Kim Dow works at a place called the 
Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
which is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is near Boston. It is a very big place. Almost 700 people work there.
While many of them are astronomers and physicists, computer programmers, science educators, graduate and undergraduate
students, public affairs folks and administrative staff work there too.
Her day starts very early these days (around 5am)! She and her husband have a young daughter and start by getting her ready in the morning. Often she has to take her husband to the airport because he commutes to his job in New York City. When she gets to the office, she usually spends the first part of the morning answering mail, returning phone calls, and going to meetings.
Every day is different. Kim might spend her time working on a research project. (She is interested in studying galaxies and clusters of galaxies in the X-ray part of the electromagnetic spectrum.) These days, however, Kim spends a lot of her time working on education and outreach programs for K-12 and college students. Typically, these programs are funded by the NSF and NASA- so she spends a lot of time writing proposals. Kim thinks it is really exciting when one of her scientific or education proposals gets funded because she has the chance to try to work out a problem or work on an idea that she comes up with on her own or with other colleagues. One of the other things that Kim thinks is neat about being an astronomer and an educator is that she gets to collaborate with people at institutions all over the country and sometimes in other countries. In the evening she spends time with her daughter and husband. Kim is working on her doctorate in education.
