my ability to do even if I have “magical” days from here till the end of the semester.

Which brings me to “crudburner days”. These are days where from the start I try to knock off as many of the todo items, preferably stale ones. Decision time. Which mean quite a few it’s “well too late now” and remove. The feel good moment is when I halve the number in today/week/month pile.

Keystone Habits, Science Coffee, and the Hubble Deep Field

The Hubble Deep Field and topic of the 2019 Bullitt Lecture

I am reading “The Power of Habit” and it talks about Keystone Habits. An institutional habit that encourages the whole place to be and get better at what it is supposed to do. This first astronomy related one that I can think of is the morning coffee. Famously instituted at Leiden Observatory and The Kapteyn Institute by Oort and his students, this early morning mixing of caffeine, science and some social interaction has resulted in a lot of good ideas and improvements.

Case in point: the Hubble Deep Field. Basically started as a discussion during science coffee at STSCI between Harry Ferguson, Mark Dickinson and Bob Williams. Exactly how such a science coffee is supposed to work. This was part of the Bullitt Lecture by Bob Williams (on youtube) and in his book, Hubble Deep Field and the Distant Universe.

So science coffee (the name alone nothing sciency about the coffee, it was often terrible coffee) and the shortened connection between early career researchers and the director. This latter part I think is key. If the Director is just right there, it's a lot easier to pitch an idea.  

I think this is an excellent example of a cornerstone habit for a scientific institution. Of a certain size. What would be a good one for a smaller institution? 

Confirmation Culture

I keep running into a subtle issue switching from Dutch to US culture: confirming an appointment that I was sure I had already agreed to. Everyone does this, the dentist, my colleagues, students.
And I am realizing this is a Northern European and possibly just a Dutch thing: you said a date, I agreed, it is in our agenda and it is a bit rude to assume I'm not enough of a grownup to use a...calendar.

All of use have been suffering from the "why are they calling about this again?" feeling but the worst part is where my brain has gone "done, date has been picked" only to realize that the other party saw this only as a suggestion. And it annoys my inner Dutchie. Oh boy it does. And of course if I am annoyed by this, sitting by myself, fuming that the other party is a no-show

Institutional Knowledge

I was the primary organizer for a public event just now and it’s a lot of work. Nothing particular hard so if you mess up the response is mostly incredulous “how could you forget to...etc” but the actual job is extremely amorphous. There are social expectations and norms that have simply grown over time. And any deviation is perceived negatively. It is very stressful. 

And it’s mostly logistics. Having the right phone number and placing the call in a timely manner. NBD. But a lot more work to find out that it needs to happen and then also how to make it happen.

So instead of about two hundred emails to various people and dozens of phone calls it would be LOT easier if this amorphous knowledge base had been collated in a single document. This is what I’m doing now. It’s something I learned from my LEAPS organization: a single google doc, easily shared with the next person or for myself next time round.

That is institutional knowledge. If you encounter something that was mostly a pain to figure out how to do, make a playbook for it for the next person. Or yourself in a year’s time. It should help with anxiety at least.