Careers beyond the ivory tower

Thank you for the initial Physics Today Annual Careers Issue in October 2019. As someone who earned a PhD in oceanography more than 20 years ago but chose to pursue a career outside the traditional academic track, I’ve long been an advocate of educating students at all levels about the myriad career options available to them other than professorships.

The issue features a range of professional opportunities such as those Elizabeth Frank mentions in her commentary (page 10) and physicists working at Boeing . I especially enjoyed the article “The road taken ” (page 32), by Anne Marie Porter and Susan White and found its figure 4, showing movement between first and current job sectors, particularly interesting.

It’s worth noting, though, that of 43 job postings in that issue, 31 were for tenure-track academic positions. Only eight were for the industrial sector: seven in a single large project (the Thirty Meter Telescope) and one at the American Institute of Physics itself, which publishes Physics Today. The others were for government or graduate-student fellowships.

In a special issue devoted to careers in the physical sciences, perhaps AIP could have solicited more nontraditional job postings. It would be a great encouragement and help to those seeking nonacademic opportunities. Other than that, this was the most practical and useful issue of Physics Today that I’ve read in quite some time.