Dr. Shellie

A comment from a reader:

I am looking for a good PhD research placement for my daughter, Christa, and I am trying to educate myself through the internet. I thought that I would look for female research professors in the life sciences because I thought they might be more sympathetic to a female student in a male dominated field. My daughter will graduate in June with a B.S. in Biochemical engineering and a minor in Biology. She is unsure of where she wants to go (she has a short list). Otherwise her only guideline to me is that she would like to do ‘meaningful’ research. She is also struggling with her cover letter. I think she is too much of a perfectionist when it comes to these kind of things but all of the sites I have seen online stress the importance of this letter. She has also had difficulty in the past securing letters of recommendation from the two researchers that she has worked with in the past; both have moved back to their countries of origin and have become difficult to reach. I think letters of reccomendation should be published on line and accessable to all for all time. Perhaps a secure site for professors and researchers that universities can access with students ID #’s. I feel so helpless in my efforts to help her. What are your reccommendations and what do you look for (or hate) in a cover letter?

 It is tempting to want to do everything you can for your daughter to help her complete her applications. But I would advise you not to try and overmanage the process. A PhD is a long and challenging period of study that requires tremendous determination and focus while working toward a delayed reward. If she wants to get a PhD, she will have to find the seeds of these qualities within herself and work to develop them. The most important thing you can do is to encourage this process. Ask her about the things she likes about biology, about either her classes so far or about her undergraduate research experience. See if you can get her to talk about the things that make her enthusiastic and passionate. Give her supportive feedback, and encourage her to look at different departments and research that might be related to the areas she enjoys. If you have friends or relatives in the cities where the schools she is applying to are located, offer to give her their email or phone number if she wants to ask about life in that part of the country.

When I read cover letters or talk to prospective students, what really impresses me is when (1) they know why they want to pursue a graduate degree and (2) they explain how their experience so far has sparked their interest in a particular area and prepared them for future study. She should not worry too much about exact phrasing, as long as the main points are clear. I read many applications from foreign students whose grammar, spelling, and syntax is not perfect– what I look for is their ability to explain their motivation and experience.

Note, I am in the physical sciences and engineering, not the life sciences. But the same general considerations apply.

As to whether I am more sympathetic to female students than my male colleagues, it is very important to me to encourage the participation of women, minorities, and nontraditional students to science and engineering. I would not go so far as to admit a female student over a more qualified male student (in terms of GPA, research statement, skills, experience, statement of purpose, etc.). However, I do try and take a look an extra look at the applications from female students and make sure they are evaluated fairly and not overlooked in the shuffle. I believe several physical sciences/engineering departments have similar practices to take a "second look" at female and minority candidates to make sure that strongly qualified candidates are admitted.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to make an impact.

First, there’s my research. By now, I’ve written a lot of papers, and people have cited them a fair number of times. So that’s good. But I am surprised by which papers have become popular (=cited more that others). They weren’t necessarily my favorite papers, or the ones that I felt proudest of, or the ones that were most creative or required the most work. I couldn’t have predicted that they’d be popular.

Then, there’s teaching and mentoring. I haven’t done a lot of formal teaching, but I have done a variety of tutoring and volunteering here and there. For a year I tutored Spanish-language GED students. You would think that would be very useful, and yet I’m not sure that any of my students even passed the GED in the end. (Due to the way the class was organized, new students were constantly coming and going, and they had widely varying levels of formal education, making progress difficult.) Quite possibly, the most useful mentoring I’ve done so far only took one hour. A few years back, I ran into a classmate who looked a little down. We got to talking, and it turned out that she was really unhappy in her research group and wanted to switch. I gave her a few tips, and she found a new group. A few weeks ago, she told me that she is planning to graduate this year, and that she didn’t think she’d still be in a PhD program if it hadn’t been for me. I was really touched. I really didn’t do much at all! I just happened to help a tiny bit at exactly the right time.

I like it when I feel like I’ve had an impact on other people’s lives. As an aside, I do wonder sometimes whether that is gendered– why am I not as happy and proud about my paper citations as I am about helping others? Am I too timid to aspire to be a Great Scientist? (The male students writing to ask me for research positions all claim to be aspiring to this goal!)

But anyway, my biggest impact might be the least expected of all. Next week I will be a bone marrow donor. Before you all pat me on the back for my tremendous sacrifice, let me point out that this does not involve giant needles, "spooning" out of marrow, or excruciating pain. Thanks to recent medical advances, all I have to do (more or less) is get a few shots and then donate blood. Through no effort of my own, I happen to have the right genetic makeup to be compatible with my sister’s immune system. And so, right now, my cells might possibly (hopefully) save her life. Pretty dramatic. How’s that for unexpected impact?

I’ve been talking to a bunch of my friends from grad school in the last few weeks, some of whom have switched fields and are in new careers. This was related to the talk I gave a few weeks ago at the university where I did my PhD– I sent out some questions about life after grad school to my friends, and incorporated their answers in the slides for my talk. I got very emotional reading their answers– it was very sad to hear how people described the "heartbreak" of leaving their PhD field to pursue other paths. In my PhD program, going to industry tended to be seen as a failure— the successful route was to be a research professor at a top university. And yet, few alumni achieve "success" by this definition. Just looking at the numbers, it’s impossible. Most people do something else, which should be just fine.

And yet… the transition can be painful. Three years after graduating, even 10 years after graduating, there is still a lot of emotion there– the pain of giving up long-held dreams. One friend said it was like a long and painful breakup– I think it’s more like a divorce. You spend such a long time in grad school, that leaving academia for the "outside world" can be heartbreaking. It’s the only home you’ve known, even if it never seemed like a comfortable one. It makes me sad. I don’t think it has to be this way.

I think that engineering is doing a better job than the sciences in this respect– in engineering, both students and faculty are aware of a wider range of options for life after graduation. But in the pure sciences, it is science, science, science, straight ahead, or else you disappear over a steep cliff. No one seems to have much of an idea what happens outside of academia, particularly the faculty. In my program, doing anything "applied" tended to be sneered at.

These are gross generalizations, of course. Not everyone is clueless. I hope that they will become less and less clueless as time goes on. I hope universities will continue to sponsor career panels and talks by alumni and networking events, more and more. I hope faculty will take increasing pride in all of the different types of success that their students achieve after graduation, not just success in a research career. Bringing in smart, hard-working people, training them in critical thinking, analysis, project planning and execution (for that’s what a PhD teaches), and then making them feel like failures for not being academics afterwards is just plain stupid, and a gigantic waste of talent. And I think it hits the women particularly hard.

I am back from my trip and talk. One woman that I haven’t seen since graduating said that I seemed like a totally new person. I must be happier than when I was a PhD student!

I’m giving a talk next week to the women grad students in my old department about life after grad school.

What do you wish you knew when you were a grad student?

Any interesting comments will go into my talk– speak up!