Program Fellow: American Physical Society and American Astronomical Society Civic Science Fellow

Public Engagement and Civic Science Across the Physical Sciences

Host organizations: American Physical Society (Public Engagement) and American Astronomical Society (Education)

Fellowship term: 18 months

Supervisors: Dr. Claudia Fracchiolla, Head of Public Engagement, APS; and Dr. Tom Rice, Director of Education Programs, AAS

Location: Remote, with possible hybrid arrangements for candidates located in the Washington, DC area

Anticipated start date: September 2026

The American Physical Society (APS) and the American Astronomical Society (AAS) seek a Civic Science Fellow to help build and strengthen a network of professional scientific societies committed to advancing civic science and evidence‑based public engagement. This fellowship is made possible through the generous support of the Kavli Foundation and the Rita Allen Foundation.

Public engagement is essential to public trust in science and to the ability of science to serve society. Yet in many scientific fields, it is still treated as optional rather than as a core part of scientific practice. APS and AAS are working to change that by supporting a culture in which public engagement is integrated, valued, rewarded, and resourced as part of what it means to be a scientist.

This is a collaborative fellowship. The Fellow will bring their own expertise, perspective, and professional goals to the role and will help shape the final work plan with APS, AAS, and participating organizations.

The Fellow will help APS and AAS identify, convene, and coordinate a growing network of professional scientific societies. The network will share knowledge, identify gaps and opportunities, and develop practical frameworks that help scientists engage more meaningfully with communities, policymakers, educators, and publics.

The project is grounded in the belief that disciplinary societies are uniquely positioned to shift scientific culture. Scientists often look to their professional societies to set norms and expectations for their fields. By working through these societies, the Fellow will help advance public engagement not as a luxury or add‑on, but as an essential practice of science.

The Fellow will work with APS, AAS, and participating organizations to:

• Build and support a professional society network by convening staff and leaders, supporting communication across organizations, and helping define the network’s purpose, structure, and opportunities for collective action.
• Map the current landscape of public engagement and civic science across relevant professional societies, including existing programs, training models, policy statements, resources, evaluation approaches, and gaps.
• Develop shared resources and frameworks such as guiding principles, case studies, a field‑facing report or white paper, practical tools, or recommendations for how societies can support, evaluate, recognize, and reward public engagement.
• Support civic science programming at APS and AAS, including helping to share learning from APS dialogue‑based public engagement pilots and supporting AAS as it develops a sustainable, evidence‑based, measurably impactful public engagement program for the astronomy community.
• Advance learning and evaluation by helping define success for the network, documenting lessons learned, and identifying approaches that combine qualitative and quantitative evidence of change.

Possible work products may include a landscape scan, shared principles, a white paper or field‑facing report, case studies, a toolkit or recommendations, and a strategy for sustaining the network beyond the fellowship period.

We encourage applications from candidates with a range of backgrounds, including public engagement, civic science, science communication, informal science education, science policy, community engagement, evaluation, sociology of science, science and technology studies, organizational change, or related fields.

We are especially interested in candidates who can bridge across disciplines, organizations, and communities.

A strong candidate may bring experience in several of the…