Mentorship & Teaching

Effective teaching and mentoring are vital skills for academics to develop, but astronomers in academia tend to receive very little formal education training unless they pursue it voluntarily. Developing these important skills is one of my most important career goals. Below, I discuss some of my experiences thus far.

Graduate Teaching: Ethical Astronomy

In Fall 2024, I am teaching ASTR 122: Special Topics: Ethical Astronomy, a graduate level course at Dartmouth College. Students in astronomy tend to receive little to no education in the history of astronomy, and the education we do receive tends to overlook major advances by people beyond Europe and the United States. We also receive little to no education on the ethics of astronomy, which can result in the perpetuation of harm by astronomers—intentional or otherwise—against marginalized communities. This course will address these educational shortcomings.

The course contains three primary sections: (1) "the worldwide history of astronomy," focusing on astronomical advancements and traditional knowledge from cultures that tend to go ignored in our education system; (2) "astronomy, colonialism, and imperialism," discussing the many historical and current ties between astronomy and imperial and colonial violence; and (3) "pursuing astronomy in right relation with marginalized communities," investigating the ways astronomy has failed in our responsibilities to our communities and what it would look like to pursue astronomy in a way that upholds those responsibilities.

I received the opportunity to teach this course thanks to my Guarini Dean's Postdoctoral Fellowship, which allows postdocs to teach a course of their choosing for one term. I conceptualized this course and developed it from scratch, including the syllabus and readings list, lectures, discussions, assignments, and all course activities. if you are interested in the syllabus or readings list, please feel free to reach out, and I would be happy to share!

I would like to extend thanks to the team at Movement Consulting (particularly Dra. Nicole Cabrera-Salazar, Alma Ramos, and Xandria Quichocho) for introducing me to several of the materials I use in this course, my amazing PROF Fellow cohort (Dr. Gabrielle Cabrera, Dr. Endia Hayes, Kaylen James, and Josephine Ong) for their support and valuable discussions, and Dr. Ryan Hickox, Dr. Peter Ferguson, and Dr. Taylor Hutchison for early feedback.

Guest Lecturer: Undergraduate and Graduate Teaching

In 2023, I served as a guest lecturer for ASTR 2/3: Exploring the Universe for the Physics & Astronomy Department at Dartmouth College, teaching undergraduate level astronomy for science majors. I gave three lectures over two terms in 2023.

Intent to Impact

In Fall 2022, I completed the Intent to Impact mentoring course offerred by Movement Consulting. The course is extremely informative and transformative, focusing on creating a radically nourishing space where academics can be vulnerable and learn to center the experiences and voices of people of marginalized identities. Through self-reflection, readings, and interactive lessons, Intent to Impact helped me become even more aware of my positions of privilege as well as the systemic oppression within academia and our society at large. Importantly, the course also gave me the tools to form stronger relationships with my colleagues and community, resist systemic oppression, and resolve conflicts.

Research mentoring

In Summer 2024, I began mentoring one undergraduate student, Ricardo Mendez. Ricardo's project is described on my Science page. I have also engaged in informal research mentoring of students in my research groups at Texas A&M and Dartmouth College.

Peer mentoring: MAGIC and GASP

Alongside Taylor Hutchison, I founded Mentoring and Advising Graduates in an Inclusive Community (MAGIC), a program at Texas A&M that matches incoming astronomy graduate students to a network of current graduate student mentors, including one dedicated primary mentor for each incoming student.

We aim to build a supportive, inclusive, non-judgmental, and compassionate community for graduate students at Texas A&M. In this way, MAGIC provides a built-in community and support system for incoming graduate students.

In addition to monthly group meetings that serve to build a community and demystify graduate school for new students, mentors meet with their mentees every month. Through entry, mid-year, and exit polls, MAGIC shows significant improvement in students feeling both prepared for graduate school and certain that they belong in graduate school.

I served as MAGIC coordinator from 2019–2021, and I served as a MAGIC mentor from 2019 until I graduated with my PhD in 2022.

In 2024, alongside Quinn Casey at Dartmouth College, I founded the Graduate Academia Survival Program (GASP), a peer-mentoring program for incoming first year graduate students, modeled after MAGIC. We match incoming graduates with graduate student and postdoctoral mentors, and hold full group meetings multiple times per term to provide all new graduates with a strong community, a direct support network, and clarifying information about the graduate program.

Postdoc-Graduate Student Mentoring

After becoming a postdoc at Texas A&M in 2022, I took leadership of the postdoc-graduate student astronomy mentoring program. In this program, each astronomy graduate student is assigned a postdoc to serve as their informal mentor, meeting once per month over the course of the year. The purpose of the program is for the postdocs to provide an avenue of support for the graduate students, providing guidance and resources as they navigate graduate school and academia. As leader of the program, I coordinated the mentor-mentee pairings and served as a mentor to three phenomenal graduate students.

In this role, I also coordinated the postdoc-faculty mentoring program, wherein each astronomy postdoc is assigned an astronomy faculty member outside of their direct supervisor to serve as an informal mentor. As with the postdoc-graduate student program, faculty meet with their postdoc mentees each month to provide support and guidance for navigating academia.

Teaching Observational Astronomy

From 2017-2018 I served as the Instructor of Record for ASTR 102: Observational Astronomy at Texas A&M. I taught two sections of this course per semester, meeting each section once weekly for 3 hours in the late evening at the Texas A&M teaching observatory. The observatory features a classroom and outdoor observation deck where you can observe using several 8-inch telescopes, as well as multiple observing domes.

Each class consists of a lecture followed by an indoor or outdoor laboratory activity. As the Instructor of Record, I was trusted with teaching students to use the 8-inch telescopes and developing and delivering lectures, indoor lab activities and outdoor observational labs, quizzes, and exams, with no direct faculty supervision. This unique opportunity drastically expanded my skill set and cemented my passion for teaching.

Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL)

As an undergraduate at UT Dallas, I worked for three years as a PLTL leader for General Chemistry I and II. As a PLTL leader, I met weekly with two groups of students to help them work through challenging question packets created by the chemistry faculty. The central tenet of PLTL is the socratic method, focusing on helping students via asking leading questions to guide them to the correct answers, thus helping them develop a deeper understanding of the material.

This experience highlighted for me the importance of establishing clear communication and trust with students, creating an environment where everyone felt comfortable speaking up and asking questions.

In my last year, I was promoted to PLTL Super Leader. Serving as Super Leader, I continued to meet with one group of students weekly while organizing the PLTL program, running PLTL Leader training sessions, and evaluating the performance of PLTL Leaders in the program.

Feel free to contact me via email!

• jonathan.cohn@dartmouth.edu