Nebraska, at length
Jul. 29th, 2012 08:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebeccmeisterThis is mostly notes for my own sake, but of course there may be some who are interested in listening in because I'll touch on a number of topics relevant to those of us who work in academia.
You know how I keep bringing up the whole topic of spending my time thinking about what I'd like to do in the future? In that respect, this trip to Nebraska was a rich experience. My host there, T, was a huge help in that regard. He's really an amazing scientist in a lot of ways, although he's also the sort of person who is highly critical of people who do sloppy work and isn't shy about letting them know that, so he told me a number of stories about the consequences of doing that. The thing I'm coming to appreciate about him is that he is very straightforward about things. For example, he pointed out that I should be developing a long-term research plan for myself (an overarching theme), and that I'll have a higher probability of long-term success if I can clearly identify where my work and this plan fit in among the different specialties in biology.
Of course, his comments are based out of his own experience, where he spent time thinking about the kinds of things he likes to do (understand mechanisms) and then figured out where he could put that interest to work to address important and fundamental questions in biology. His thinking and the thinking of my advisor in Texas produced the grant I'm working on, and he's right that it's satisfying to do this type of work. That also highlights an aspect of my work that I've struggled with - figuring out and communicating why and how my research is important. Actually, many of the key contributions are important for similar reasons as with the cricket work - I've taken a step back to actually test and measure ideas that others have mostly just speculated about or studied in poorly-designed experiments.
Anyway, that was a background component of our conversations there, which happened over the course of the days of my visit. It was part of an overall message of encouragement, and I'm kind of amazed to observe how effective this approach is. It also shows up in the atmosphere in his lab, where he has a pretty large team of undergraduates working away at the physiological aspects of this grant project.
While I was there, T also had me go to meet with a couple of other faculty members there. I should start by saying that my overall impression of the department was that it mirrored the department in ASU somehow. I can't explain it exactly, but from walking around I just got the feeling that the faculty generally like each other and work well together. It also seemed like an environment that would be especially encouraging for women and parents, as partially evidenced by the presence of space for breastfeeding within the building. One of the really great people that T had me meet with was E, who told me quite a bit about her experiences in getting established at UNL.
She actually started a tenure-track position at my brother's alma mater, UC,B (my brother began grad school at UT,A, but then his advisor transferred after a year and my brother went with him). The two of them were on the same floor, and I think had some interaction because she was basically the only person holding lab meetings out of the faculty there. Anyway, she has the "two-body problem" - she and her husband got married while she was starting out at UC,B, and so he wound up finding a job at SFSU. But after about a year, he came to realize that he hated it there, so he started to look around again for other opportunities. It sounds like the search was pretty intense; she turned down something on the order of 15 different job offers because things just weren't right, before they were finally able to work things out with UNL. And all evidence suggests that she's been happy at UNL.
At the same time, some aspects of the ways she has done things have been pretty crazy, something she freely admits. She had her first kid ten days after she arrived in Lincoln, before the house was unpacked and before she'd had a chance to figure out hospitals or any of those details. After that, she faced the decision of what to do for childcare, and wound up deciding to bring her daughter in to her office with her while she worked. She said that nobody really ever said anything to her about that, despite the fact that she brought her kid to meetings and seminars and such. That, right there, is actually a huge thing to me, because it suggests that the people working in that department are supportive of each other as human beings. In reading about inequality in the workplace, I've repeatedly read that when women push for an improvement of something in a traditionally male-dominated workplace, both men and women wind up benefiting from the change. This is especially true of family-friendly practices.
In contrast, the academic environment at A&M still feels chillingly male-dominated. I can't always put my finger on what bothers me about it, but it doesn't feel as welcoming, and I think that has caused my work to suffer. I read an article recently that seemed helpful for pinpointing part of what I've been experiencing here. Say what you will about it all, but the findings that were reported from this study have resonated with my experience. Many of the things that people do that affect a workplace environment are completely subconscious, so I don't think that the stuff happening at A&M is at all intentional. Still, it's frustrating to suffer the side-effects.
So, in addition to spending this snippet of time in a much more supportive environment, I've got my work cut out for me to make the place where I currently reside a better place to be. There are parallels with things I identified in Phoenix as being less than ideal (bicycling there); as soon as I figure out what's not working as well as it should, and what I can do to change those things, it's time to take action. Out here, it's time to gather together more supportive mentoring resources for grad students, postdocs, and faculty, and time to encourage more in-depth conversations about work-life integration.
I won't be here for forever, or even for very long. And there are a lot of other things I need to get done while I'm here. But if I'm unhappy at a fundamental level, and have a chance to figure out why and what I can change to make things better, I am compelled (inspired?) to act.
Oh, and this is just one component of what happened over the course of the visit. There was also a lot of delicious cheese enjoyed out on the farmstead porch, time spent with awesome chickens and a happy-go-lucky dog, and of course time spent working away at this cricket project. Good strides were made on the work, too.
You know how I keep bringing up the whole topic of spending my time thinking about what I'd like to do in the future? In that respect, this trip to Nebraska was a rich experience. My host there, T, was a huge help in that regard. He's really an amazing scientist in a lot of ways, although he's also the sort of person who is highly critical of people who do sloppy work and isn't shy about letting them know that, so he told me a number of stories about the consequences of doing that. The thing I'm coming to appreciate about him is that he is very straightforward about things. For example, he pointed out that I should be developing a long-term research plan for myself (an overarching theme), and that I'll have a higher probability of long-term success if I can clearly identify where my work and this plan fit in among the different specialties in biology.
Of course, his comments are based out of his own experience, where he spent time thinking about the kinds of things he likes to do (understand mechanisms) and then figured out where he could put that interest to work to address important and fundamental questions in biology. His thinking and the thinking of my advisor in Texas produced the grant I'm working on, and he's right that it's satisfying to do this type of work. That also highlights an aspect of my work that I've struggled with - figuring out and communicating why and how my research is important. Actually, many of the key contributions are important for similar reasons as with the cricket work - I've taken a step back to actually test and measure ideas that others have mostly just speculated about or studied in poorly-designed experiments.
Anyway, that was a background component of our conversations there, which happened over the course of the days of my visit. It was part of an overall message of encouragement, and I'm kind of amazed to observe how effective this approach is. It also shows up in the atmosphere in his lab, where he has a pretty large team of undergraduates working away at the physiological aspects of this grant project.
While I was there, T also had me go to meet with a couple of other faculty members there. I should start by saying that my overall impression of the department was that it mirrored the department in ASU somehow. I can't explain it exactly, but from walking around I just got the feeling that the faculty generally like each other and work well together. It also seemed like an environment that would be especially encouraging for women and parents, as partially evidenced by the presence of space for breastfeeding within the building. One of the really great people that T had me meet with was E, who told me quite a bit about her experiences in getting established at UNL.
She actually started a tenure-track position at my brother's alma mater, UC,B (my brother began grad school at UT,A, but then his advisor transferred after a year and my brother went with him). The two of them were on the same floor, and I think had some interaction because she was basically the only person holding lab meetings out of the faculty there. Anyway, she has the "two-body problem" - she and her husband got married while she was starting out at UC,B, and so he wound up finding a job at SFSU. But after about a year, he came to realize that he hated it there, so he started to look around again for other opportunities. It sounds like the search was pretty intense; she turned down something on the order of 15 different job offers because things just weren't right, before they were finally able to work things out with UNL. And all evidence suggests that she's been happy at UNL.
At the same time, some aspects of the ways she has done things have been pretty crazy, something she freely admits. She had her first kid ten days after she arrived in Lincoln, before the house was unpacked and before she'd had a chance to figure out hospitals or any of those details. After that, she faced the decision of what to do for childcare, and wound up deciding to bring her daughter in to her office with her while she worked. She said that nobody really ever said anything to her about that, despite the fact that she brought her kid to meetings and seminars and such. That, right there, is actually a huge thing to me, because it suggests that the people working in that department are supportive of each other as human beings. In reading about inequality in the workplace, I've repeatedly read that when women push for an improvement of something in a traditionally male-dominated workplace, both men and women wind up benefiting from the change. This is especially true of family-friendly practices.
In contrast, the academic environment at A&M still feels chillingly male-dominated. I can't always put my finger on what bothers me about it, but it doesn't feel as welcoming, and I think that has caused my work to suffer. I read an article recently that seemed helpful for pinpointing part of what I've been experiencing here. Say what you will about it all, but the findings that were reported from this study have resonated with my experience. Many of the things that people do that affect a workplace environment are completely subconscious, so I don't think that the stuff happening at A&M is at all intentional. Still, it's frustrating to suffer the side-effects.
So, in addition to spending this snippet of time in a much more supportive environment, I've got my work cut out for me to make the place where I currently reside a better place to be. There are parallels with things I identified in Phoenix as being less than ideal (bicycling there); as soon as I figure out what's not working as well as it should, and what I can do to change those things, it's time to take action. Out here, it's time to gather together more supportive mentoring resources for grad students, postdocs, and faculty, and time to encourage more in-depth conversations about work-life integration.
I won't be here for forever, or even for very long. And there are a lot of other things I need to get done while I'm here. But if I'm unhappy at a fundamental level, and have a chance to figure out why and what I can change to make things better, I am compelled (inspired?) to act.
Oh, and this is just one component of what happened over the course of the visit. There was also a lot of delicious cheese enjoyed out on the farmstead porch, time spent with awesome chickens and a happy-go-lucky dog, and of course time spent working away at this cricket project. Good strides were made on the work, too.
