Mentoring Resources
Undergraduate Astronomy Research Tutorial Repository
The Astronomy Research Tutorial Repository serves as an excellent resource for undergraduate students learning how to program in the Python language, as well as introducing several other astronomy-specific software packages. This is a work in progress and contributions are always welcome. Please check back periodically for new additions!
Graduate Student Research Agreement Template
Student-mentor relationships are both extremely rewarding, but also challenging. This graduate student research agreement template has been developed to provide (graduate) students with a set of guidelines for their role performing independent research in astronomy. The purpose of this document is to provide a clear set of expectations, which will help make students and mentors more successful in their journey, enhancing the students development, and ensuring that the student and mentor are on the same page. A generic version of the Graduate Student Research Agreement can be downloaded and adapted; please acknowledge those that have contributed to making this document: Prof. Kate Whitaker (UMass Amherst), Prof. Stella Offner (UT Austin), Prof. Cara Battersby (UConn), Prof. Julia Kamenetzky (Westminster College), and Prof. Jeyhan Kartaltepe (RIT).
Compilation of Undergraduate Research Opportunities
This compilation of undergraduate research opportunities, compiled in Fall 2020, including the program name, an estimate of the application due date, and a link to the webpage. Some information may not be up-to-date; corrections and/or additions are encouraged - please email me!
Effective Plotting and Presentations Workshop
This workshop was originally developed for the UMass Astronomy Department Fall 2020 Journal Club (and made public in September 2020). Included in the 2-session workshop is a “Data Challenge”, where participants are asked to download a spreadsheet of the astrophysics arXiv submissions between March 15th and August 10th of 2019 and 2020 (i.e., before and during COVID-19). Using code released by Professor Megan Frederickson, the CSV file contains two gender columns counting the total number of men and women (albeit an imperfect process, gender is automatically assigned through an applied algorithm whenever first names are specified).
Other Resources
Prof. Arianna Long has an amazing compilation of resources on their professional webpage: https://www.ariannalong.space/resources, including research skills, applications, teaching pedagogy, mentorship, and literature on community and support.
Python for Astronomers is a free textbook, with interactive tutorials and guides for learning scientific computing by Imad Pasha and Chris Agostino: https://prappleizer.github.io/
Pre-print of various chapters for the Encyclopedia of Astrophysics to be published by Elsevier as a Reference Module:
Spectral Energy Distributions: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.17680
Galaxy Morphologies: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.09610
Interstellar Medium: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2504.01410v1
Gas in Galaxies: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2504.08103
Circumgalactic Medium: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.10579
Gravitational Lensing: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.07938
Other related resources not in the encyclopedia but related include: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.07832 and https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0109358