Outreach

Peer Mentoring

At UCLA - Marginalized Identities in Physics and Astronomy (MIPA)

Marginalized Identities in Physics and Astronomy is "dedicated to building a more inclusive, accessible, and equitable environment for our graduate students who identify with one or more marginalized groups, including but not limited to: women+; Black, Indigenous, & People of Color (BIPOC); LGBTQIA+ folks; neurodiverse and disabled people. We strive to provide an intersectional support network for these students who face systemic barriers to success in graduate school by building community, fostering camaraderie, and promoting allyship." I have been a member since Fall 2021.

As part of my work with this group, I am involved in peer mentoring with undergraduates in the department. With this program, called Critical MASS (Mentoring and Academic Strategies for Success), a graduate mentor is partnered with both lower and upper division students in a group. We meet every month both one-on-one and as a group to discuss topics designed to foster success in academic pursuits and beyond, such as getting involved in research, applying to grad school and jobs, careers in physics/ astronomy, imposter fears, and more. My mentees include:

  • Ella Friess, UCLA '24
  • Malena Bloom, UCLA '27
  • Michaelia Fang, UCLA '22
  • Deniz Akin, UCLA '25

The UCLA MIPA website has more information about the MIPA program and the Critical MASS program:

UCLA MIPA Website

You can sign up to be a mentor or undergrad participant as well at the following links:

Sign up to mentor Sign up as an Undergrad

Planetarium and Public Outreach Talks

UCLA Planetarium Coordinator

The UCLA planetarium is completely graduate run. The shows run for one hour, and include a science talk at the public level about specific areas of astronomy and a night sky showing on the dome. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many shows in 2020-2022 were moved to a virtual format, being livestreamed on YouTube instead. I am excited to share my own interests in cosmology and (astro)physics theory with any audience, as well as giving shows on topics related to inclusion.

Left: The UCLA planetarium projector on the roof of the Mathematical Sciences Building

As a planetarium coordinator, I am a part of the team that runs the facility. In this role, I work on organizing the weekly public planetrium shows and private shows for educational groups, recruiting volunteers to give planetarium shows, presenting shows, training volunteers, maintaining our website, updating and organizing the existing shows, and coordinating planetarium and telescope maintenance.

Recently, our committee is working on several initiatives to improve the UCLA planetarium. Firstly, we are working on a series of inclusive astronomy shows to bring diverse ideas and voices to this program. This includes shows for Black history month, Hispanic heritage month, and more, as well as accessible shows. In this same vein, we are also looking to bring the outreach efforts of UCLA's planetarium to audiences who can benefit the most, beyond communities near Westwood. This involves securing funding and coordinating efforts to bring students from Title I schools around Los Angeles to campus to see shows. We are also working to do in-depth maintenance and cleaning of the planetarium and public telescope facilities, as well as partnering with the undergraduate astronomy groups to bring more telescopes and astronomy demos to our public events and better incorporate these showings into the planetarium talks. We are partnering with NASA community events to provide several special shows for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), including being designated as one of the locations for the first public display of images from JWST. I will be organizing this event (see below). Finally, looking ahead, we are beginning the process of fundraising for a major upgrade of the planetarium projector and facility at UCLA.

List of planetarium talks:

Visit the UCLA Planetarium website for information about upcoming shows:

UCLA Planetarium Website

Watch remote shows on the UCLA Planetarium youtube channel:

Watch UCLA Planetarium Youtube Chanel


Request a free private show for an educational group:

Private show request

Astronomy Introductory Coding Workshop

Foundational astronomy coding and research skills for undergraduate students.

Fellow grad student Sahil Hegde and I founded and teach the UCLA Astronomy Introductory Coding Workshop. The goal of the workshop was to teach foundational python and astronomical coding skills to all levels of undergraduate students in an effort to bridge a gap we saw in the curriculum. Basic python skills are not taught in astronomy classes, and students are often unprepared for astronomy research projects (which are often primarily require python programming in the modern astronomy context). This is a problem that is particularly relevant to transfer students, who may not have gone through the same core classes and are looking to find research opportunities in a shorter time frame.

To this end, we led a series of weekly workshops, drawing heavily on the incredible python instructional series of notebooks/textbook by Imad Pasha . If you are a student in the workshop, please see the resources below

Link to course syllabus.

If you are an undergraduate student interested in joining the workshop and missed the original advertisement, please email me at clairewilliams@astro.ucla.edu.

Invited Outreach Talks

Outside of the planetarium, I am also available for public talks on astronomy. Interested groups should contact me via email.

List of public outreach and invited talks:

Media

Recent results: UCLA Newsroom press release on Williams et al 2024, January 31st, 2024.

AAS Nova highlight-- "Using Ancient Ultraviolet Light to Probe Theories of Cosmology," January 26th 2024.

All news and media highlights:





At Carleton College - Goodsell Observatory

I volunteered at the monthy public open houses of Carleton's Goodsell Observatory, showing visitors celestial objects with the 16.2-inch John Brashear refractor in the main dome, the 8.25-inch Alvan Clark and Sons refractor in the small dome, and the 8-inch Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain LX200 telescopes on the observing pad.

Left: The 16.2-inch John Brashear refractor in the main dome of Goodsell observatory.



At Carleton College - Physicists of Underrepresented Genders (PUGs)

As a member of Physicists of Underrepresented Genders (PUGs) [Formerly Women+ in Physics (WIPS+)] I also took part in peer mentoring. This meant meeting with a lower division student as an uppclassman and providing mentorship related to the Carleton Physics and Astronomy Program. Also in PUGs, I was a part of various deparmental events designed to increase inclusion in our department, such as DiversiTEA discussion meetings and faculty panels.