We applied for a small grant from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund. The feedback was that our project was more scientific and technical and didn’t really qualify as “art.”

We then approached Sloan, which funds film and theater projects through their Public Understanding of Science and Technology program. At that point, we were not encouraged to apply, largely because the project was at too early a stage and sounded like an arts project than a science communication project. It should be noted that Sloan very recently has been funding more independent film projects, though almost exclusively in conventional (e.g. flat-screen) formats.

Based on positive feedback from a program officer, we the put together a large proposal for NSF’s Informal Science Education (ISE) program. The proposal did very well and was largely recommended for funding; however few projects were funded that year and ours was not among them. More importantly, though, according to the program officer, it turns out that NSF’s ISE program has changed in recent years and no longer supports “product” type projects, like making a film, etc. They now seek hypothesis-driven education proposals, essentially educational psychology/sociology programs and the program has been renamed Advancing Informal STEM Learning.  I should point out the inherent difficulty with the NSF approach: They are requiring a strictly data and hypothesis-driven proposal even for novel “informal” science education projects where educational impact is very difficult to quantitatively assess. Also, any formal assessments typically require surveys, and surveys require IRB approval because you are “experimenting” with humans, and IRB applications require explicit hypotheses and quantitative measurement techniques.

The point? Early stage, innovative EPO ideas—particularly those initiated by scientists—have few avenues of support. And this was before sequestration!

NSF has in the past dished out big bucks to large, well-established production groups that are making traditional, frankly incrementally novel products. WGBH, for example, received $2.9 million to produce Peep and The Big Wide World Season Five. Now NSF doesn’t fund development of products (e.g. planetarium shows). Meanwhile, arts foundations are so ridiculously strapped for cash that they can’t afford to fund anything that could possibly fit into another category.

Now that our Kickstarter campaign is doing well, we have attracted private foundation interest (we’ve been solicited to apply to the Richard Lounsbery Foundation and National Geographic distribution has expressed interest. We’ve found a first venue for our screenings in the East Village Planetarium at the Lower Eastside Girls Club!

What outreach project would you consider crowdfunding? What about going further and crowdfunding the science too, like Travis Metcalf did with FundaGeek? Technical question: Could we give a percentage of the Kickstarter-raised funds to our institutions as overhead so it would “count” as an overhead-bearing grant?

(This post is a bit modified from the draft version which was accidentally prematurely published.)

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What field do you currently work in?
Science Communication / Writing

What is the job title for your current position?
Web Editor.

As Web Editor for Sky & Telescope I manage online content, writing and editing news stories, commissioning blog authors, and scouring press releases and astro-ph for news topics. I also manage app development, and I’m working on a long-term overhaul of the website. In my copious spare time, I answer customer questions about our website, apps, digital issue, and why the Moon is sometimes red.

What is the name of your company/organization/institution?
Sky & Telescope.

As a print magazine, we provide astronomy news, observing guides and charts, and feature articles on topics ranging from amateur astronomer participation in research to the latest knowledge of how Saturn’s rings formed.

What city, state, and country do you live in? Work in?
Cambridge, MA.

What is the highest degree in astronomy/physics you have received?
PhD

What is/was your ultimate/final academic position in astronomy/physics?
Postdoc (1st)

What has been your career path since you completed your degree?
During my final years of graduate school and during my year as a postdoc, I wrote on a volunteer basis for a variety of venues, including AWIS magazine and Penn State’s media relations. In fact, I took my postdoc at Penn State in part because of the prospect of working with Penn State’s media relations department – my experience there helped me decide to pursue writing full-time.

During these years, I also started a blog about the “the moving universe,” I guestblogged for Science in My Fiction, and I wrote a book review for a local newspaper that I ended up reading for a local radio station.

A few months into my postdoc, I decided that I would never feel fulfilled pursuing research as a career and decided to pursue science-writing instead. I left my postdoc after a year and took some time off to be at home with my newborn son before applying for jobs.

Ultimately, luck played a huge role in my current position – when I applied for an internship at Sky & Telescope, they happened to be accepting applicants for a job there at the same time. The internship essentially served as a trial run and they ended up hiring me full-time after two weeks as an intern.

What were the most important factors that led you to leave astronomy and/or academia?
This is really a complicated question. There were a lot of factors that played *some* role – for example, I hated the prospect of moving from city to city every couple of years. I also didn’t like the many-hour workweeks, although I’m now in a position where I do appreciate the flexibility that even those long weeks offered me. However, I think I would have ultimately have dealt with those downsides if I had the passion for research that others around me had.

At the end of every day, I never really felt complete unless I wrote in my blog or edited an article. So in other words, there were many days I felt incomplete. Research was fun at times, but it never produced that same feeling of fulfillment.

If you have made a career change, what was your age at the time?
I left my postdoc at age 30.

What have been particularly valuable skills for your current job that you gained through completing your degree?
I am probably one of few where my Ph.D. experience is directly relevant to my current non-academic career. I use my background daily while reading astro-ph and press releases, examining new publications for newsworthiness. Even when I’m not familiar with a topic, I’m generally able to assess whether a result is valid and interesting before I email an expert for their opinion.

What, if any, additional training did you complete in order to meet the qualifications?
No additional training, aside from what I learned on my own by writing/editing in my free time.

Describe a typical day at work.
I typically catch up on email for the first hour of my day. This means reading through press releases, answering reader questions, and organizing news content for the week. After that, each day is different. Some days I’m pursuing a news story, which involves lots of reading (I always read the original article at the bare minimum) and interviews. Other days, I’m analyzing our website’s information architecture and making wireframes, thinking of how we can optimize the site’s organization during the overhaul. I might spend all day editing an article for the magazine, which also involves finding illustrations to accompany the text and writing captions. And occasionally, I’ll be managing app development, which means coordinating between our designer, who puts together the basic interfaces, and our app developer, who does the coding.

Describe job hunting and networking resources you used and any other advice/resources.
I conducted informational interviews, which led to my internship, and that led directly to my current job.

What advice do you think advisors should be giving students regarding their career path?
Mention non-academic career options and enable networking outside of academia. For example, Neil Brandt at Penn State helped me connect with Penn State’s media relations department.

How many hours do you work in a week?
40-45 hours.

Because of daycare and owning only one car, I typically work 35 hours in the office, and another 5 at home.

What is your level of satisfaction with your current job?
Very Satisfied.

My job allows me to read about science and write about science. I’m always at the forefront of every field. There’s nothing better.

What opportunities does your job provide to be creative and/or to take initiative?
Too many to count. Every article I write or edit, every caption I write, every decision I help make is an opportunity to be creative. Opportunities to take initiative have largely come with answering readers’ questions. As readers make me aware of certain issues, I can take initiative (assuming it’s within the budget) to make changes.

What advice do you have for achieving work-life balance (including having a family)?
My only advice is that balance is a wobbly thing – sometimes you’ll be working more, sometimes you’ll be with family more. And that’s ok.

There is a worry among those considering careers outside of astronomy or academia that you can’t “go back” and/or that you feel that you betrayed advisors, friends, colleagues. Have you felt this way?
Yes.

Nope, no advice. I’ve never heard of anyone leaving academia and finding their way back.

What do you do for fun (e.g., hobbies, pastimes, etc.)?
Most of my fun time is spent playing with my 15-month-old son, Liam. I also enjoy cooking, yoga, reading, and watching Downton Abbey. And occasionally making my way to an Irish pub to listen some music.

Can we include your email address for people who may want to contact you directly about your specific career route?
Yes. monica.c.young [at] gmail.com

Additional thoughts, comments, resources:
Anybody interested in science writing should join the National Association of Science Writers (NASW).

Submitting the application to the App Store can be the most complicated part. The rest of this paragraph is very technical and only for those who are in the process of submitting. However, I couldn’t find all this information in a single location so here it is:

1. Subscribe to an Apple Developer account. It costs $100 per year and you can submit any number of applications you wish.
2. Get an account on iTunes Connect, and create a receiving slot for your application (Manage applications / Add new app). When you complete the forms you’ll see a “waiting for binary” status.
3. Plug-in your iOS device to your Mac and choose it in Xcode’s “Running Scheme” drop-down menu, instead of the default “iPhone simulator”.
4. Xcode will help you through the steps of creating certificates for declaring your iOS device as the one you use for development and adding them to your keychain automatically. If you ever want to modify those after, you’ll have to login to your apple developer account created earlier, and click on “Provisioning Portal” in the right menu bar.
5. Press “Run” (the “play” button in Xcode) and see if your application runs well on your own iOS device. Maybe it could be slower because your iOS device doesn’t have the same technical specifications as your Mac computer.
6. When it works fine, return to Xcode and choose “Product / Archive” (the Archive menu will be grayed-out if you didn’t choose a valid iOS device as your running scheme). This will compile and archive the binary file for your app, which will be what is sent to the appstore.
7. If a new window doesn’t immediately appear showing your archived application, click “Window / Organizer” in Xcode.
8. Choose the binary and click “Validate” to ensure it passes some basic tests, and finally “Distribute”.
9. Go back to iTunes Connect on the web and check that your app was successfully submitted. You application status should become “Waiting for review”.
10. An Apple employee will review your app to make sure it doesn’t do “bad” things to the iPhone (such as draining battery power when outside the app). This process took approximately one week for me and most other people I heard from.
11. Your app status will become “In review” for approximately 1 day and then, hopefully, “Ready for sale”.

Now everyone can start downloading your app!

What apps would you like to see developed for astronomers?  There are plenty of star gazing apps, but what do you need at your fingertips to do your research?

What have been particularly valuable skills for your current job that you gained through completing your degree?
Problem-solving! ** Learning and working independently – how to find answers yourself, knowing when to ask questions and to whom to ask them, not being afraid to tackle problems with which you have little to no experience.

Computer programming – In grad school I used Fortran, which wasn’t a directly transferable skill whatsoever. But understanding programming and scripting fundamentals helped me pick up an object-oriented language (C/C++) quickly.

What, if any, additional training did you complete in order to meet the qualifications?
Earned a certificate in C/C++ programming from UCLA Extension. (5 – 6 extension classes, I think.)

Describe a typical day at work.
- Daily morning scrum (Agile development) meetings — 15-30 min.
- Various meetings throughout the day to discuss: planning and allocation of resources, feasibility and architecture of game systems, assorted managerial meetings — 1 – 2 hrs
- Coding — 4 hr.
- Mentoring, answering questions, code reviews — 1 – 2 hrs

Describe job hunting and networking resources you used and any other advice/resources.
I got into the video game industry because my girlfriend’s father was the game designer at the first company I worked for and he and I talked about video games and the work he did. A PhD in astronomy, without any other experience, simultaneously over-qualifies you for some jobs and under-qualifies you for the rest, thus making it virtually impossible to get past the automated sorting/filtering of job applications. Therefore, my experience was that it was very difficult to get a foot in the door in any other industry besides academic astronomy, unless you know someone.

Once in the door, however, I found that while I had a very steep learning curve because I had almost no direct knowledge of how to make games, I picked things up quite quickly and wasn’t afraid to just dive right in. My advice is to stick with the program and finish your degree! You’ll feel good about yourself, continue to learn indirect, but valuable skills, and demonstrate to future employers that you finish what you start.

See if you can take advantage of your university enrollment and take a class here or there that will help prepare you for your new career. Spend whatever time you can spare gaining new skills or be prepared that you might need some time after you finish to do that. However, don’t let either of these things steal your focus of finishing your degree.

From what I’ve seen, most fields have trade organizations, shows, meetings, online communities, etc, so get active in them and start meeting people! Remember that university extension classes are usually taught by people who actively have jobs in that industry and therefore are great places to learn new skills and network.

Out in the ‘real world’ PhDs in astronomy have quite a ‘wow’ factor. People like knowing a ‘rocket scientist’ and companies like to brag about having one on their staff.

What advice do you think advisors should be giving students regarding their career path?
They should be:
- honest about the positives and negatives of an academic research position.
- approachable, so that students feel they can talk to them without fear of reprisal, disinterest, or disdain. – knowledgeable and willing to discuss alternative careers path.
- willing to introduce their students to professors in other fields.
- able to help their students get in contact with former students who have alternative careers.

How many hours do you work in a week?
40-45 hours. All hours are @work, although my company is flexible and I can work from home as needed and/or desired.

What is your salary? 
$100k – 150k.

What is your level of satisfaction with your current job?
Very Satisfied.

My job is a wonderful combination of coming up with ideas to solve technical problems and executing on those ideas. I work in a creative, social, interactive, and collaborative environment, which I enjoy. I also get to mentor less-experienced engineers which satisfies my desire to teach and work with others.

My company takes very seriously the issue of a healthy work/life balance. We do work extra hours at ‘crunch time,’ but that is infrequent, particularly for the games industry.

I am quite satisfied with my pay, benefits, and perks. I really like my coworkers and look forward to seeing them at work, as well as in our spare time.

My job is pretty low stress, but engaging. I rarely find myself ‘taking my job home with me,’ unless I happen to be working on something particularly interesting and then I’m too excited to stop thinking about it after work!

What are the most enjoyable aspects of your job? Least enjoyable?
I love working in a creative, collaborative field with smart, talented people who are passionate about games. I really enjoy problem-solving with my co-workers and listening to their ideas. The least enjoyable aspects of my job are attending too many meetings (this has gotten much better, though, after we complained), not having full control of my projects (executives make the ultimate decisions), and working for a business which means market forces and profits are the guiding forces (less R&D or risk-taking).

What do you like most about your working environment? Dislike most? 
I like that it has structure, but is still fairly flexible. I dislike the lack of job security – people in corporate America seem to get hired, laid off, hired by a different company, etc. Luckily, this hasn’t happened to me yet, but you have to be ok with that cycle.

What opportunities does your job provide to be creative and/or to take initiative?
Engineers are given the opportunity to design and implement their own technical solutions and are also free to contribute game ideas in brainstorming sessions. Employees are encouraged to take initiative and ownership of their work and are actively rewarded for it (promotions, awards, shout-outs, etc).

How satisfied are you with your work-life balance in your current job?
Very Satisfied.

My company places an emphasis on work-life balance, which is really important to me. We do work extra-hours sometimes during ‘crunch time,’ but that happens infrequently and they try to keep the additional hours to a minimum.

How family-friendly is your current position?
Very family friendly.

We have flex-time, where you can (with supervisor approval): – telecommute (work from home) – shift your schedule early or late, as long as you’re here during the ‘core hours,’ so that you can drop kids off or pick them up, etc. Paid maternity and paternity leave. A company-owned and operated daycare across the street (although it is very full and has a long waiting list, but I believe they are building another on). Good benefits and a company-sponsored Flexible Spending Account. Family-friendly work functions/parties.

What advice do you have for achieving work-life balance (including having a family)?
Make having a healthy work-life balance a priority when choosing your position and ask the company/institution direct questions about their policies towards it. Once you start working, set boundaries and stick to them. No matter where you work, if you’re seen as the person who will always pick up other people’s slack, stay late, and work extra hours, that will become expected of you and you’re setting yourself up for failure. You do not have to be a workaholic to be successful!

Do you still interact with people who work (directly) in astronomy and/or are you still involved in astronomy in some way?
Yes. My best friend is an astronomical lecturer at Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. He also still does some research with colleagues at UCLA and UC Santa Cruz.

There is a worry among those considering careers outside of astronomy or academia that you can’t “go back” and/or that you feel that you betrayed advisors, friends, colleagues. Have you felt this way?
Yes. I do believe that it would be difficult to re-enter the field of astronomy after leaving the rather strictly prescribed academic career track. Also, the field moves at a very rapid pace, so it’s easy to get left behind. While I was in grad school and grappling with my decision, I worried that I would disappoint my professors and colleagues by leaving the field, especially since I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to do instead. In the end, though, it’s your life (and hopefully a long one!) so you need to put yourself first and do whatever you think is best for you.

What do you do for fun (e.g., hobbies, pastimes, etc.)? 
I love to walk my dogs, read, garden, and play – video games, music, nerdy board games, pinball. I also enjoy volunteering and have been a crisis counselor on LA’s suicide hotline for the past ten years. Having time to do all these things was a major factor in deciding not to stay in astronomy.

May we include your email address for people who might want to contact you directly about your career route? 
Yes. public [at] sugarego.com

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Comments, questions about this career path? Let’s hear them in the comments!