MINUTES OF 2004 CHAIRS MEETING GENERAL Most departments represented were experiencing healthy growth, often because of synergies with closely-related areas in physics and/or through being part of major observational consortia. Two negative consequences of this were widely mentioned: the first was space pressure for additional facilities and people, and the second was a time pressure problem for people. The latter in some cases is taking a personal toll on people that was affecting departmental atmosphere and causing concern about burn-out of key younger/mid-career faculty. One department is losing astronomy faculty lines to physicists and another said it was having to defend itself against the loss of astronomy faculty lines and having physicists teach intro astronomy for non-majors. With these exceptions, other astronomy groups and departments were holding their own or growing, even in the face of major reductions in state funding. There is sometimes a problem of counting things as interdisciplinary with administrations that see everything as "astrophysics". A number of departments that have experienced substantial growth and/or an increase in quality in recent years were wanting to improve their visibility. FUNDING State Funding A number of institutions reported that state funding was at an all-time low. NASA funding At least one department was worried about currently living off large NASA programs. Control of Budget One or two departments have full or near full control over their budgets in the sense that money can be used either for faculty positions or other things. In most departments the administration keeps control over faculty lines. Private fund raising, boards of visitors, promotion of programs, etc. One university has a very successful "board of visitors". At least one other is trying this. One university had almost finished paying off its major commitment to a major consortium. Another university was giving free astronomy calendars to legislatures etc. FACULTY ISSUES Delays in filling positions. Some departments reported that people who were offered tenure-track faculty positions were putting off joining the department for a year. There were pluses and minuses to this. This was an advantage to the holders of prestigious prize post-docs who might still have a year to go on their post-doc. One department reported that they had had someone renege on coming in two years. In some cases deans were happy with approving a position two years in advance. At one state university a position has to lie fallow for a year or 18 months. Startup funding In recent years there has been a significant increase in start-up funding. Funding for a post-doc and graduate student for three years is not uncommon and this can be ~$300k. Buying into telescope consortia has also been a part of start-up packages. There is also, unfortunately often "salary inversion" (i.e., new assistant professors being offered more than older associate professors.) Two career issues These were being handled on a case-by-case basis in most institutions. For example, there might be partial salary support for a few years. One institution has a program of actively encouraging applications by married couples. Retirements Retirements represent both challenges and opportunities for many departments. POST-DOCS Even highly-regarded institutions tend to get small numbers of applicants for narrowly-focused, grant-funded post-docs and at times few of these are worth hiring. Less narrowly focused post-doc ads can generate ~100 applications. GRADUATE STUDENT ISSUES Selecting and admitting graduate students It was reported that the astronomers in one joint physics/astronomy department were making admissions decisions separately from the physicists. Another combined physics and astronomy department has its astrophysicists do separate graduate admissions. Another has a graduate student as a full-voting member of the admissions committee. Departments did not care about whether the undergraduate major had been in physics or astronomy, so long as there was a strong physics background. The raw GPA (grade-point average) was not necessarily of interest. What was much more important were the grades in physics, mathematics, and astronomy in the last two years. These should mostly be A's and not too many B's. C's ought to be explained. Undergraduate grades were not necessarily correlated with success in graduate school. There were differences of opinion on the value of general GRE scores. One department said that they did not pay attention to them. One person said his department found a strong correlation of success with the "analytical" GRE. Another said that the "verbal" GRE was the best indicator. Yet another said that the applicant must have a high "quantitative" GRE. In at least one university general GREs had been one of the main criteria for awarding campus-wide graduate scholarships. There was a much better consensus on the physics advanced GRE. It was felt that the student should be above the 50th percentile for admission, but lower scores were acceptable if other factors made the student attractive. It was felt that students who were over 60th percentile usually passed qualifier exams and would usually "make it" in graduate school. A student's physics GRE score depends on what physics courses the student has had before taking the GRE. Applicants who had not taken the physics GRE did badly. Essays by applicants were not very interesting but could be helpful in borderline cases since they could show a spark of interest. One person commented, "When people come in with weak physics we can teach them physics, but it's harder to get the fire in the belly." Some departments look strongly at research experience. Almost all applicants to graduate school have some research experience. It did not matter whether this was at the student's home institution or in an REU program. REU programs are most helpful for students of small colleges. There are some students who are "REU junkies" and would try to do 3 or 4 REUs. This does not add anything to the application. In many cases it would be better if the student had spent the summer brushing up on physics rather than doing another REU program. It was thought that the role of REUs is to get interest, not to be an evaluation tool. It is an advantage that the student has worked with a mentor and so has helpful letters of recommendation. Just as there has been "grade inflation" at many institutions, there has been "letter of recommendation inflation". An account of a specific accomplishment is much more helpful than merely saying that a student is in the top n percent. If possible a comparison with a known past or present student in the department is very helpful. Having prospective students visit a department was desirable. One department tried to get students to visit together over a few days. Even though having a student visit could cost a department $800 or so, it was noted that this was small when the total cost of training a graduate student could be over $300,000. One department said that 30% of its applicants are women, and recently the fraction had been as high as 50%. Some departments would like to get more American applicants. Financial support of first year graduate students. Departments had differing philosophies on the support of first-year graduate students. Some departments only had teaching assistant support for the first couple of years. After that grant support was needed. One school said that a lack of research funding from day one was a significant factor in the low acceptance rate of graduate student offers. Some schools offered TA support for the first year. There were differing philosophies of what was best for first-year graduate students. One astronomy department insists on astronomy teaching for the first year in graduate school so that the students become well grounded in basic astronomy. Another astronomy department does not allow teaching in the first year. This year must be spent on research instead. Some institutions encouraged graduate students to come to the department the summer before their first semester so that they could get involved in research that summer. Graduate courses There was strong criticism of the teaching of graduate physics. One person said, "Our problem has been that we have trusted it to the physicists." There was near unanimous feeling that courses such as the "Jackson" E&M course as taught by physicists were a waste of time for astrophysics majors. One representative felt that such a course was still worthwhile training because it taught some useful skills. He was still concerned that in his department there was no astronomy on the qualifying exams. One department has 12 core graduate courses. Physics graduate courses are not part of this core, although students are encouraged to take them. Another department has cut down from 12 graduate courses to 9 courses. These do not include graduate physics courses. They teach the physics as it is needed in courses. One large department has 8 required courses. They see them as a bridge to research, and they have research projects rather than homeworks. The European tradition of summer schools for graduate students was appreciated. "Qualifiers" and "prelims" Quite a few colleagues of participants seemed to take a view towards qualifying exams of "we had to do it so those guys have to do it!" Interestingly, one representative reported that the graduate students in his department do not want the qualifier to be discontinued. He said that his department would not get rid of it because it has been adopted as something that the students get together in teams to do. The qualifier was not seen as a threat to students because no one had failed it in recent history. The use of qualifier/prelim exams to "weed out" weak students seemed, in part, to depend on the quality of admissions. One large department has no prelim. exam since they feel that they do their weeding out in the admissions process. One smaller department valued the qualifier as an instrument to get rid of unsatisfactory students. In one department students have to chose three topics and have an oral exam on these. About 10-15% fail and are given a chance to do a retake. In another department, graduate students are not allowed to take more than two courses in their first year (they are also not allowed to teach that year). Instead they have to do two research projects. They have to write paper in ApJ format and defend it for an hour in front of three faculty members other than the advisor. "We give [the student] a referee report." Of the four students thrown out in previous seven years, it was for failure to pass the research exam, not the qualifier. Students have to do the research exam twice with different advisors. It was felt to be important to throw out students who failed at the research exam. "or it is a disaster." UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT ISSUES Astronomy education - non majors Most of the discussion centered on education of majors, but some resources for teaching non majors were mentioned. There are digital libraries of physics and astronomy resources. Astronomy is part of the Compadre program - a joint AAPT, APS, AAS enterprise. The open-source Lon-capa software ("Learning on-line with computer-assisted personalized approach." - see Lon-capa.org) co-authored by Wolfgang Bauer of Michigan State was mentioned. Astronomy education - majors There was some general discussion of the nature and goals of the education of physics majors. At least one department was revising its undergraduate major. It was commented that the current scheme in many departments gives students "an excellent preparation for the last century!" [the editor wonders wasn't sure whether the words "last century" referred to the 20th or 19th century!] It was pointed out that history majors do not major in history to become historians. There is a problem with weaker students who cannot do the physics. Typically, undergraduate majors take all the core physics courses in a department, but topical physics courses are replaced with astronomy courses. Some departments have a "freshman seminar" required for all majors, or a pass/fail "gee-whiz" course on the frontiers of physics and astronomy. This might be a course where each research group comes in and gives a presentation. A number of institutions reported that undergraduate majors were approaching a 50/50 gender ratio. REU programs have been particularly effective in attracting women and minorities into astronomy. One university has a mentoring program between graduate and undergraduate students to help introduce undergraduates to the culture of graduate school. BA/BS-level Jobs There is presently no centralized location where jobs that only require a bachelor's degree can be announced, since jobs in the AAS job register generally require a Ph.D. It was agreed that there ought to be a site on the web for publicizing jobs that only require a bachelor's degree. TECHNICAL SUPPORT It was agreed that faculty time should not be spent in writing software, computer maintenance, fixing leaks in observatory roofs etc. It was agreed that there would be a small survey of who has what in the way of support so that departments know what is realistic when getting into observatory projects and consortia. There will be a follow-up questionnaire about support staff. LIBRARIES Two library issues were discussed. The first was the issue of space: some departments had to expand into their libraries; others had their libraries taking over their space! The second issue was the question of the future of print copies. Currently 20% of subscriptions in physics are electronic only. The AAS has only been able to keep up the relatively high circulation of its journals because it has been able to keep prices low. SURVEYS OF PROGRAMS The 2005 NRC Survey There will be another NRC survey in the summer of 2005. Previous surveys had been primarily "reputational" and there have been concerns about the objectivity of those doing the ranking. The US News and World Report undergraduate rankings had had the same problems. The 2005 NRC survey is attempting to be more objective. In 2005 there will be four surveys - of programs, of administrators, of faculty, and of students. These will include questionnaires for individual faculty members, for past graduate students, and students who are advanced to candidacy. Drafts of the proposed surveys are available on the web and the NRC is taking feedback on them. Attendees were warned that although the upcoming NRC survey is a survey that astronomers might not know about, their deans and provosts will know about it and "it will be a big deal." Already some universities are looking at "how to game the system." There was a lot of concern at the meeting about the new NRC survey and about whether it would be getting at what ought to be in such a ranking. The key issue was that nobody wanted rankings based on faulty data. It was even suggested that astronomy programs boycott the survey. Last time the survey was done, 147 physics departments were ranked, but only 33 astronomy programs participated in the ranking. One chairman felt that in the last ranking his department had "stuck their heads out" by participating since they had come in near the very bottom of the programs that had chosen to participate in the ranking and that this had not looked good to the upper administration. Departments did not want to hand their deans ammunition for taking bad courses of action. Potentially arbitrary divisions and the issue of how astronomers are classified was one major area of concern. For example, there is a subheading under physics called "cosmology". Planetary scientists presented another classification problem. In the NRC survey people cannot be double counted so divisions are going to be forced. The classification issue could make it hard to get an accurate head count and a proper assessment of the strengths of programs. Departments will self classify themselves. As the survey is currently proposed, each faculty member will fill out a form and will declare which category he or she is in. There was concern that there was no plan to control for department size. In the past, rankings were correlated with department size. One specific concern was that small departments will be hurt in the proposed 2005 survey because they do things informally and therefore cannot say that they have organized programs for various things. For example, in one department graduate students had claimed that there was no ethics training. Since there will be a survey of graduate students it was suggested that some preparation of the graduate students by explaining the survey could be a good idea. Salary Surveys It was noted that there is a good mid-west chemistry questionnaire of salaries and it had a high participation rate. It was reported that at least one chemistry department chair at a major state university thought that it wasn't too much effort. Such a survey takes an administrative assistant about half a day to reply to. ANNUAL REPORTS The value of printed annual departmental reports has lessened considerably with the advent of the World-Wide Web. In the last five years the number of annual departmental report submissions to the Bulletin of the AAS has plummeted by a factor of two. With this level of participation historians feel that annual reports are no longer of value for tracking things. Instead lists of publications can be reconstructed from the ADS. Some departments send a copy of their annul report to prospective graduate students. One university reported that for about half of its graduate students the printed annual report had played some role in the student choosing to go there, and that for a couple of students it was the most important thing in making them decided to go to graduate school in that department. Given the demise of annual reports the AAS might capture things into a data base, but the society does not have major resources to put into this. NATIONAL FACILITIES NRAO is keen to maintain its support for traditional university users. There is a new Jansky Fellowship program and half of these fellows are at universities. The Green Bank Telescope has a student support program. NRAO wishes to advertise that they have long had a pre-doc support program for graduate students wishing to do thesis work at NRAO. This can be from a few months up to two years. Previous pre-docs have done very well in getting jobs. There was concern that departments are pulling away from national optical facilities (e.g., KPNO). NRAO has long had a summer school every other year for how to use VLA data. AMERICAN ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY The society asked chairs and departmental representatives to encourage colleagues, post-docs, and students to join the AAS. It was felt that the younger generation of astronomers did not have the culture of joining that previous generations had had. New student members who join get two year's membership for $40. It was noted that some cosmologists tend to be members of the DAP of the APS, and it was wondered what membership trends were in the APS. The society is looking for new science editors for the Astrophysical Journal. NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION The NSF wants to make sure that it is not missing areas they ought to be covering, and that their funding methods are appropriate. They feel that astronomy "has its act together" because of the decadal reports. Points that came up from recent NSF discussions with representatives from the five main sciences were: 1. Support of individual investigators is important. 2. A separate theory program is not wanted so long as 25-30% of support continues to go out to theory. NSF was applauded for not sub-dividing and tagging proposals into theory/observation until they had been looked at by program officers. 3. There might be a few astronomy-directorate wide "Einstein" postdocs. This would follow on from the success of the Hubble and Jansky fellowship programs which the astronomy community likes. A problem with such postdocs, however, is that they tend to be, in effect, giving additional post-docs to just the top institutions. 4. It is recommended that theory be a part of any or all major new facility initiatives. For example, there will be a theory component associated with ALMA. 5. Supercomputer support might be changing. "THE SYSTEM" IN OPTICAL/IR ASTRONOMY The optical/IR system (NOAO/KPNO etc.) will not operate the same way as 30 years ago. There has to be public/private partnering. There will be no more small national telescopes and even the 4-m telescopes will be closed eventually. The SMARTS consortium is a model of how to operate small telescopes now ("small" meaning in the 2-m to 4-m aperture range). Such a telescope can be built at a national facility and institutions can buy into the rotating membership of the telescope. There are two instrumentation programs: TSIP which tends to fund instruments for 6-m class telescopes, and PREST for smaller telescopes which funds telescopes of the 0.5 - 2.5-m class. With such telescopes there is community access through queue scheduling or survey work. Queue scheduling does require a cultural change to get observers to be effective in the queue mode. Two concerns were mentioned: the first was the problem of training the next generation of instrument builders if the smaller telescopes are being shut down, and the second was the desire to get people from the "have-not" institutions involved in big surveys. NASA There was discussion of the recent and impending organizational and programmatic changes at NASA. These are having a major effect on astrophysics research. Many justifications will need to be re-defended.