When you tweet and the Universe tweets back...

Engagement with the public is an important activity for us here at PVL. Many would think about this largely as a one-way street with scientists preparing materials for public consumption, such as a presentation, a documentary or a book. But it's always a richer experience when you're having a two-way conversation, as Christina describes in this week's Blog post. Sometimes the level of engagement displayed by that response can be surprising! Note that the photo above is a word cloud she made from some of the jobs respondents are currently doing (sizes randomly assigned).

By Dr. Christina L. Smith

 

One of the things I think is important as a scientist is making sure that not only the scientific community knows of your work (and general existance) but also that the wider public is able to engage with you and your research, when appropriate of course. As my previous posts (i.e. poetry in science and the Rover Exploration Challenge) show I particularly enjoy getting involved in public engagement in a variety of formats!

A couple of months ago, I was invited to give a presentation at a “Future Women in STEM” (STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) day held at York University, talking about my personal experience as a woman in STEM. I realised that, although there were a large number of very interesting presentations and activities on the agenda, mine was the only one revolving around someone’s personal experience in a science field. I’m also very aware that STEM careers are far, far broader than my own personal experience.

  

When I was a third or fourth year PhD student, I participated in a large panel discussion for undergraduate physicists highlighting different career paths that women, now at different levels in their careers, in STEM fields have taken. It felt very odd to be essentially only a few years out of my undergraduate degree telling my story to others when surrounded by extremely successful women who had gone on to become editors, patent attorneys, professors etc etc. It turns out that “at all levels” really did mean that. The story of “my PhD experience so far” was echoed by many of the women on the panel and led to some great discussions about the jarring change from undergraduate to post-graduate degree programs, imposter syndrome, and the challenges of figuring out a future career path.

There’s such a diverse array of careers rooted in STEM that even a panel discussion can barely scratch the surface! And I wanted to make sure that I got that across in the outreach presentation, which isn’t easy...

So I turned to social media.

Initially, I posted on my Facebook page asking my female-identifying friends whether anyone who works in STEM but specifically not in research would mind me using their career route as an example on a slide. And I got some really great responses (thank you to all of you!). This got me thinking – it’d be really great to show, not only half a dozen or so in detail, but as many as possible. So I posted the same message to Twitter.

Now at this point I should explain that I am the kind of sporadic tweeter who gets maybe 3 likes and a couple of retweets on a good day, and I was expecting to literally reach the half a dozen or so friends of mine who don’t have Facebook. This tweet got 124 likes, 93 retweets, and 94 responses (to date). I’ve never had my Twitter account blow up like that before and, if I’m completely honest, I was a little worried it was going to go viral! I also would definitely have worded it differently had I thought that so many people who didn’t directly know me would be reading and interacting with it...

The responses I got were amazing! Women from a vast array of STEM fields, at a variety of career levels all replied giving their degrees (where applicable), current job and, if relevant, an overview of their career path. These included, but are not by any means limited to, careers in health care, science policy, science education, public outreach, science communication, engineers, journalism, authors, business managers, project managers, field geologists, software engineers, stained/fused glass makers, data scientists, consultants, to name just a few. The whole thread can be found here, and I definitely recommend giving it a browse as I simply can’t do the stories justice in a single blog post: https://twitter.com/astro_tina/status/1025136738904289280

The moral of this very short story from my slightly biased perspective is that careers based in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are extremely diverse and extremely amazing!