[MATHLINK] Alt/Non-Academic Jobs Panel

Tue Aug 3 11:48:33 CST 2021

Dear MCLS Community,

Thanks for joining our first set of lightning talks last week! If you
missed the excellent set of talks, you can find them on our YouTube channel
here: https://youtu.be/jS6TVs1ov1A.

We're getting excited about our first workshop of the year coming up *this
Friday, August 6 *at* 11am EST // 4pm BST. *We'll be joined by an amazing
group of panelists (bios below) who all earned PhDs and are now working in
non-academic or academic adjacent jobs. The panelists will talk about their
experiences and trajectories, and will answer any questions folks have. If
you would like to ask a question, we encourage you to submit it ahead of
time here: https://forms.gle/H4Tpa7Hxfyepe5Sm7

Information to join the call is below the panelists' bios. As always, you
can join the room for this year's meetings at any time from the link
https://tinyurl.com/MCLS2021 (Passcode: MCLS2021).

------------------------------

*Kelly Escobar*
Kelly Escobar, Ph.D. is a Senior Program Officer on the Fund for Early
Learning initiative at the Robin Hood Foundation in New York City. Kelly
came to Robin Hood, a non-profit grant making organization that aims to
lift New Yorkers out of poverty by supporting data-driven, evidence-based
services, after several years in academia. After receiving a bachelor’s and
master’s degrees from Villanova University, Kelly moved back to New York to
earned her Ph.D. in Applied Developmental Psychology from NYU Steinhardt.
At NYU, she developed an expertise in cultural influences on child language
development and bilingualism, and consulted with the New York City
Department of Education on dual-language services in the Division of Early
Childhood Education. After completing her Ph.D., Kelly was a postdoctoral
associate at Teacher’s College at Columbia University and toyed with the
idea of going on the academic job market before ultimately deciding to join
Robin Hood. Though she is no longer actively conducting research, Kelly is
still an active consumer of the latest science and works to bridge the
research-policy-practice divide in her everyday responsibilities.

*Aubrey Francisco*
Aubrey Francisco is the Deputy Program Director for EF+Math. In her role,
Aubrey works closely with the Director to drive overall program strategy
implementation and manages several funded R&D teams. Aubrey brings
expertise in working collaboratively at the intersection of research,
education practice, and technology development to design, implement, and
scale approaches that can improve learning outcomes. Previously, Aubrey was
Chief Research Officer at Digital Promise, where she led the development of
novel ways to communicate learning sciences research, supervised dozens of
pilot studies of education technology products, developed continuous
improvement methods for supporting schools in implementing instructional
coaching and was co-principal investigator on an effort to scale an
effective early literacy professional support system. Prior to joining
Digital Promise, Francisco worked in biomedical R&D where she developed
innovative biomaterials for intervertebral disc regeneration. She earned
her undergraduate degree from Syracuse University and her PhD from Duke
University.

*Eben Witherspoon*
Eben Witherspoon, Ph.D. is an education researcher in the Research and
Evaluation division at American Institutes for Research (AIR), with
expertise in quantitative analysis. He currently supports a number of NSF
and Department of Education funded projects focused on understanding
students’ undergraduate experiences in science, technology, engineering and
mathematics (STEM) classrooms and career pathways, with a focus on
broadening participation in those fields. His current work also includes
examining the impact of professional development and classroom practices in
student persistence in STEM, and evaluation work of the implementation of
educational technologies that seek to teach core science concepts through
the integration of computational thinking and computer science instruction.

Prior to joining AIR, Dr. Witherspoon was a secondary mathematics teacher,
an analyst for the College Transition Collaborative
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__the-2Dmcls.us20.list-2Dmanage.com_track_click-3Fu-3D52a664da881817eed812437d0-26id-3Dce2784aac4-26e-3Df13dd00558&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=VayoKepUaVSDRZHcUhnIjw&m=VjSqhaMAjxd9HCcA5-30Xl-KmczcU3hDV-oXO5Pe07Q&s=7JHa9Sy0Px1Klt6D__3-QktM8tTNCGhYEG1uZbZFmFE&e=>
and
the SEISMIC Project
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__the-2Dmcls.us20.list-2Dmanage.com_track_click-3Fu-3D52a664da881817eed812437d0-26id-3Dc6494accde-26e-3Df13dd00558&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=VayoKepUaVSDRZHcUhnIjw&m=VjSqhaMAjxd9HCcA5-30Xl-KmczcU3hDV-oXO5Pe07Q&s=QBHNQXae8TaPMa36iiD5OjPZPVGLxc0YcHZyPIlklnQ&e=>,
and a postdoctoral scholar at the Learning Research and Development Center
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__the-2Dmcls.us20.list-2Dmanage.com_track_click-3Fu-3D52a664da881817eed812437d0-26id-3D3f9ee91e7c-26e-3Df13dd00558&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=VayoKepUaVSDRZHcUhnIjw&m=VjSqhaMAjxd9HCcA5-30Xl-KmczcU3hDV-oXO5Pe07Q&s=efGlGCO2E2OuWFUuvCBj5wc_rfg3SzxyyxO5yXEgG_s&e=>
at
the University of Pittsburgh. He has extensive experience with cleaning and
analyzing large, multi-institutional administrative datasets; developing,
collecting, and analyzing survey data; designing and evaluating K-12
curricula and professional development programs; conducting classroom
observations; qualitative coding and mixed-methods analysis of
instructional coaching; and a variety of experimental and
quasi-experimental research methodologies. His work has been featured in
leading academic journals such as Education Researcher
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__the-2Dmcls.us20.list-2Dmanage.com_track_click-3Fu-3D52a664da881817eed812437d0-26id-3Dc6c31056f0-26e-3Df13dd00558&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=VayoKepUaVSDRZHcUhnIjw&m=VjSqhaMAjxd9HCcA5-30Xl-KmczcU3hDV-oXO5Pe07Q&s=bwJNC3orLL-maQIQj-yI8jEVHOWTYgY14fCrPnzGUW0&e=>
, Science Education
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__the-2Dmcls.us20.list-2Dmanage.com_track_click-3Fu-3D52a664da881817eed812437d0-26id-3Db749481764-26e-3Df13dd00558&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=VayoKepUaVSDRZHcUhnIjw&m=VjSqhaMAjxd9HCcA5-30Xl-KmczcU3hDV-oXO5Pe07Q&s=34ILx_T25v_K2lC6xBJ_6pz-ZJpEQ5OLVPvqb-gfOfU&e=>,
and Social Psychological and Personality Science, and has been covered by
media outlets such as The Chronicle of Higher Education
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__the-2Dmcls.us20.list-2Dmanage.com_track_click-3Fu-3D52a664da881817eed812437d0-26id-3Dc7fb7bc3ec-26e-3Df13dd00558&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=VayoKepUaVSDRZHcUhnIjw&m=VjSqhaMAjxd9HCcA5-30Xl-KmczcU3hDV-oXO5Pe07Q&s=FEap2JSvqCcRZz_swC_fTGNymUbz7Iolv6L77TrU6Lc&e=>
 and Inside Higher Ed
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__the-2Dmcls.us20.list-2Dmanage.com_track_click-3Fu-3D52a664da881817eed812437d0-26id-3D2f2f35e633-26e-3Df13dd00558&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=VayoKepUaVSDRZHcUhnIjw&m=VjSqhaMAjxd9HCcA5-30Xl-KmczcU3hDV-oXO5Pe07Q&s=I9HBCzcBvAuwPhwsc4YmWjA6yQyNP5wHn3uSKGbUDy4&e=>.
Dr. Witherspoon holds a Ph.D. in the learning sciences from the University
of Pittsburgh.

*Fabian Van Den Berg*
I am Fabian and my academic history consists of a bachelor’s degree in
psychology, followed by a Research master's in cognitive and clinical
neuroscience where I also got certified for diagnostic work. In the end, I
decided I liked the research side more, so I did my best to apply to PhDs,
which in my case took about 2 years and more than a dozen interviews at
almost a dozen different universities. In the meantime, I worked as a
statistician for an online company and applied to some other jobs,
unsuccessfully.

Eventually, I landed a PhD in developmental cognitive neuroscience at
Maastricht University, which I completed and should defend at some point
this year. I thought long and hard about what I wanted to do. I love doing
research, analyzing data, and finding out new things, but there were some
things about academia I didn’t like so much. I decided to apply to
non-academic jobs and now I work as a data scientist in a large digital
marketing agency where I work on various client and internal projects.

*Priya Silverstein*
Priya completed their BSc in psychology and MSc in cognitive neuroscience
at Aston University, before their PhD and postdoc in developmental
psychology at Lancaster University and the University of Surrey
respectively. They currently work as a consultant in two roles: Research
Scientist at the *Center for Open Science
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__the-2Dmcls.us20.list-2Dmanage.com_track_click-3Fu-3D52a664da881817eed812437d0-26id-3D72de190acc-26e-3Df13dd00558&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=VayoKepUaVSDRZHcUhnIjw&m=VjSqhaMAjxd9HCcA5-30Xl-KmczcU3hDV-oXO5Pe07Q&s=khUK6NkhMEGOfbZGXodnBP_dqBGHDco2tnBdc_b5W0I&e=>*
and
a Community Manager at the *Journal Editors Discussion Interface
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__the-2Dmcls.us20.list-2Dmanage.com_track_click-3Fu-3D52a664da881817eed812437d0-26id-3D47b23737e0-26e-3Df13dd00558&d=DwMFaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=VayoKepUaVSDRZHcUhnIjw&m=VjSqhaMAjxd9HCcA5-30Xl-KmczcU3hDV-oXO5Pe07Q&s=jyLmWr3SetEHrvZpkfP7ICGVag_PJz_1v2IwagWieNw&e=>*
(JEDI)
(each 20 hours/week). As well as this, they continue to work on their
ongoing research projects in developmental psychology and metascience, and
to train researchers at all career stages in open and reproducible science

------------------------------
MCLS Trainee is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: MCLS 2021
Time: Aug 6, 2021 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://tinyurl.com/MCLS2021

Meeting ID: 225 833 7242
Passcode: MCLS2021
------------------------------

Be sure to mark your calendars for the following upcoming events:
*Thursday, August 12 (9:00-10:00am EST // 2:00-3:00pm BST) *- The interplay
of vocabulary, reading competence and early number concept development:
Linguistic perspectives on early numeracy in South Africa
(Organizer: Hanrie Bezuidenhout)
*Friday, August 20 (WORKSHOP 11am-1pm EST // 4pm-6pm BST)* - Applying for
Academic Jobs: Karina Hamamouche, Mojtaba Soltanlou, Eric Wilkey, (others
TBA)

Thanks so much and we can't wait to see you all again!
The MCLS Conference Organizing Committee