Jack Moody, 2020 APS Career Programs Intern

Biography

SPS Chapter: University of Massachusetts-Amherst

I grew up in Ashaway, Rhode Island, and study physics with a minor in military science and certificate from the integrated concentration in science (iCons) program at UMass Amherst. I am a first-generation college student and am enrolled in Army ROTC with the goal of commissioning as a second lieutenant when I graduate in Spring 2021. My long term goal is to become a nuclear non-proliferation officer for the Army and to help bridge the communication gaps between the military and the physics community. I also plan to pursue a Ph.D. in nuclear physics along the way.

At UMass Amherst, I have been lucky to participate in many amazing opportunities. I have worked for Dr. Rory Miskimen since mid-freshman year conducting experimental nuclear physics research. Our group designs and builds both large and small scale Multi-Wire Proportional Chambers for Jefferson Lab Hall D. The goal of the experiment is to determine a precise measurement of the pion polarizability as a test of chiral perturbation theory and low energy Quantum Chromodynamics. I’m also a member of the iCons renewable energy program at UMass. My main focus is on designing large scale redox flow batteries as an accompanying energy storage system to the new renewable energy generation techniques being implemented across campus as UMass races to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.

In addition, I’m grateful to be a part of the Forsythe Grange Mentorship Program at UMass, where I mentor three freshman first-generation math and physics majors on how to navigate college, practice self-advocacy, and foster professional development. I’m also a resident assistant at UMass Amherst and have been a teacher’s assistant for a couple of classes, including a graduate-level electronics course. Outside of academics, I love making music, reading, and am an avid fan of stand up comedy.

Internship

Host: American Physical Society

Project

Abstract

When most physicists enter their freshman year of college, many believe they will go on to become tenured college professors. While this is a possibility, there are so many other amazing opportunities for budding physicists to pursue! My mission this summer was to show undergraduates the vast array of careers within their grasp and provide resources to both them and their advisors so they may reach their full potential. This presentation will go over the methodologies I used to reach undergraduates and their advisors to provide career tools.

Final Presentation

Internship Blog

Week 1: Let’s get after it!

Hello everyone! I am grateful to be the APS Careers Area Intern this summer working under the mentorship of Dr. Midhat Farooq. I will be working with her on a variety of projects, mostly focusing on tailoring our content towards specific audiences (undergraduate students, graduate students, early-career scientists, mid-career scientists in industry, etc) through specialized email and outreach initiatives along with revamping the careers website and reorganizing the physicist profiles page and adding new content.

I applied to this internship because I wanted to help the physics community, especially those just at the beginning stages of becoming physicists, learn about the plethora of opportunities a physicist can pursue when it comes to careers. But more importantly, I wanted to help teach them how to gain the skills needed to pursue that career, such as networking, resume building, and finding effective mentors.

Once the national quarantine started and I had to return home from UMass Amherst, I saw an opportunity to try to help the physics community cope and endure during this difficult time. Dr. Farooq was able to get me in contact with Dr. David Voss, the editor for APS News, and I was able to write an Op-Ed for the ‘Back Page’ article in the June edition of APS News which was published on June 1, 2020. My hope is that the article will be able to help inspire fellow students to keep moving forward and working towards their professional goals during this challenging time. I also saw this as a good opportunity to prepare for this internship and begin thinking about what a particular audience may need in terms of career advising. The article can be found here: https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/202006/backpage.cfm

Beyond the Op-Ed, I have been able to meet with Dr. Farooq to go over the specifics of our projects for the summer. For example, we have met with the marketing team at APS to begin coming up with different audiences and specialized content for them that would be distributed through a series of emails that offer tailored content and career advice. I was also able to moderate a Q&A session following a career panel at this week’s DAMOP (Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics) meeting for Dr. Brian Patton, which was a lot of fun! Beyond that, I began working on categorizing the current physicist profiles (https://www.aps.org/careers/physicists/profiles/ ) for the upcoming reorganization of the page and met with Dr. Crystal Bailey, Head of Careers at APS, about beginning outreach to new physicists to begin writing profiles about careers that are not currently represented within the physicist profiles.

Outside of work, I have been enjoying spending time outside as the weather is getting warmer here in southern Rhode Island, and attending the zoom sessions the fellow SPS interns have been having to get to know each other better.

Overall, I loved my first week and can’t wait for week two!

Week 2: Compact Productivity

The second week flew by! Mostly because a lot of work got done, but also because I only had a 3 day week. APS did not conduct operations on Wednesday in support of #ShutDownSTEM, and I took Friday off to go with my family to pick up our new Irish Wolfhound puppy from New York. Nonetheless, a lot of work got done!

It started off with lunch on Monday with my mentor, Midhat, the other programs’ managers, their mentees, and the APS Programs Director. It was great getting to meet them all and learn about their backgrounds and what inspired them to work for APS.

Other than that I was able to continue working on the categorization of the physicist profiles page with Midhat’s help. We were able to go through and read all 69 profiles, determine proper characterizations of each profile, and made some guidelines for how we want to revamp the visuals of the page online to comply with this new organizational scheme. We also prepped notes and questions to bring to our meeting with the web team happening next week. Beyond the older profiles, Midhat and I discussed who should be interviewed for the next set of profiles and went over questions to ask them based on previously conducted interviews.

The other big thing that happened this week was another meeting with the marketing team. We were able to continue working on the career advising emails by going over “personas"/ demographics we’d want to target and began the needed steps of figuring out what resources and content each persona would need. We then began to draft an interest survey and writing questions that would help us figure out which persona the email recipient would fit into.

Overall, this was a great second week and I can’t wait to continue making progress!

Week 3: Social Engagement and Major Progress

This was a fantastically productive and encouraging week here at APS Careers. I am really starting to feel like a member of the team and the community both within APS Programs and amongst my fellow SPS interns!

Now for actual updates:

In terms of creating new physicist profiles, Midhat uploaded three new profiles (Julianne Pollard Larkin , Wendy Laurin , and Shahida Dar ) that were completed throughout the winter of 2019 and early 2020. Each of these is a great read and I highly recommend checking them out! I have contacted three new physicists that fill gaps in career fields that aren’t represented yet in our physicist profiles page. One has already filled out the survey and I am in the process of drafting and editing the profile, hopefully it will be uploaded in the next two weeks!

For reorganizing our profiles page, this week Midhat and I met with the web team and came to a consensus on an initial draft of how we want the new visual layout to look. We have also finalized the four categories we want all the profiles to fall under, which will hopefully help people have a far better visual and navigational experience when it comes to how they interact with the profiles page.

There was also continued progress in the APS Careers “Career Shape Up” email series. Midhat and I were able to develop a list of resources each of the individual “personas” we came up with would need to learn about. After that, I was able to develop a list of each individual email that would need to be written. I then organized which emails would be sent to which personas. Midhat and I have decided to split the work and each of us would do an initial draft of an email we felt confident writing about so that we could edit each other’s work next week before moving on to another email. After all of the content is written for these emails, Midhat and I will meet back up with the marketing team to see how they will be distributed and develop a timeline.

In other news, Midhat and Dr. Crystal Bailey (the head of APS Careers) have asked me to host my own webinar for APS Careers, which is very humbling and exciting! We have begun brainstorming some ideas and I can’t wait to help the physics community in this new way!

For social updates on the week, I was able to go kayaking this weekend with my grandmother which was a ton of fun! I was also able to grab dinner with a few different friends and participated in the social events and happy hours hosted by fellow SPS interns and the SPS Executive Committee; all of them were very fun and engaging! I’m really enjoying learning about my fellow interns and I’m happy with the relationships I am building despite not being able to do this internship in person with them. Each intern has an incredible backstory and such ambitious career goals! I cannot wait to continue learning about them as time goes on.

Week three was all I could hope for and more, but here’s to continued progress in week four!

Week 4: Keep the ball rolling!

This was another fun week at APS Careers! I feel like I’m really making an impact on the community and am loving being around fellow physicists that care so deeply about helping the physics community progress and thrive. My favorite part of any project is almost always the people I work with and their passion for their work along with the actual content itself we’re working on. All of the people within APS Programs are so passionate about their work, it’s truly inspiring!

Now for some progress updates! In terms of the physicist profiles, it was a bit of a slow week. We are waiting for the web team to come back to us and see if a timeline can be made for when the redesign of the profiles page will be up. However, I am currently working on finishing up the first draft of my first new physicist profile. After that draft is done, Midhat will do some edits then we will send it back to the physicist for edits before moving to get it published! We are hoping to have this done within the next week are two. We have also begun thinking about who to contact next for the profiles.

For our upcoming email series: Midhat and I have finished writing drafts of two separate emails that would be sent out to two of the separate “personas” we’ve developed. Midhat and I spent a lot of the week editing/ finalizing those emails. Up next for us are two meetings about this email series and where to go next with the marketing team. Both of those will be on Monday, 6/29, so stayed tuned for more updates!

In my opinion, the most exciting news of the week is that I will be hosting my own webinar for APS Careers! A lot of this week was spent brainstorming what I would talk about and what our specific audience will be. Sadly we haven’t finalized details yet so I can’t elaborate too much, but I am super excited to host my first webinar and make a lasting impact on the physics community and provide some tips that will be able to help people! I have been watching a lot of the previous webinars in the “summer webinar” series to ensure no content gets repeated as well as starting to make my list of action items for the talk. Midhat and I have also established a timeline of when certain content needs to be done to keep us on track.

In terms of the socializing for the week, it was pretty busy! I was happy to join a happy hour with APS colleagues on Tuesday. I also attended Midhat’s networking talk she gave to the fellow SPS interns, which was very helpful and informative, thank you Midhat! On Friday I was able to go out sailing for a few hours, play some games with my family, and attend the SPS “bad physics” movie night with my fellow interns! We watched ‘The Core’ (2003) and it was great to see everyone’s reactions to the shoddy, at times, science in the movie.

Overall, this was another great week and I cannot wait to keep moving forward!

Week 5: Shape Up Week

This was a short but chaotic week here at APS Careers. The long and short of it is that this week can “kindly” be called, Shape Up week...The email series had a very tumultuous timeline that took up far more headspace than Midhat or I predicted. But beyond that, it was a light week with the 4th of July being observed on Friday and APS wanting us to have as few meetings as possible.

There were many ideas thrown around trying to redesign the layout, timeline, content, and audiences for the Career Shape Up emails this week. Most of it was hard to navigate due to there not being a clear and concise mission for what this product was supposed to be. So, as a careers team, Midhat, Crystal, the marketing team, and I all got on a zoom call and had a long discussion about the purpose of these emails and where they fit in the larger mission of APS Careers. This was, thankfully, a fruitful discussion that helped clear up some major points.

After this meeting, Midhat and I got to work refining the previous emails that we had written with a fresh perspective. A signup sheet/ questionnaire was also designed and a new email for one of our audiences was drafted. We are hoping to start rolling out these emails as soon as possible.

Sadly, the physicist profiles were put on the backburner this week due to the unexpected amount of time the shape up emails took up. However, we will hopefully be setting up a meeting with the web team soon to see where the page redesign is in terms of the role out and I will continue drafting my first profile next week.

There is good news for the webinar though! With a timeline finalized for Midhat and I to ensure key tasks are accomplished on time for the webinar, I was able to create an outline for the talk that is now waiting for revisions. I am so excited for this opportunity and to see where it goes!

This was a more lowkey week for social engagement for me. I mostly spent time with my family but I did take a drive up to Falmouth, MA to go get dinner with a few of my friends in ROTC that I had not seen in a long time. It was great to catch up with them! This past weekend I did not do too much either besides spending time with my family, barbequing in our back yard, and going on a few long runs at a hiking trail near my house. My family and I did not think it would be the best idea to visit the local Rhode Island beaches this weekend, due to the uptick in coronavirus cases.

Overall, this was a bit of a tumultuous week for my internship, but this upcoming week will be a ton of fun and I cannot wait to get back in the swing of things! I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday weekend!

Week 6: Finishing Up Shape Up

This was another action-packed week here at APS Careers. I feel like a lot of progress is being made and I’m really enjoying the projects I’m working on.

This was a great and productive week for the Shape Up email series! We continued our revamp from our original ideas and decided to break down our longer emails into a series of shorter ones for easier digestibility. We also continued drafting and finalizing the first set of emails that will hopefully be coming out very soon. The graphics team has also started to come up with visuals such as banners and clip art for us, which is exciting!

My webinar also had notable progress this week. Midhat and I walked through my initial outline and have finalized the flow/ talking points for the most part. I have also begun making the initial draft of my presentation slides and they should be edited by early next week. I am so excited to be giving this talk and I hope it becomes a go-to resource for undergraduate advisors and their students!

While the Shape Up series and the webinar have been absorbing most of my time for the past two weeks, there has been some progress on the physicist profiles. The web team has gotten back to Midhat and I, indicating that they hope my webpage redesign will be done by the time I give my webinar, which will be helpful. I also have begun collecting graphics for my first profile. As Shape Up begins to wind down, the profiles will begin to have more room in my schedule. Much more to come!

This was also a surprisingly more social week than I had anticipated. I went to a happy hour with other members of the programs department, which was a blast! I also went to the SPS Virtual Picnic with the other SPS interns, where we had a lot of delightful conversations and got to know each other better. There was also a science policy roundtable hosted by SPS that was very informative! Besides physics things, I spent a decent amount of time with my family playing games and hanging out. I also spent a lot of time preparing for the “Virtual Branch Orientation Week” that is about to be hosted by the various branches (the army’s word for jobs) in the army so that us senior cadets can make informed decisions about what branch we want the most and what we think we can succeed in. I am super excited to hear from all the branches and to learn more about what my future army career could look like!

I’m very happy with all the work I am doing right now and am excited to see where the webinar and the profiles go next as Shape Up begins to wind down. I’m also excited about virtual branch orientations for ROTC coming up next week!

Week 7: Webinar Ramp Up!

Yet another action-packed week here at APS Careers! It is sad to think my internship is in the back half and starting to finish up, but I am so proud and happy to be a part of all of these amazing projects. Midhat and Crystal make me feel like a true member of the team, and I am so grateful for that!

The biggest breakthrough this week was on my webinar! I was able to complete an almost finalized draft of the slides I’m going to present and Midhat is helping me put on some finishing touches. We also adjusted the outline of the talk given to help the slides flow better. Besides that, I have been practicing the talk on my own to better understand the flow and to prepare for two separate practice runs next week, one with Midhat and the other with our Careers team. I am so excited about this webinar!

Shape Up is also rounding out nicely, pun intended. Midhat and I provided some last-minute feedback/ touch-ups on the first round of emails that are set to go out for our “soft launch”. We also decided to limit the initial audience of our emails to ensure they are working the way that we intend them to. We will gauge this from the feedback/ data we receive from our audience. That way we can make adjustments to the product, if need be, before making it a widely available APS Careers product. The banner was also finalized and it came out so well!

This week also saw some forward progress on the redesign of the physicist profile website! Midhat and I have been in contact with the Web team and are working out the finer details of the redesign before it’s implemented. I have also been putting together a list of people I want to contact for the next round of profiles I want to write.

This was also a very fun week socially! I was able to attend a happy hour where we talked all about astrology, I definitely learned a lot! I was also honored to attend a talk by Dr. John Mathers hosted by SPS which was incredibly inspiring! I also recorded a demo video of how a nuclear reactor works for the AAPT (American Association of Physics Teachers) Demo Competition for this month’s meeting with the help of my brothers and mom. My family also had some baby Guinea Keets hatch, which will be great for keeping the ticks and spiders down at our farm.

However, the most important thing to happen this week for me, besides my activities at APS, was the “Virtual Branch Orientation” events hosted by the different branches within the Army. All 17 basic branches held live video sessions this week where senior cadets in ROTC and at USMA were able to learn more about what each branches mission is within the larger Army, what a day in the life is like, what roles lieutenants fulfill, and what duty stations you can expect to be at throughout your time in the Army. It was incredibly helpful, interesting, and informative! I must say Cyber, Military Intelligence, and Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) are definitely at the top of my list! Now I have to prepare for the interview phase, which will start hopefully next week. I am incredibly excited about this next step in my life and to see where the Army takes me.

While my time at APS is starting to wind down, the momentum is definitely not slowing! I am trying to make the most out of my last few weeks here and look forward to seeing the role out of all the projects I am participating in.

Week 8: Rehearsals and Reflection

This week was mostly preoccupied with my upcoming webinar and ROTC activities, but both are going splendid and I am so excited for these final weeks of my internship here at APS!

A lot of my time this week was spent doing rehearsals and final edits for the webinar I will be hosting on Wednesday, July 29! I spent hours rehearsing my talk in order to get down pacing and cadence, as well as a run-through with Midhat and then the whole Careers department. Many thanks to Midhat, Crystal, and Leslie-Ann for helping me with my practice runs and for all your valuable feedback! Besides rehearsals I continued to finalize the more minute details of the slides, such as adding transitions, to ensure the talk goes as smoothly as possible. This prep has definitely been a different process for me since most of the longer form talks I’ve given previously have been in person, so getting the exposure and practice on how to give talks online will definitely be a valuable skill I can use in the future!

A quick note on the status of Shape Up: Midhat and I were able to approve and add some final touches onto the first series of emails that are going to be sent out. I look forward to receiving the data on how these emails were received from our soft launch and getting feedback on how these emails have been able to help students and young professionals prepare for their future careers!

Due to some technical issues, the Web Team had to move our meeting from this week to Monday, July 27, to go over the changes they plan on making to the Physicist Profiles page based on Midhat and I’s suggestions. Midhat and I are excited to see how it turned out! There also has not been much forward progress on the physicist profile I have written due to the webinar, but I plan on utilizing my time after the webinar to finish up that profile.

The abstracts for our final presentations to go over what we did during our internships are due July 27, so I have also spent some time this week reflecting on my time here at APS and trying to distil the activities I’ve been doing into a concise abstract. It definitely wasn’t as simple as I originally hoped!

In terms of social engagement, it was a fairly good week. I was able to meet with some friends in ROTC as we went to a local base to get our commissioning physicals. I was also able to complete some interviews for what branch I would want in the Army when I commission, which was a lot of fun! My time here at APS definitely helped me prepare for them, which is great! I was also able to spend a large amount of time with my family. School and ROTC training is coming up very soon after this internship ends, so I’m trying to spend as much time as possible with them while I can. I also began to have a few meetings about my research on campus in the fall and began coming up with a list of priorities to complete in the fall in relation to my senior thesis. Overall, it was a good week socially!

While I really don’t want my time at APS to come to an end, I have been enjoying every last second of it and this is an experience I will remember fondly for the rest of my life. However, there are still many things to be done and there’s no time to take my foot off the gas! I am so excited to host the webinar next week, and I hope it becomes a go-to resource for undergraduate advisors!

Week 9: Webinar Hosting and Profile Redesign Posting

The train is rolling in! Things are starting to wrap up here at APS Careers, but it has been a fantastic ride! I have been learning so much and have gained many valuable skills and perspectives from my time here at APS. I am so thankful to Midhat for being such a great mentor and for helping me accomplish so much over these past 9 weeks. Here’s a recap of what’s going on:

We’ll start with shape up. The soft launch has officially happened and the stats are looking quite promising! We have had 46 sign ups for career explorers, 38 for job seekers, and 33 for grad school. Plus the open rate is over 70, which is great! I signed up for them myself and have been receiving the emails, so far everything is running smoothly. I’m excited to see how this series progresses and to receive the feedback on how it is helping our audiences! You can sign up for it yourself here .

I was also able to host my webinar this past Wednesday for the APS Summer Webinar Series, and it was the most fun thing I did all summer! I absolutely loved being able to speak and engage with our viewers and provide them resources and implementation examples to help prepare them for career development. We had 112 attendees during the recorded session and had some fantastic questions asked by the audience. I strongly encourage anyone interested in seeing how they can support their students, or if you’re an undergraduate yourself, to go watch the webinar here on the APS Physics YouTube channel.

There is also exciting news for the Physicist Profiles webpage redesign, it’s officially updated! I have to sincerely thank the web team for doing such amazing work to help get this done. Please check out the new design here . You will be able to view all the profiles we have completed so far first by type of work the physicist is in (academia, private sector, public service, or national lab) then by the level of their degree (bachelors, masters, Ph.D.). The layout is much more user friendly and engaging. Thanks again to the webteam for helping me get this work done!

I also spent a good portion of the past week putting together the materials for my final presentation slides for SPS. It was a really good way to reflect on all that has gone on this summer and how much work has gotten done!

Socially this past week was nice. I was able to attend a few happy hours with APS co-workers and attend a great colloquium hosted by SPS! I also got outside a lot this past week and was able to go to the beach on Sunday, which was a lot of fun!

While it is getting hard preparing to say goodbye, it has been such a great experience and I am looking forward to working with APS again in the future!

Week 10: That’s a Wrap!

Well, that’s all folks! This will be my last blog post as an SPS intern. This has been an amazing experience! I could not be more grateful for this opportunity to give back to the physics community and to participate in so many fantastic activities at APS Careers.

Helping with a webpage redesign, writing and hosting my own webinar, helping create an on-going email series, and getting published in APS News has awarded me many new skills and perspectives. I am hoping to take all these new lessons and apply them in the future in both the Army and in future physics endeavors.

I have to specifically thank Midhat Farooq for her guidance throughout this internship, her leadership style is exemplary and I hope to lead as effortlessly as she does one day. I also have to thank the APS communications team, APS web development team, Crystal Bailey, Kayla Stephens, Mikayla Cleaver, and Brad Conrad for their help and support throughout this internship. You have all been so welcoming and made me feel like a member of the community from day one. I am excited to work with you all again in the future, either at SPS or APS events!

I also have to thank my fellow interns for amazing group me conversations, having so many inspiring ideas, and hosting bad physics movie nights.

As this internship comes to a close, I return to a tumultuous senior year of college. But, I am sure everyone will preserve in the end and I hope everyone reading this is finding themselves safe and healthy. I will be continuing my research for the Jefferson Lab at UMass as well as completing my senior thesis at UMass in conjunction with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)! I am very humbled and excited to see where this process goes and to see what the future holds for me, both in my physics and Army career! Please feel free to reach out to me over LinkedIn if you are an aspiring future intern at SPS or have any questions at all about my time here at APS, I would be happy to help however I can!

Stay safe everyone, thank you for reading.