Annie and Val

 

How did you come to be the director of the Education Outreach program of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at CU-Boulder?

My undergraduate research work as a lab tech analyzing air samples from a Superfund site and studying air quality at Hearst Castle sparked my interest in atmospheric chemistry, which naturally led me to CU Boulder for graduate school.  I didn't apply anywhere else because it was obvious that CIRES and CU Boulder were the natural home for my interests.  I came to Boulder in 1989 to the Chemistry Department, and completed my doctoral work with Dr. Bob Sievers and Dr. Fred Fehsenfeld with the NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory.

 

I had my first child right before my dissertation defense, and my direction changed. After commencement, I started looking for part-time work I could do from home.  Volunteer work led to the formation of the CIRES Outreach program and a paid position.  I became director of the group in 2001. Now I manage a group of eight regular staff plus undergraduate and graduate students, consultants and volunteers.  We focus on professional development for educators in geosciences, partnerships between scientists and educators, and climate education.  I am also the 2012-2013 president of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers.  

How does your work with CIRES help academics trying to balance work and family?

I work with scientists across the career spectrum -- from graduate student through post-doc, mid-career to late career.  People have different priorities to balance at all those stages.  I often work with early-career scientists deciding how to balance career, job mobility, and family decisions and then later help them decide how to balance the demands of the tenure track with family. The teachers with whom I work also have families and demanding work lives to balance.  The members of the CIRES Outreach group fit profiles across the same spectrum of family trajectories.  Everyone, whether raising children or not, has to be intentional with their time and their commitments in order to succeed, make a contribution and retain their health, interests and relationships.  

 

What challenges did you face balancing work and family as a graduate student?

I got married while in graduate school and was pregnant with my first child while writing my dissertation. I had to postpone my defense to avoid having my son too early.  At the time it seemed like a big deal, but it turns out the world doesn't end because you did your defense six months later. I tell the young scientists with whom I work that there is no convenient time to have a baby. You have children when it's time and the chips fall where they may.  Careers change and morph, and different opportunities arise. Smart, reliable smart people will always have opportunity regardless of whether or not they have children. Good employers want to recognize and retain talent. 

 

What challenges do you face balancing family and your current work?

I have had a lot of different work/family situations in my life. I worked part-time until my youngest was three. I separated and divorced soon afterwards, in 2001. I have been a single mom for 12 years, and I now have a wonderful supportive fiancée. In June, I'll have a wonderful supportive husband and five teens.  So, I've seen the entire gamut.  

 

The challenges are always to work when at work, and be home when at home. There are sometimes crunch times when work bleeds over into home, but ideally those become fewer and fewer as you realize what you can actually do.  I tell people there is always more work than a person can do-the question is whether you draw the line before it affects your health and family or after.  There is definitely a line and no one else will draw it for you.

 

What specific issues do graduate students who are starting a family while in school face, and what resources are available to them to protect their rights and support them?

Depending on the culture of your department, people can see you differently when you are pregnant or need to go home to the family after regular business hours.  This is the burden borne by every person who challenges stereotypes of a profession. The best antidote is to use your time well and be productive during your work time. I don't know much about support and rights but every university has people who can help. 

 

What advice do you give or have for female students and professionals who feel faced with a choice between family and their work? How can they best advocate for themselves and their families?

The metaphor I like is that life is like a book with chapters -- you can't read them all at once, and you can't live them all at once.  There are choices between family and some kinds of work; it doesn't work well to both have a newborn and work 70-hour weeks. Choices that are difficult in one phase of family life are very feasible in another. You don't have all the choices at once but no one does. 

 

I also recommend that people seek out work situations where supervisors understand the needs of families. An efficient person who is deliberate with her time, gets the job done, tells me if she is overloaded, and then goes home to take care of herself and her family is a great employee. The best advocacy is seeking out a good situation, being realistic about what you can and can't accomplish, having good communication with your supervisor and having focus during your workday. 

 

Professional societies often have early career development offerings. My own society, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, offers early career development workshops, often including negotiations training. Getting involved with these things is helpful and helps you find employers who will be a good fit for your life. I have also taken the training offered by Kerry Ann Roquemore through the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity. That's a great way to learn how to be productive in ways that get you ahead, manage time and commitments, and make time for yourself and your family. 

 

Can women in grad school and the workplace really have it all? Can we be students and professionals as well as parents?  

It depends on what you mean by "it all".  Yes, women can absolutely be professionals and parents.  Women have been doing that for a long time, whether that's recognized or not, or whether that has been the norm in your discipline or not. See the blog Grandma Got STEM for examples of women academics with families over history.  It is entirely possible to make a significant contribution, raise children and take care of yourself.  It is not possible to do everything at once, whether you have children or not.  When you have children and a busy career, some things will not get done to the highest standards (think housekeeping), some options will not be feasible at every time, there will be times that are not pretty.  I remember a time when I was happy to have stomach flu in the middle of the night because the kids weren't awake -- there's no way that's pretty. But I am happy about the contribution I am making and my kids are doing very well.

Making Science and Family Fit

By Elisabeth Pain

Israeli structural biologist Michal Sharon has made some bold decisions in her young scientific career. After productively using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to study protein structure during a Ph.D., she switched to structural mass spectrometry for her postdoc in the United Kingdom. Upon taking a tenure-track position at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot 3 years ago, she set out to create the first structural mass spectrometry lab in Israel. And when she wrote the proposal that won a European Research Council starting grant, she let her scientific ambition run free, asking herself, "What will I want to investigate ... if money was not a concern?"

 

Sharon believes that many young women with families lack confidence in their abilities -- including their ability to couple a full commitment to science with family life. They "don't know if they are capable of leading a group [or] if they will be able to combine family and career," she says. Sharon -- who had two children before she finished her Ph.D. and has since added a third -- admits that she herself has experienced self-doubt. But time, success, a supportive husband, and excellent role models have encouraged her to be ambitious in her science and at home. "I don't think that science should be done as the result of a sacrifice," she says. Read More