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Interview with Zoa Conner Recently, I had the opportunity to speak
with Dr. Zoa Conner, 1997 graduate of the University of Maryland Department
of Physics. She kindly offered me insight on her career experiences
as well as her thoughts on issues facing women in physics today and
what the field can do to attract more women scientists. After a visit to the University of Maryland, where she says she was warmly received, Dr. Conner decided to join the Maryland Physics family. She wanted to study in an area that she found intellectually interesting, but would also provide her with a window to other related areas of science. These goals led her to the field of particle astrophysics. She originally had reservations about working with a group as large as the one at Maryland because she was concerned that a large group would not provide her with the opportunity to gain experience in the variety of tasks associated with an experiment that a smaller group would. However, Dr. Jordan Goodman, who would soon become her advisor, and Dr. Todd Haines, a postdoctoral associate in the group at the time, assured her that this would not be the case. Their assurances were enough to convince her to join them and, sure enough, their words rang true. During her six years at Maryland, she worked on many aspects of the Super-Kamiokande experiment, which studies nucleon decay, solar neutrinos and supernovae neutrinos. She spent nearly one-fourth of her time each year on-site at the experiment in Japan. And her Ph.D. thesis on solar neutrinos was the first one written on the Super-K experiment from the U.S. collaboration. She also gained teaching experience at Maryland. Though, thanks to her fellowship, she did not need to earn her tuition as a teaching assistant, she volunteered to work as a TA for several semesters, mostly for the sequence of physics courses that engineering majors are required to take. She also spent several summers teaching middle school girls the wonders of science through the Department's Summer Girls Program. She especially enjoyed this experience, as the summer day camp format provided her with the freedom to explore new and fun topics as well as less traditional teaching tactics. Upon graduation, her excellent work at Maryland earned her the University of Chicago's Enrico Fermi Post-Doctoral Fellowship, which provided her with research funds and a stipend for two years to study in any group at the University of Chicago's Enrico Fermi Institute that she wished. She stayed in the field of particle astrophysics, but this time studied gamma rays among very energetic stars through her work on the STACEE experiment. After two years in Chicago, she returned to the D.C. area to a position as the Program Director for the Women and Power: Science and Technology Program at George Washington University. This position, which was much different from her previous research work, provided new challenges. While she did miss the research, she was happy to have the opportunity to pursue her interest in working with women scientists and women students. Dr. Conner managed a residential program for freshmen women interested in majoring in science. In this program, designed as an incentive for top-notch women to attend the university, the women students lived together in a dorm (with a female science graduate student as resident advisor), attended special seminars together and took several courses together, including some of the university's fundamental requirement courses and multi-disciplinary classes developed for the program - all in an effort to provide a supportive environment for women science students. Dr. Conner organized a weekly seminar for these students and taught a multi-disciplinary class on energy and power, which addressed the topic from several different science perspectives. The course allowed these science-savvy women to combine their own interests with new knowledge from other related disciplines. Dr. Conner's teaching assistant experience from Maryland also came into play at George Washington University, as she had a joint appointment with the physics department where she taught an astronomy course. Given her extensive work both as a woman in physics and as someone working toward the advancement of women in physics, Dr. Conner was asked about some of the issues she feels women physicists face today. She replied that sometimes the field can still feel like a "boys club." While several of her experiences in physics, including her time in the particle astrophysics group here at Maryland, provided safe environments where people focus on ability instead of gender, there are still many places where women can feel isolated, even if it's only because of the poor representation of women in the field. She also says some women are still put in positions where they must prove themselves more than a man would have to. She encourages physicists today to make sure they disregard their colleagues' gender and simply value the scientists' contributions and accomplishments. Dr. Conner also addressed the fact that so few girls and young women express an interest in science, especially physics. To remedy this, she feels that science teachers need to encourage all their students, including the young women, to explore science and be careful not to communicate, even accidentally, the negative experiences they may have had when they were earning their degrees. Physics can be a high pressure field where one is always striving to reach the next level. Teachers and mentors need to be sure that they do not assume that this is an atmosphere in which their female students would not excel. At the same time, she feels that the field of physics needs to make sure that it provides supportive environments in which women can thrive. She feels that women often enjoy working more cooperatively than men do and that this work-style can be very beneficial, especially in research environments. She also recommends that universities and laboratories be flexible with women in their child-bearing years. Dr. Conner finds that even when couples take a "team" approach to child-rearing, parenthood is usually more demanding on a mother when the children are babies. If an employer can be flexible with a woman's schedule during these years, they can reap the rewards of her professional success in the years to follow. Dr. Conner found working with women physicists and women students at George Washington University to be very interesting and enjoyable. However, she found the time that the position required to be a little more than she wanted to devote to work at this time, since she had just given birth to her first child. She is pursuing a different path now. She is currently home-schooling her two young children and looks forward to teaching both her son and her daughter the wonders of science. The Department of Physics thanks Dr. Conner for taking the time to share her thoughts and experiences and wishes her and her family the best. _______________________________________________________ If you have any comments for Dr. Conner, please email the editor at karrie@physics.umd.edu. She will be happy to forward your inquiries to Dr. Conner. |
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