Season 1 |
Bonus Episode 5: How to be build diverse supporting relationships
[00:00:00] RORI: Hey, Emilia, how are you?
[00:00:01] EMILIA: Hi Rori. I mean, super impressed by Sue's story.
[00:00:05] RORI: Okay.
[00:00:06] EMILIA: She has experienced so many things, both not so good and obviously good. Like the thing that happened when she was getting divorced.
[00:00:15] RORI: Oh yeah.
Back in Virginia, when you had to have a reason to divorce your spouse, you couldn't just say like, I, I don't want to be in this relationship.
[00:00:24] EMILIA: Yeah, I mean, that sounds bananas today. She was in a situation where she could lose the custody of her children, which
[00:00:31] RORI: Oh my god, that's the scariest shit.
[00:00:33] EMILIA: Very scary.
[00:00:34] RORI: She represented her own self. She was her own lawyer. She got resources from people she trusted, and she made it happen. Sue Rosser, force of nature.
Welcome back to Science Wise. Emilia and I are here today talking about our top three take home lessons from our conversation with Dr. Sue Rosser.
[00:00:58] EMILIA: So, what was the first take home lesson for you?
[00:01:00] RORI: I would say that it is so important to build relationships with people who share your identities and experiences. And I'm getting this because, you know, Sue was talking about that consciousness raising group that she was a part of back in grad school and postdoc back in Wisconsin.
That group completely changed her life. Just talking with other women who were in academia and in science, she came to realize what their shared experiences were. So, for example, she was like, sexual harassment wasn't even a phrase. But by talking with each other, they realized that they were all being sexually harassed at work.
And they also realized it wasn't their fault. They were like, oh, it's not because of the skirt I wore or whatever. This is bullshit and none of us should need to put up with it. It
[00:01:45] EMILIA: was definitely helpful in affirming that they were not doing anything wrong. And I guess it's sad that it was happening to all of them.
[00:01:53] RORI: It's wild! It's wild to think that sexual harassment was so normative back then.
[00:01:58] EMILIA: You know, grabbing and touching and probably really inappropriate comments. I'm glad that that has changed. One of the things she talked about, and I guess it's one of the things In the way that you connected with her in the first place?
[00:02:09] RORI: Mm-Hmm.
[00:02:10] EMILIA: is by talking about how she had an experience where she did some statistical analysis and she was only going to be acknowledged for that. And she didn't feel good about that. You know, she thought she deserve more and so she went to this group of women and she got some counsel and I thought it was interesting. And some of them were, yeah, you should get authorship, but there were also some women who advised her not to fight that battle.
[00:02:39] RORI: They were like, don't rock the boat. It's going to get you in trouble. This is a powerful person.
[00:02:43] EMILIA: They probably had bad experiences in the past, and that's why they felt this way.
But you know, she weighted the pros and the cons, and then she decided that she needed to Confront her supervisor and say, I think I deserve more than just an acknowledgement. That took a lot of guts. It was, it was a scary thing to do.
[00:03:04] RORI: It did take guts. She like developed her guts from this consciousness raising group, from like talking to these other women and getting their validation.
Even the people who advised her against confronting him, they all knew it was wrong. It was clear.
[00:03:18] EMILIA: Yeah. And at the same time, I think she also influenced. her PI or her supervisor, right? That this could be done that, yeah, I guess you did some things like he recognized that that was okay. Even though the status quo was to just people or women, probably just acknowledgements.
[00:03:35] RORI: Thank you, Sue. A little extra labor that she was doing there, but I think this consciousness raising group changed her even beyond that. Through that, she started thinking about and understanding her own body more. She started getting into women's health and like teaching these women health classes and that opened professional doors for her too.
Like then she saw the job at Mary Baldwin, which is a liberal arts women's college. And she was like, yeah, I want to, I can do that. I can go and bring women's studies.
[00:04:03] EMILIA: So it was important for her to raise awareness and develop these courses where women and their biology was like the main topic.
[00:04:12] RORI: Wildly popular courses that changed the college, it sounds like.
And then I'm, well, I mean, I'm going on a little bit now, but like, because she was in that consciousness raising group, she was like, yes, I want to be at a woman's college. Her feminism got really well developed. And then, when she was at the Women's College, you know, in that environment, she like, met her love, she came out as a lesbian, and then she found even more community.
Then she was in this kind of lesbian academic network between Mary Baldwin and other colleges within Virginia, which by the way, I would like to sign up for the lesbian academic network. Emilia, if you know who's running that, can you please? Like, put my name on their list.
[00:04:51] EMILIA: Noted, Rori.
[00:04:52] RORI: Thank you. Any listeners, you too, can put my name on the list for the Lesbian Academic Network.
And that too, was this network that like, buoyed her up. It was like, a hostile environment
back then, right?
[00:05:02] EMILIA: And I mean, the administration told her, like, she knew that if that It came out that she was a lesbian. They were not gonna have her back and, and support her in any way.
[00:05:13] RORI: Yikes, right? I was honestly shocked when she was like, Oh yeah, lesbian culture in southern Virginia in the 80s and 90s was great.
I was like, dang, like it's because of those relationships that it was great. Mutually supportive feminism for the win, really. Okay, Emilia, what is your take home lesson
number two?
[00:05:33] EMILIA: Another lesson for me is to not be afraid to think big. She was really successful at this women's college and then she knew that she wanted more.
Um, and so she went to University of South Carolina and she saw the potential. She wanted to work with a bunch of campuses and expand her research.
[00:05:54] RORI: I think she said it was almost like she had a laboratory of multiple campuses. I'm like, what? What a jump and what a way to think big. You're going from teaching like classes at a small liberal arts university to being like using campuses as your laboratory.
Like that is so bold.
[00:06:09] EMILIA: And she was the founding director of women's studies. I always wonder, like, that's like a big jump from where she was to this, right? Like she, she gained so much responsibility and had. a lot more power at the same time and more resources. And so I think we asked her, like, you know, what was it ambition?
Why did you want to do all these things? And she said it was necessity, right? She was a head winner. She did not want her children to feel limited. by money. So she did all the things that she needed to do. And of course, along the way, she was able to also reduce misogyny in academia and science.
[00:06:49] RORI: She saw all of these as necessities.
I think she felt like she could not continue to exist in academia as it stood. So like, reducing misogyny was like, she's got to make it happen in order to stay in. I guess it's kind of a little bit of a lesson that, uh, you know, if you feel like you must accomplish something, then you can identify the resources you need, get them, and make it happen.
[00:07:12] EMILIA: I think sometimes we want to make changes, but it's really difficult to do so because there's no resources, or there's other external things working against you.
[00:07:22] RORI: There's a feasibility question in there too, but let's move on to the third one.
[00:07:27] EMILIA: What's the last lesson, Rori, for you?
[00:07:29] RORI: This is kind of like broadly stated.
To prepare for a career transition, get mentorship to know what is possible. And she was talking about this particularly for faculty negotiations, because as dean and as provost, she did a lot of negotiating with new faculty hires, but I think it's broadly applicable that it's important to get mentorship to establish your Expectations before your next step, before you do something that you don't have experience in.
[00:07:54] EMILIA: And this could be going from being an undergraduate to a grad student or from grad student postdoc or postdoc to assistant professor. Any change. You need to find people that can answer questions. that you may have and can also tell you about the things that you haven't thought about.
[00:08:12] RORI: I have a question, Emilia.
When you're saying somebody who has more experience than you and can tell you about things you haven't thought about, so this is like a mentor, and I'm curious, when did you figure out what it means?
[00:08:24] EMILIA: That's an interesting question, Rori, because when I was a grad student, I used to go to all these talks and they would say, you need to find a mentor.
I thought mentor meant. Somebody who, who would be there for you when you needed them. Somebody who would be advocating for you behind closed doors. Somebody who was always fighting for you out there. I don't believe that now.
[00:08:45] RORI: So now you don't think that, but this is like this kind of like mentorship mystique.
Right? The idea that your mentor is perhaps a somewhat magical person who can anticipate your needs and just steer you in just the right way. And they are like 100 percent committed. They're meeting with you three times a week or something.
[00:09:04] EMILIA: Yeah. Or like our minds are somehow aligned, like they know what I want.
[00:09:08] RORI: Yeah, totally.
[00:09:09] EMILIA: And to me, it seemed like an impossible person to find. How was I going to find a person or a mentor that would be willing to help me?
[00:09:16] RORI: And convince them, be like, would you, would you be my mentor? Would you do all of this?
[00:09:22] EMILIA: Yeah, in theory, I suppose a mentor could do all those things, but I think in reality, what a mentor is, is somebody who knows more than you. and somebody who has more experience and somebody that can answer questions that you may have about something that you're struggling with.
[00:09:42] RORI: You want to learn a new technique like you. Yeah, I've never done an analysis and you need to figure out how to do it.
[00:09:47] EMILIA: Exactly. So a mentor could just be somebody who can, you know, help with that or steer you in the right direction.
They don't have to do it for you, but they can give you some information.
[00:09:57] RORI: Yeah. I mean, emilia. You and I both did this, this training called the Faculty Success Program through the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, the NCFDD, and in that
[00:10:10] EMILIA: Which, which I, I recommend if anybody wants to do it.
[00:10:13] RORI: I totally recommend. NCFDD is the way to develop professionally as an academic and to not like break your head at the same time. But in it, they have clarity about, about, about Mentorship, which is kind of as you've described it. And they also have this clarity that like when you want a mentor in something, you can identify somebody who has the skills or the experiences that you want, and you just start asking them for help.
[00:10:39] EMILIA: Or if you're a grad student who's writing an application for a fellowship, You ask people for what they wrote for the fellowship, or they can share documents with you where you can see an example of, of what they did.
[00:10:53] RORI: And it's kind of like if that person who you're asking, if they don't like blow you off or act like an asshole, then they're your mentor.
Some mentors might know you very well, they might know you intimately, but some really don't. Some mentors you might speak with frequently and some you might speak with very infrequently.
[00:11:08] EMILIA: And I think you're going to need mentors always, new mentors. So it doesn't have to be like a high stakes relationship.
[00:11:16] RORI: Yep, it can be simple. Well, Emilia, you are one of my mentors. You know I ask you questions. I'm all like, what's happening, Emilia? I'm like, I'm in this position. What do I say?
[00:11:27] EMILIA: Yes, Rori is also one of my mentors. And she gets to read my stuff all the time, even if it's not fun for her.
[00:11:34] RORI: Oh, but it is. Please, Emilia.
Okay, Emilia and all of the listeners, we'll sign off now and we'll catch you next time.
[00:11:43] EMILIA: Until next time, ciao!
[00:00:01] EMILIA: Hi Rori. I mean, super impressed by Sue's story.
[00:00:05] RORI: Okay.
[00:00:06] EMILIA: She has experienced so many things, both not so good and obviously good. Like the thing that happened when she was getting divorced.
[00:00:15] RORI: Oh yeah.
Back in Virginia, when you had to have a reason to divorce your spouse, you couldn't just say like, I, I don't want to be in this relationship.
[00:00:24] EMILIA: Yeah, I mean, that sounds bananas today. She was in a situation where she could lose the custody of her children, which
[00:00:31] RORI: Oh my god, that's the scariest shit.
[00:00:33] EMILIA: Very scary.
[00:00:34] RORI: She represented her own self. She was her own lawyer. She got resources from people she trusted, and she made it happen. Sue Rosser, force of nature.
Welcome back to Science Wise. Emilia and I are here today talking about our top three take home lessons from our conversation with Dr. Sue Rosser.
[00:00:58] EMILIA: So, what was the first take home lesson for you?
[00:01:00] RORI: I would say that it is so important to build relationships with people who share your identities and experiences. And I'm getting this because, you know, Sue was talking about that consciousness raising group that she was a part of back in grad school and postdoc back in Wisconsin.
That group completely changed her life. Just talking with other women who were in academia and in science, she came to realize what their shared experiences were. So, for example, she was like, sexual harassment wasn't even a phrase. But by talking with each other, they realized that they were all being sexually harassed at work.
And they also realized it wasn't their fault. They were like, oh, it's not because of the skirt I wore or whatever. This is bullshit and none of us should need to put up with it. It
[00:01:45] EMILIA: was definitely helpful in affirming that they were not doing anything wrong. And I guess it's sad that it was happening to all of them.
[00:01:53] RORI: It's wild! It's wild to think that sexual harassment was so normative back then.
[00:01:58] EMILIA: You know, grabbing and touching and probably really inappropriate comments. I'm glad that that has changed. One of the things she talked about, and I guess it's one of the things In the way that you connected with her in the first place?
[00:02:09] RORI: Mm-Hmm.
[00:02:10] EMILIA: is by talking about how she had an experience where she did some statistical analysis and she was only going to be acknowledged for that. And she didn't feel good about that. You know, she thought she deserve more and so she went to this group of women and she got some counsel and I thought it was interesting. And some of them were, yeah, you should get authorship, but there were also some women who advised her not to fight that battle.
[00:02:39] RORI: They were like, don't rock the boat. It's going to get you in trouble. This is a powerful person.
[00:02:43] EMILIA: They probably had bad experiences in the past, and that's why they felt this way.
But you know, she weighted the pros and the cons, and then she decided that she needed to Confront her supervisor and say, I think I deserve more than just an acknowledgement. That took a lot of guts. It was, it was a scary thing to do.
[00:03:04] RORI: It did take guts. She like developed her guts from this consciousness raising group, from like talking to these other women and getting their validation.
Even the people who advised her against confronting him, they all knew it was wrong. It was clear.
[00:03:18] EMILIA: Yeah. And at the same time, I think she also influenced. her PI or her supervisor, right? That this could be done that, yeah, I guess you did some things like he recognized that that was okay. Even though the status quo was to just people or women, probably just acknowledgements.
[00:03:35] RORI: Thank you, Sue. A little extra labor that she was doing there, but I think this consciousness raising group changed her even beyond that. Through that, she started thinking about and understanding her own body more. She started getting into women's health and like teaching these women health classes and that opened professional doors for her too.
Like then she saw the job at Mary Baldwin, which is a liberal arts women's college. And she was like, yeah, I want to, I can do that. I can go and bring women's studies.
[00:04:03] EMILIA: So it was important for her to raise awareness and develop these courses where women and their biology was like the main topic.
[00:04:12] RORI: Wildly popular courses that changed the college, it sounds like.
And then I'm, well, I mean, I'm going on a little bit now, but like, because she was in that consciousness raising group, she was like, yes, I want to be at a woman's college. Her feminism got really well developed. And then, when she was at the Women's College, you know, in that environment, she like, met her love, she came out as a lesbian, and then she found even more community.
Then she was in this kind of lesbian academic network between Mary Baldwin and other colleges within Virginia, which by the way, I would like to sign up for the lesbian academic network. Emilia, if you know who's running that, can you please? Like, put my name on their list.
[00:04:51] EMILIA: Noted, Rori.
[00:04:52] RORI: Thank you. Any listeners, you too, can put my name on the list for the Lesbian Academic Network.
And that too, was this network that like, buoyed her up. It was like, a hostile environment
back then, right?
[00:05:02] EMILIA: And I mean, the administration told her, like, she knew that if that It came out that she was a lesbian. They were not gonna have her back and, and support her in any way.
[00:05:13] RORI: Yikes, right? I was honestly shocked when she was like, Oh yeah, lesbian culture in southern Virginia in the 80s and 90s was great.
I was like, dang, like it's because of those relationships that it was great. Mutually supportive feminism for the win, really. Okay, Emilia, what is your take home lesson
number two?
[00:05:33] EMILIA: Another lesson for me is to not be afraid to think big. She was really successful at this women's college and then she knew that she wanted more.
Um, and so she went to University of South Carolina and she saw the potential. She wanted to work with a bunch of campuses and expand her research.
[00:05:54] RORI: I think she said it was almost like she had a laboratory of multiple campuses. I'm like, what? What a jump and what a way to think big. You're going from teaching like classes at a small liberal arts university to being like using campuses as your laboratory.
Like that is so bold.
[00:06:09] EMILIA: And she was the founding director of women's studies. I always wonder, like, that's like a big jump from where she was to this, right? Like she, she gained so much responsibility and had. a lot more power at the same time and more resources. And so I think we asked her, like, you know, what was it ambition?
Why did you want to do all these things? And she said it was necessity, right? She was a head winner. She did not want her children to feel limited. by money. So she did all the things that she needed to do. And of course, along the way, she was able to also reduce misogyny in academia and science.
[00:06:49] RORI: She saw all of these as necessities.
I think she felt like she could not continue to exist in academia as it stood. So like, reducing misogyny was like, she's got to make it happen in order to stay in. I guess it's kind of a little bit of a lesson that, uh, you know, if you feel like you must accomplish something, then you can identify the resources you need, get them, and make it happen.
[00:07:12] EMILIA: I think sometimes we want to make changes, but it's really difficult to do so because there's no resources, or there's other external things working against you.
[00:07:22] RORI: There's a feasibility question in there too, but let's move on to the third one.
[00:07:27] EMILIA: What's the last lesson, Rori, for you?
[00:07:29] RORI: This is kind of like broadly stated.
To prepare for a career transition, get mentorship to know what is possible. And she was talking about this particularly for faculty negotiations, because as dean and as provost, she did a lot of negotiating with new faculty hires, but I think it's broadly applicable that it's important to get mentorship to establish your Expectations before your next step, before you do something that you don't have experience in.
[00:07:54] EMILIA: And this could be going from being an undergraduate to a grad student or from grad student postdoc or postdoc to assistant professor. Any change. You need to find people that can answer questions. that you may have and can also tell you about the things that you haven't thought about.
[00:08:12] RORI: I have a question, Emilia.
When you're saying somebody who has more experience than you and can tell you about things you haven't thought about, so this is like a mentor, and I'm curious, when did you figure out what it means?
[00:08:24] EMILIA: That's an interesting question, Rori, because when I was a grad student, I used to go to all these talks and they would say, you need to find a mentor.
I thought mentor meant. Somebody who, who would be there for you when you needed them. Somebody who would be advocating for you behind closed doors. Somebody who was always fighting for you out there. I don't believe that now.
[00:08:45] RORI: So now you don't think that, but this is like this kind of like mentorship mystique.
Right? The idea that your mentor is perhaps a somewhat magical person who can anticipate your needs and just steer you in just the right way. And they are like 100 percent committed. They're meeting with you three times a week or something.
[00:09:04] EMILIA: Yeah. Or like our minds are somehow aligned, like they know what I want.
[00:09:08] RORI: Yeah, totally.
[00:09:09] EMILIA: And to me, it seemed like an impossible person to find. How was I going to find a person or a mentor that would be willing to help me?
[00:09:16] RORI: And convince them, be like, would you, would you be my mentor? Would you do all of this?
[00:09:22] EMILIA: Yeah, in theory, I suppose a mentor could do all those things, but I think in reality, what a mentor is, is somebody who knows more than you. and somebody who has more experience and somebody that can answer questions that you may have about something that you're struggling with.
[00:09:42] RORI: You want to learn a new technique like you. Yeah, I've never done an analysis and you need to figure out how to do it.
[00:09:47] EMILIA: Exactly. So a mentor could just be somebody who can, you know, help with that or steer you in the right direction.
They don't have to do it for you, but they can give you some information.
[00:09:57] RORI: Yeah. I mean, emilia. You and I both did this, this training called the Faculty Success Program through the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, the NCFDD, and in that
[00:10:10] EMILIA: Which, which I, I recommend if anybody wants to do it.
[00:10:13] RORI: I totally recommend. NCFDD is the way to develop professionally as an academic and to not like break your head at the same time. But in it, they have clarity about, about, about Mentorship, which is kind of as you've described it. And they also have this clarity that like when you want a mentor in something, you can identify somebody who has the skills or the experiences that you want, and you just start asking them for help.
[00:10:39] EMILIA: Or if you're a grad student who's writing an application for a fellowship, You ask people for what they wrote for the fellowship, or they can share documents with you where you can see an example of, of what they did.
[00:10:53] RORI: And it's kind of like if that person who you're asking, if they don't like blow you off or act like an asshole, then they're your mentor.
Some mentors might know you very well, they might know you intimately, but some really don't. Some mentors you might speak with frequently and some you might speak with very infrequently.
[00:11:08] EMILIA: And I think you're going to need mentors always, new mentors. So it doesn't have to be like a high stakes relationship.
[00:11:16] RORI: Yep, it can be simple. Well, Emilia, you are one of my mentors. You know I ask you questions. I'm all like, what's happening, Emilia? I'm like, I'm in this position. What do I say?
[00:11:27] EMILIA: Yes, Rori is also one of my mentors. And she gets to read my stuff all the time, even if it's not fun for her.
[00:11:34] RORI: Oh, but it is. Please, Emilia.
Okay, Emilia and all of the listeners, we'll sign off now and we'll catch you next time.
[00:11:43] EMILIA: Until next time, ciao!