Today is my first ~official~ day as an Assistant Professor at Vassar College so I’ve spent a bit of time reflecting on how I got here. I did an overview of my career path for my friends and family on Instagram but I think there are academic aspects of this story that could be useful to PIs and trainees alike.
I'm going to start at the very beginning - I grew up on a farm. Today my family farms corn, soybeans, and wheat. For most of my life we had a sizeable herd of beef cattle. For many generations, my family has worked as farmers and ranchers and cowboys. I credit this with both my interest in science and my commitment to hard work. In my family, we talked about how plants grow and why we use fertilizers, I watched cows and cats and dogs have babies and grow up. When we asked a question, we were encouraged to explore it even if my parents didn't know the answer. They even let me grow soybeans in their bedroom for a science fair project.
Rebecca and her brother and sister sit at the top of the stairs but outside the cab of a John Deere combine.
My parents didn't graduate from college but it was always clear that they hoped I would. I could go to "whatever college I could get paid for." I don't remember ever being told I couldn't do math or science. I remember plenty of surprise from teachers and other parents that I wanted to continue to math or science when I was the only or one of just a few girls and some skepticism that I would continue to do well but mostly I remember support.
Rebecca standing in front of a large tri-fold style board displaying her science fair project. The title on the board reads “How do Coke products affect your blood sugar?”
After attending some well resourced schools, I finished high school at a small school with a large contingent of Indigenous students and a high percentage of students on free or reduced lunch. There were 100 people in my graduating class so even though I had only been there 3 years, I knew everyone. I tell you this not to say that I came from a disadvantaged background; instead, I tell you this to highlight that opportunity comes in many forms. My high school did not have an AP Bio class, but our biology teacher sacrificed a lot of her personal time to prepare us to take the AP Bio exam. I had teachers who fought to implement or maintain the AP classes we did have. When I qualified for the state science fair and the school didn’t have money budgeted to support us, parents and teachers came together to figure out how to get me and the other qualifiers there.
During high school I worked at a small, hometown pharmacy. Answering the phone, ringing up clients, and stocking the shelves was a great job but it also gave me an application for the biology and chemistry I was learning at school. On slow days the pharmacist would pull out the drug info sheets and we would talk about drug mechanisms of action. I was often surprised at how little we knew about how drugs work.
So when I graduated high school I knew I liked biology and chemistry and it would be cool to learn more about medicines. Off I went to the University of Tulsa to major in biochemistry with the intention of going to pharmacy school.
But once I got to college I had a friend who was working in a biochem research lab and she invited me to come work with her. After a few afternoons in the lab, I was hooked and I have been in the research lab ever since. This happened during my first semester of undergrad, did I really understand everything that was happening? Absolutely not. But Dr. Robert Sheaff was very patient and spent a lot of time outlining experiments and talking with me about how to relate our project to whatever I was learning in class. In fact, I often use lessons as a student with Dr. Sheaff to inform my own mentoring techniques. By junior year I had my own project and was mentoring other students. At the same time I started TAing for Dr. Gordon Purser for a computational based lab course. So as a junior in college I realized I wanted to keep doing research and I wanted to stay in the classroom. When I was choosing college I knew that the small class sizes and the relationships I could develop with faculty seemed like something that would be useful to me but I never could have imagined how important it would be for my career.
Rebecca and her friend Ashley stand in front of a sink while disassembling a SDS-PAGE apparatus.
Rebecca stands in front of a gray wall on which a poster displaying scientific data is hung.
Then, I vividly remember the day Dr. Sheaff said "you know you can get paid to go to graduate school right?" At this point I had been to ACS National meetings and I was well on the way to completing my project so my name could be on a manuscript but I didn’t know how to apply to graduate school, how to move several states away. When I went to my first ACS meeting, it was the first time I had flown since I was a baby. I had been to maybe 7 states in my life, all right around Oklahoma. A lot of time I didn’t really know what I was doing, I just went a long with what my mentors said I needed to do. I absolutely would not have made it to graduate school if it had not been for all of the mentoring and support I received at TU. If you are mentoring a student, don't be afraid to take a student their first year and don't be afraid to take a student to a conference. It might be the thing that changes their life.
After listening to Dr. Sheaff describe graduate school, I decided to apply. I knew I had some solid backup options in Oklahoma so I decided to apply to top PhD programs. I had no idea where to start but Dr. Sheaff had advised us to start with considering where we wanted to live. I saw this an opportunity to try out a new place so I picked the east coast. I applied at schools up and down the eastern seaboard and a few places a little closer to home. But even then, I had a ton of options. At the time I thought I was interested in doing cancer biology research that took a biochemical approach so I looked up the schools with the top cancer biology programs. I also asked my professors for suggestions and considered if there were faculty with projects that sounded interesting. I ended up not applying at the actual top cancer biology programs but programs a little further down the list that were probably a better fit for me. I spent my Thanksgiving break completing applications. I was thrilled to get interviews and then acceptances at most of the schools. I’ll save the whole story of interviewing for another day but I ended up choosing between Vanderbilt and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I truly think both are amazing PhD programs but I am so glad I ended up at UNC. I found a supportive community through the IMSD program, interesting research, and a great place to live.