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Paper short abstract

We share interviews of the LSST Discovery Alliance Catalyst Postdoctoral Fellowship community(astrophysicists/computer scientists/social scientists) with a focus on mentoring. We assess effectiveness of advancing inclusivity of diverse workers using Community of Practice and Standpoint frameworks.

Paper long abstract

This qualitative study of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Rubin Observatory community highlights mentoring and mentoring relationships. Of interest is the new LSST-Discovery Alliance Catalyst Postdoctoral Fellowship – created to build a cohort of early career researchers prepared to use the data when released in 2026. Using targeted sampling, we conducted over 33 interviews in 2025-2026. These interviews with the fourteen postdoctoral fellows, their mentors, and beyond to other community members. How the postdocs are mentored is an innovative aspect of the Catalyst fellowship, with each postdoc having a committee of five mentors – with a supervisor at the same institution and the other mentors are interdisciplinary and distributed worldwide.

Interview participants reflect on their sense of belonging, scientific collaborations, aspirations, and mentoring experiences with the goal of advancing our understanding of program impacts, broader significance of knowledge exchange, and early career socialization. Interviewees were from all economic classes, international and American, and embodied other intersectional identities. Our analyses should enable us to identify patterns grouped by economic class, gender, ethnicity and ableness. This detailed exploration provides insights into the effectiveness and challenges of the LSST Catalyst Fellowship program for advancing inclusivity and diversity within astrophysics through mentoring using both Standpoint and Community of Practice frameworks. The intersection of these frameworks help to understand that knowledge is situated and to intentionally allow communities that elevate marginalized perspectives to create more equitable and effective practices.