Recruiting the next Generation of Astronomers

One year ago the astronomy community was rocked by the national news of protests surrounding the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/13/hawaii-telescope-protests-tmt-mauna-kea_n_7044164.html

Relations were further strained when two UC Berkeley Astronomy professors made unfortunate choices of language in emails about the protests.  Whatever their intent, the impact of these emails mattered.  Members of our astronomy community and Hawaiians saw these emails as racist to varying extents, particularly in the context of the history of the US assimilation of Hawaii:

https://storify.com/docfreeride/team-science-apologizes-badly-widens-rift-with-mau

http://mahalonottrash.blogspot.com/2015/05/decolonizing-astronomy-or-why-debt.html

Wherever your opinions may lie, these events and others over the past year have led to conversations about race, sexual harassment, and the potential for change in our community.  Importantly, those receptive to new, diverse viewpoints have had an opportunity to hear them.

In particular, I joined a new Facebook group promoting equity and inclusion in professional astronomy. This group is a "next level safe zone" where minorities and women can express their viewpoints, and have them echoed and supported by like-minded individuals.  My role in this group is not to tell others what I think is best; it's simply to listen and learn.  And it's changed me in the process too.

One of the leading voices of this new community is Professor John Johnson at Harvard University.  He posts regularly to his blog at: http://mahalonottrash.blogspot.com/ . I've known John Johnson for a number of years, particularly while we overlapped at Caltech.  We first met when we shared a dinner as graduate students at Lick Observatory.  Since then, I've been fortunate to collaborate with him on the MINERVA Observatory among several other papers and projects.  John Johnson is quantifiably the most prolific observational exoplanet scientist to earn their astronomy PhD in the past 15 years. 

This past July, I found myself sitting down to dinner once again with John Johnson.  We were both attending the Extreme Precise Radial Velocity Conference held at Yale.  He's a busy guy, and we don't get to interact as often now that we've both left Caltech.  I asked John - what can I personally do to improve the diversity of our field?  How do I foster such an environment?  John Johnson's answer was obvious in hindsight. It was a forehead slapping moment for me:

Recruiting.

If premier athletic departments can devote full-time personnel to recruiting the best athletes worldwide, why couldn't I borrow some of their techniques and switch from passive to active recruiting?  What gets a top-level high school athlete to commit to a particular University?  It's the personal connection that recruiters form with them number one, and number two, the promise of being in a successful environment.

John Johnson suggested I go recruit from predominantly minority area high schools in the St Louis area.  John himself grew up in a suburb of St Louis, and went to college in nearby Rolla, Missouri before becoming an academic rock star as a graduate student at UC Berkeley.   He recommended that I establish personal relationships with the physics teachers and their students, and to encourage the students to come to Missouri State University to conduct exoplanet research with me.  Fostering an inclusive and equitable environment once they matriculate is the other half of the equation.

So, that's what I've done and I will continue to do.  I contacted a few high school principals in the St Louis suburbs, including in Ferguson, one of the birthplaces of #blacklivesmatter.  One forwarded my information on to their physics teacher.  We corresponded for a few weeks, and he agreed to let me come and talk to the physics students at two of the high schools he teaches at.

One early morning this fall, I hopped into my car and drove the three hours to St Louis.  I visited two physics classes at two different high schools.  It was a real learning experience for me, the physics teacher, and the students.  I opened the students' eyes to potential careers in science that they hadn't known about before.  I gave each of them my business card and asked them to stay in touch if they decided to apply to Missouri State University.  I offered them research opportunities in my group if they matriculated.  The physics teacher has invited me back for next year.  Personally, as I drove home later that afternoon, I found the experience to be incredibly rewarding.  I was #ohdi - Out Here, Doing It.  Time will tell, but I hope to have an impact on the future diversity of our field for the better.

Visiting a high school physics class room in the St Louis area to recruit the next generation of Astronomers.

A few months later in December 2015, the protests at the University of Missouri (a two hour drive away in Columbia) would echo on my campus at Missouri State University.  A group of students submitted a list of demands to our University President.  Our University administration fortunately listened immediately, and it's a work in progress.

During one lecture in my general education astronomy class, I expressed support and encouragement to those students on my campus.  After all, college is a place for students to find their voice, and education doesn't always come in the form of a classroom.  After class, several students came up to me and thanked me for what I had said.  Unbeknownst to me, one minority student was a freshman thinking about majoring in Physics and Astronomy.  He was in the classroom at the back, listening. He hadn't spoken to me the entire semester.  And on that day he came up to the front of the large lecture hall, shook my hand, and joined my research group.