Advice from America's top women scientists

This video is billed as advice from some of the top women scientists and engineers in America for girls all over the country, but its good for boys too:

Physics Careers/Scholarships: Department of Homeland Security

This Department of Homeland Security scholarship looks like a good opportunity for Physics majors if your interests run this way:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) realizes that the country’s strong science and technology community provides a critical advantage in the development and implementation of counter-terrorist measures and other DHS objectives. The DHS Scholarship and Fellowship Program is intended for students interested in pursuing the basic science and technology innovations that can be applied to the DHS mission. This education program is intended to ensure a highly talented science and technology community to achieve the DHS mission and objectives. Eligible students must be studying in a homeland security related science, technology, engineering and mathematics (HS-STEM) field with an interest, major, or concentration directly related to one of the homeland security research areas listed below:

1. Advanced Data Analysis and Visualization
2. Biological Threats and Countermeasures
3. Border Security
4. Chemical Threats and Countermeasures
5. Communications and Interoperability
6. Community, Commerce and Infrastructure Resilience
7. Emergency Preparedness and Response
8. Explosives Detection, Mitigation and Response
9. Food and Agriculture Security
10. Human Factors
11. Immigration Studies
12. Infrastructure Protection
13. Maritime and Port Security
14. Natural Disasters and Related Geophysical Studies
15. Risk, Economics, and Decision Sciences
16. Social and Behavioral Sciences
17. Transportation Security

Click through to get the details. You have to be a sophomore when you apply (or a junior in a five-year program), there's a summer program, and you need to do a year of service after graduation.

Physics Teaching Jobs

Southern Teachers has a poster up at UD's Department of Physics and Astronomy looking to recruit physics teachers. They recruit teachers at private K-12 schools in the South.

Physics Major to Congress

I'm always looking to see what else people do with Physics degrees.

Here's a physics undergraduate major:

According to the Arizona Daily Wildcat, a guidance, navigation and control engineer who works for Raytheon Missile Systems won the GOP primary in Arizona’s 7th congressional district in late August and now hopes to unseat U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, a four-term Democrat, come November.

Ruth McClung, a self-described “rocket scientist”, earned a bachelor's degree in physics in 2004 from the University of Arizona in Tucson before going to work for Raytheon.

(I can't find the original article at The Arizona Wildcat.) She studied towards, but didn't finish, a master's degree in optical sciences.

So we see two careers here: Becoming a politician, and (more practically) working for the defense industry, missile defense in particular. (Actually, back in the 80s, my best friend's father always claimed SDI was a fake jobs program for physicists.)

The three -- an all-time record -- current PhD physicsts in Congress are Democrats Rush Holt and Bill Foster and retiring RepublicanVern Ehlers.

Physics Major to Electrician

I've been meaning to keep track of the stories of physics graduates. Here's one physics major who became an electrician:

"It woke me up," [the professor] said. "There is a strong anti-manual-work bias in this country. I fell prey to it, too."

Brian Jones, 30, sometimes feels it. Originally from southern Virginia, he studied physics on an academic scholarship to McDaniel College in Westminster, Md., hoping to get a job as an engineer with NASA or an aviation company after he graduated in 2002. He watched friends with lower grades land jobs through family contacts, but he couldn't find one. Then a friend suggested that he could make as much money as an electrician. He just finished his third year as an apprentice.

"It's not the same as a job with, say, Lockheed, with a lot of office politics," he said. "In the electrical trade, your knowledge and actions speak for themselves. The only downside is the prestige. If you say you work for a multinational, half-trillion-dollar company, versus, 'I'm an electrician,' it doesn't have the same ring."

If the pay is good and the work is satisfying, I say don't worry about "prestige." I think Jones has done well. The Post says:

Licensed journeymen can expect to be paid $65,000 to $85,000 a year, depending on overtime...

These will not be the people you call to fix a clogged toilet or plaster a hole in the drywall. Most gravitate to commercial construction, where digital equipment has made the ability to decipher technical manuals and complicated building codes crucial. Many aspire to be foremen or own their own business.

Non-Academic Astronomers Network

My friend Rolf Danner has started a Facebook page for the Non-Academic Astronomers Network.

This network was originally founded as an activity of the Committee on Employment of the American Astronomical Society. The purpose of the group is to connect astronomers on a variety of career paths. If you are an astronomer working in a non-traditional job consider becoming a member.