Proposal Preparation Training

Preparing the Community

In November 2019, STScI hosted the inaugural JWST Master Class, an intensive week-long training session for 28 trainers selected from the community at large. These 28 Master Class graduates have received in-depth training on JWST and on the proposal preparation tools, and have been tasked with sharing that knowledge with other scientists by hosting one or more local workshops at their local institutions. This “train-the-trainers” concept in intended to seed the broad community with the know-how to write and submit JWST proposals, providing help during the open Cycle 1 call for proposals period where it will be most effective. Local training events may also help proposers build collaborations spanning a wider range of institutions, large and small.

Workshop-in-a-Box

The Workshop-in-a-Box is a compendium of training and support materials that have been adapted from those used during the JWST Master Class at STScI. These materials can be used for personal training or for organizing your own local proposal planning workshops. Links to the files are provided in the expandable sections below or you can download the entire set of materials in a zipped file. Of course, STScI also provides extensive help in the form of the JWST User Documentation system (JDox) as well as a series of short training videos for ETC, APT, and other resources, which are hosted on the JWST Observer YouTube channel. These materials are not duplicated in the Workshop-in-a-Box materials.

Workshop-in-a-Box: Homework

The files in this folder include basic “getting started” materials that you may find useful as a starting place for you own workshops. In the context of the Master Class, these were assigned to participants prior to coming to the Master Class week. They include:

JWST Documentation and Helpdesk Resources
Understanding JWST Detectors
Understanding and using the ETC
Understanding and using APT for JWST

Where appropriate, answer keys are also provided.

Workshop-in-a-Box: Overview Talks

This folder contains PPTs (or Keynote files) as well as PDFs of the plenary presentations presented during the Master Class. While some of these talks expand on information from the homework (in terms of additional functionality of the tools), these talks were also geared toward explaining some of the “why's” behind the main tools. The PPTs are provided to make it easier to grab certain figures or materials for crafting your own overview talks for local workshops. Webcasts from the Master Class Plenary sessions are also linked below for most of the topics.

Overview of JDox (Bill Blair/Ori Fox)
Overview of JWST Help Desk (Stacey Bright)
Understanding the ETC (Klaus Pontoppidan)
Understanding the APT and APT Overheads (Shelly Meyett and Bill Blair)
Ancillary Tools (Bill Blair)
JWST Policies (Lou Strolger and Amaya Moro-Martin)
How to Teach/Ideas for Communicating Effectively

Workshop-in-a-Box: Takeaways

After the Master Class, we asked the hands-on session coordinators to produce a short set of bulleted “Take Away points” for each topic. Even if you don’t delve into the hands-on materials, you may find these cheat sheets quite helpful:

Workshop-in-a-Box: Hands-on Support Materials

The Master Class included several days of 2- and 4-hour hands-on sessions on various more advanced topics for the participants. Most of this material is too detailed for use in local workshops for a general audience. However, if you or your local participants want a more detailed dive into specific observing modes, you will have these materials to draw on. If you workshop has a general open ‘hack’ session where participants can learn more about specific topics of interest, or if they are actually working on proposal concepts themselves, they may find the exercises and other support materials in the various Hands-on directories of interest.

Level 2 Topic	Instruments & Tools	Tools
High Contrast Imaging (AMI, Coronagraphy)	MIRI, NIRCam, NIRISS	APT, CVT, ETC
IFUs	MIRI, NIRSpec	APT, ETC
Mosaicking with imagers	MIRI, NIRCam	APT, Aladin
NIRSpec MOS	NIRSpec,	APT, ETC, MPT
Solar System Observing with JWST	MIRI, NIRCam, NIRSpec, NIRISS	APT, ETC, MTVT
Specifying Parallel Observations	MIRI, NIRCam, NIRISS	APT, JIST
Time-series Observing (transiting exoplanets)	NIRISS, NIRCam, NIRSpec	APT, ATC, ExoCTK, PandExo
Wide Field Slitless Spectroscopy	NIRCam, NIRISS	APT, ETC

Workshop-in-a-Box: Additional Support Materials

Additional support materials include:

Getting Started Guide: This file was sent to Master Class participants to help them find and load the various software tools they would need for their workshop. You might consider using something like this file to get your participants ready for your workshop.
Master Class logo for use in presentations
Entire set of materials in a zipped file (available to download)

Community Workshops (2020)

Here is the current schedule of upcoming local community workshops. Please check back as information will be updated regularly.

Date	Location	Organizer	Capacity	Comments
1/15	Amherst College, Amherst, MA	Colette Salyk and Kate Follette	50	One-day workshop. Participants are encouraged to contact the organizers with a description of the observing modes they are likely to be interested in.
1/21-22	Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD	David Nataf	40
1/24	Institute for Astronomy Honolulu, HI	Jacqueline Keane		Proposal Planning Astro Coffee Talk at 10:30 a.m.
1/30	Campus MIL, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada	Neil Cook and Loic Albert	40	Webinar
1/30-31	University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada	Jeremy Heyl, Javiera Parada, Ilaria Caiazzo, and Chris Willott	50	Two-day training workshop for experienced and new JWST users. Day 1: We will have an information session on the different JWST instruments, observations modes, and proposal preparation tools. Day 2: We will offer two hands-on sessions to help you get started with your own proposal. Website
1/31	University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX (Peter O'Donnell Jr. Building (POB))	Micaela Bagley, Jasleen Matharu, Rebecca Larson, Taylor Hutchison, and Vicente Estrada-Carpenter	45	Our team will be hosting two all-day workshops, one each in Austin and College Station Website Email organizers Twitter account: @jwst_TXmaster
2/3	University of Chicago, Chicago, IL	Jenny Bergner	30	Full-day workshop
2/4	UC Irvine Beall Applied Innovations, Irvine, CA (Venture Cove B)	Hooshang Nayyeri, Vivian U, and Sabrina Stierwalt	40	Website
2/6	Northwestern University, Evanston, IL	Jenny Bergner	30	Full-day workshop
2/6	UCLA Physics & Astronomy, Los Angeles, CA (Conference Room PAB 4-330)	Xin Wang	40
2/6-7	Gemini Observatory, Hilo, HI (Lecture Hall)	Siyi Xu, Trent Dupuy, Sandy Leggett, Christy Cunningham, Morten Andersen, Hwihyun Kim, Ricardo Salinas, Geoffrey Bower, Klaus Hodapp, John O'Meara, Steve Mairs, Andreea Petric, Mirko Simunovic	60	Website
2/17-18	Instituto de Astronomía, UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico	Aida Wofford, Yilen Gómez Maqueo Chew, and Omaira González Martin	100	Website
2/18 & 2/24	National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), Charlottesville, VA (Auditorium)	Christian Eistrup and Dana Anderson	50	Part 1: Overview & background (2/18) Part 2: Hands-on session (2/24)
2/18-19	Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ	Audrey Martin and Lauren McGraw	100	Two-day workshop
2/19	Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ (Department of Physics and Astronomy)	Grace Telford	40
2/20-21	Arecibo Observatory, Puerto Rico	Estela Fernández-Valenzuela and Mario de Prá	50
2/21	Texas A&M University, College Station, TX (Mitchell Physics Building)	Jasleen Matharu, Micaela Bagley, Taylor Hutchison, Vicente Estrada-Carpenter, Rebecca Larson	40	Our team will be hosting two all-day workshops, one each in Austin and College Station Website Email organizers Twitter account: @jwst_TXmaster
2/27-28	Florida Space Institute, Orlando, FL	Estela Fernández-Valenzuela, Ryan Challener, Charles Schambeau, Christofer Bennett, Theodora Karalidi, and Kerri Donaldson Hanna	110
2/29	Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX	Liliana Rivera Sandoval	35	One-day workshop with a hands-on session. Workshop poster
3/2	Montana State University, Bozeman, MT	Mallory Molina, Zachary Schutte, and Amy Reines	25	One-day workshop: Morning is a general information session and afternoon is hack-day style with parallel sessions based on instrument interest.
3/2-4	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI	Arthur Adams, Michael Meyer, Ke Zhang, and Matthew DeFurio	60	Website
3/6	European South Observatory, Santiago de Chile	Estela Fernández-Valenzuela
3/9 & 3/10	Stanford University, Stanford, CA (Physics & Astronomy Building)	Rebecca Canning	30	We will host two one-day workshops on March 9th and 10th. 30 people will be able to attend in person and a remote participation option will be provided. Email organizer
3/12	University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada	Alexandros Maragkoudakis, Els Peeters, Jan Cami, Collin Matthew Knight, and Ameek Sidhu	30
3/12-13	Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ	Jenny Patience
3/13	University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS	Kevin C. Cooke, Allison Kirkpatrick, and Kristin Rennells	120
3/16	University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ	Irene Shivaei	100
3/17	Institute for Astronomy Honolulu, HI	Jacqueline Keane		JWST Proposal Planning Workshop (10 a.m-4 p.m.)
3/18	Campus MIL, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada (Room A-5502)	Neil Cook, Loic Albert, and Geert Jan Talens	60	Full-day workshop (9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.); two additional smaller workshops will be held later in April Website Email organizer
3/19	University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Catonsville, MD (ILSB Room 116/AB)	Trisha Ashley, Eileen Meyer, Alec Hirschauer, Christopher Clark, Hannah Wakeford, and Joel Green	70	One-day workshop Website
~~3/20-21~~ Cancelled due to campus closure	Brigham Young University, Provo, UT	Denise Stephens	40	Two-day workshop
3/25	University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL	Kedar A. Phadke	40	Email organizer
~~3/25-27~~ Cancelled	Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil	Thiago Goncalves	30
3/30-4/1	Centro de Astronomı́a, Universidad de Antofagasta, Antofagasta, Chile	Jeremy Tregloan-Reed	100	Email organizer
TBD	University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ	Irene Shivaei	100	Q&A session Email organizer
~~4/9~~ Cancelled	Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD (Muller Auditorium)	Trisha Ashley, Eileen Meyer, Alec Hirschauer, Christopher Clark, Hannah Wakeford, and Joel Green	70	Proposal Hack Day Website
TBD	New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM	Denise Stephens	25

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The NASA James Webb Space Telescope, developed in partnership with ESA and CSA, is operated by AURA’s Space Telescope Science Institute.

Proposal Preparation Training

Preparing the Community

Workshop-in-a-Box

Schedule and Materials

Workshop-in-a-Box: Homework

Workshop-in-a-Box: Overview Talks

Workshop-in-a-Box: Takeaways

Workshop-in-a-Box: Hands-on Support Materials

Workshop-in-a-Box: Additional Support Materials

Community Workshops (2020)

training

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