Introducing my “Career Day” series, where I connect with professionals in various fields to share their college and career experience to help high school students considering similar paths. Here, for the STEM edition, I speak with a surgeon, a veterinarian, an environmentalist, a neuroscientist, and an engineer.
If one spends enough time in the education business, one can’t help but hear the acronym STEM. I have to admit, I’ve always hated this term, but that might be because I triple majored in English, history, and philosophy, and avoided science, technology, engineering, and math like the proverbial plague. I actually once spent a year teaching a class in Algebra I under some very strange circumstances, and did a great deal of work with students on the math sections of the SAT and ACT, but no one has ever suggested that I pursue a career in the sciences.
With that in mind, for this post, I’ve reached out to a number of friends with careers in various areas of STEM to ask about their experiences. I found the experience singularly (SAT word) interesting, and I hope that students whose interest is more in the sciences than the humanities will find what they have to say helpful as they consider a variety of possibilities for their futures.
Becoming a Surgeon: A Conversation with Dr. Melissa Herrin, M.D.
Dr. Melissa Herrin
I’ll start with my best friend in the entire world, Dr. Melissa Herrin, M.D. We’ve known each other for over twenty years, and I was privileged to serve in her wedding party, in which I think I was the odd-man out as the only non-doctor in the whole group.
She attended Stanford University as an undergraduate, where she was a Division I athlete, matriculated to Yale University Medical School, and is now a cardio-thoracic surgeon at the University of Washington. I think I can safely say she has the best pedigree of anyone I know. But, her own words are more compelling than anything I could write.
Dr. Herrin’s interest began in high school.
For some reason I was always drawn to anatomy and physiology in school. Medicine offered a marriage between art and mechanics, between the rules of physics and chemistry and a certain degree of magic — a lot about human function and disease still seems to defy explanation. When I was fifteen, I was fortunate to be able to shadow my uncle, a cardiologist, and watch a coronary artery bypass surgery. I can't quite identify why, but I found the heart very beautiful and compelling. There was something breathtaking about how it began beating again on its own when reperfused following surgery. It sounds cheesy, but I still get misty eyed holding a beating heart in my hands.
While studying at Stanford University, Dr. Herrin balanced pre-med coursework with being a student-athlete.
I found my undergraduate pre-med coursework very challenging, particularly in the setting of being an athlete and trying to compete with my classmates, most of whom did not workout six hours a day, for grades when everything was on a curve. I'm not sure what to say about how I was able to complete it except that I had a very clear vision for my future and it helped keep me motivated; it's easier to be disciplined when you don't doubt what you want to do. Also, I was lucky to go to a great undergraduate university and had a lot of support and encouragement as well as role models around me.
It's important to acknowledge that medicine and all the steps leading up to a career in it, including college coursework, is still modeled around a "weed out" philosophy/mentality: make this as hard or miserable as possible and those left standing at the end are worthy. To be clear, I think we need to get out of this realm of thinking, and I have heard from plenty of successful doctors that failed some of their pre-med coursework and clearly did just fine.
My major was called Human Biology, and the core lectures my sophomore year were a paired science course with a humanities course, and it was built that way to facilitate students seeing connections with biology and health, environmental and public policy issues that impact human welfare. The major also offered me the flexibility to focus on Environmental Science, a field in which I worked for several years before going to medical school. One of the more impactful quarters of those core lectures was a course in anthropology and human behavioral biology during which we had lectures by Robert Sapolsky and Jared Diamond. I think it’s important to integrate our understanding of science with the forces that influence human health and experience.
Over the course of several years, I also took many organic chemistry courses where each progressive class continued to build on the last. The further along we progressed, the more I liked the topic, as not only did it become more interesting and beautiful in its complexity but its relevance to biology and medicine began to crystalize. The associated labs were hard and time consuming but an important ongoing lesson about carrying out experiments and becoming familiar with benchwork, which will equip you well for basic science research, which can be fun and a huge asset to building a medical career. Most importantly, it showed me I was able to be successful at one of the most dreaded parts of being a pre-med and fed my motivation to continue.
One of the challenges Dr. Herrin faced is the paucity (SAT word) of women surgeons. I asked her specifically to address young women interested in medicine for her thoughts on being a woman in a predominantly male field, and she has words of warning, and encouragement:
If you had asked me about sexism in medicine when I graduated from high school in 2000, I probably would have not believed that discrimination and misogyny were much of a problem in the medical profession. Nearly two decades later, it still most certainly is. It tends to be more subtle, in the form of microaggressions, though many times not so subtle, as one can see with pay disparities. It’s hard for me to know what the environment will be like when girls who are high school aged now start entering medical school and residency, but I would want to prepare any woman entering science fields not to be surprised if she were to find herself confronting disparate treatment or hostility.
Equal representation within a profession is important so that the culture, dynamics, and priorities of that profession at least attempt to adequately reflect its members. Women are paid far less than their male counterparts (and yes, it’s still blatantly happening — offers for the same position to graduates at the same level of training have been significantly different when offered to a female surgeon vs a male surgeon). Policies in the workplace have had a punishing effect on the reality that women more often are also working as caregivers to children and aging family. The only way to fix this is to have more women enter the profession.
“Seek out as many opportunities as you can to expose yourself to the profession, and challenge yourself along the way. Challenges can be scary, but getting ourselves out of our comfort zone begets learning, growth, and confidence in our capabilities.”
We also need women in science (specifically surgery!) because there are so many compassionate, talented, and brilliant women that would be phenomenal assets to the profession, but they are discouraged along the way. Girls’ confidence starts undergoing a major decline in puberty and high school, and many are deterred along the way directly or indirectly by deterrent messaging from family, friends, professors, and fall out of the pipeline. There are recent studies reporting superior patient outcomes with women doctors compared to men. And we need women in science to encourage more women to enter science.
I asked one of my mentors, Giana Davidson, M .D., MPH, this question and her answer was, “We are capable. We have opportunities other people can only dream of. Our voice at the table is critical. We can choose to do hard things.”
Dr. Herrin has advice for anyone — male or female — considering a career in medicine.
Seek out as many opportunities as you can to expose yourself to the profession, and challenge yourself along the way. Challenges can be scary, but getting ourselves out of our comfort zone begets learning, growth, and confidence in our capabilities. Being comfortable with failure is also a skill that's worth building because high achieving people will often have a difficult time with failure. However, it's inevitable that we will encounter it on the road to success. For me, the above meant:
Taking honors and AP classes in high school, especially in science classes. Honors chemistry in my high school was notoriously difficult, but I think it prepared me for and made me more confident I could succeed in organic chemistry in college. I say this not because I sailed through it, but because there were many times I did poorly on labs or tests and was pretty discouraged, but I ultimately ended up with As in the class, I'd like to think because I kept putting effort in and getting extra help.
Dr. Melissa Herrin as a student-athlete at Stanford University, rowing.
Being a student athlete at a D1 university. Looking back it was one of the most formative and valuable experiences of my life. To be a rower for 8 years (4 in high school, 4 in college) teaches grit. There were many times I did NOT feel like getting up at 5 AM, working out for several hours, going to class, working out again for another several hours, and then studying at night. On a day to day basis, if I had relied entirely on inspiration or excitement to motivate me, I may not have made it to a lot of practices or gotten through difficult workouts. To become great at something there needs to be a significant element of discipline and deliberate practice where you show up every day ready to work, even if it’s the last thing you feel like doing. I sacrificed a lot of what "normal" college students experience on a day-to-day day basis, as I am sacrificing a lot right now (I see my husband and son a lot less than I otherwise would, I'm not able to take as many weekend trips as my friends, I miss out on important events such as weddings or funerals). But, as on an athletic team as in medicine, people to whom you’ve made a commitment are relying on you to be there for them.
Seeking out opportunities to shadow physicians (in high school, college, and after college, but before applying to medical school, and even in medical school).
Getting involved with research. Lots of scientists/researchers need help with projects. Even if the tasks are pretty basic, you can learn a lot and it’s a valuable addition to applications or resumes.
Volunteer, if you have the means. I was able to travel abroad with an NGO, but I recognize that can be an expensive experience. Local non-profits may be a great option.
This is a life decision that usually comes later than high school, but it is important nonetheless — find a partner who supports you in your mission! I am extremely lucky to be married to a doctor who understands the pressures of my job and who has far more normal hours as a pediatrician than I do as a surgeon, so that he can be there for my son when I can’t.
Becoming a Veterinarian: A Conversation with Dr. Nate Stanglein
Dr. Nate Stanglein
Dr. Herrin is just one of many doctors with whom I’m friends, and I’m even beginning to have some former students in the medical profession. Indeed, one of my favorite students from my first year teaching, among the very first people I helped with college applications, is now a dentist, and I have several other students in medical school or their first year of residency. But, I wanted to highlight a medical professional on a very different path: a veterinarian.
Dr. Nate Stanglein is a friend from high school, as well as a varsity hockey teammate whose play I always admired for its tenacity. I often think of vets as that profession every ten-year-old girl thinks she wants to do about whatever period of time she is obsessed with horses. If I sound somewhat stereotypical, I’ve taken a poll of almost every woman I know, and they all talk about that phase. And yet, so few people actually do study veterinary science, perhaps because, unlike medical doctors who have to deal with one species that can generally communicate a problem, vets deal with dozens of species, none of whom speak English - or any other language known to Mankind. A vet might treat a cow, a canary, and a cobra on the same day, with very little in common other than alliteration. So, I asked Dr. Stanglein, a graduate of Colby College and the University of Pennsylvania, about how he found himself in such a varied field:
Dr. Stanglein’s experience began when he was a four-year-old, but he didn’t consider it as a career initially.
My father had me in the clinic from the time that I was 4, although I suspect this had more to do with father/son bonding and the cost of daycare than trying to get me interested into the field. He was just starting out at the time, so while Stanglein Veterinary Clinic is exclusively small animal (dogs, cats, some exotics/pocket pets) now, back then it was a mixed practice which would also see pigs, cows, sheep, and goats. We even had 5 or 6 sheep in the backyard that we kept in a small barn/garage. I remember going on farm calls to do screening blood work on pigs, where I would have to get into the styes to snare the pigs, getting covered in slop in 90-degree heat. I thought this was the coolest thing ever, and he paid me $5 for 3-4 hours of grueling work, well less than minimum wage. As I grew up, I worked during the summers as a veterinary nurse, which was more out of convenience and having flexible times for hockey and off season training.
Dr. Stanglein majored in English and Classics at Colby College preparing to be a teacher, but was still drawn to medicine.
Even with all of those childhood experiences with the veterinary field, I never was sure that it was going to be my path. I majored in English and Classics at Colby thinking at some point that I might want to be a teacher. I completed a Chemistry minor and took all of the pre-med, pre-vet classes to keep my options open. After the first year of college, I felt fairly certain that I wanted to go into the medical field, but enjoyed the coursework for my major. I was leaning towards medical school initially and even took the MCATs.
My favorite English teacher, Phyllis Mannocchi, helped set up an externship during our January break with a local orthopedic surgeon. I spent a month with him in both surgery and clinics. Lots of the chronic pain and arthritic conditions his patients experienced were exacerbated by people’s lifestyle and weight. I remember thinking at the time that I would have a hard time bluntly telling patients that, even with physical therapy/medications, they would be painful unless they significantly changed their diet and exercise habits to lose 50lbs. While I enjoy soft tissue surgery today, the orthopedic procedures I observed, while technically graceful, seemed more monotonous to me. While I may have explored more deeply other aspects of human medicine and found something that appealed more to me, it was at that point my focus turned to veterinary medicine.
For me veterinary medicine was a natural fit. In retrospect, the veterinary field should’ve been obvious, but I am a stubborn sort and had to experience other things first. In Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, he details that it takes 10,000 hours to master a task. Without knowing it, I had put that time into interacting with dogs and cats to the point that my understanding of their behavior was instinctual. This helps to calm stressed animals by understanding their body language, enables better physical exams, and thus creates better results. Clients also are more at ease with a veterinarian with whom their pet is comfortable. The most similar comparison is to the approach a pediatrician would have with children. The medical side of things in veterinary medicine is going to be similar across other medical disciplines. Dogged memorization of information, an understanding of physiology, and then practice, practice, practice.
Like Dr. Herrin, Dr. Stanglein was an athlete, and part of his college choice was based far more on sports than his future.
Colby is an excellent college, but like many liberal-arts institutions, does not have the type of facilities for science that a larger university does. This does not mean that one cannot major in science, but it does go to show that students can be successful applicants to a science-based graduate program even while majoring in English and classics! I asked Dr. Stanglein, however, to talk a bit about how and why he chose Colby, because I know that many students have more than a major in mind when looking at a college:
In high school, I was fortunate to do well enough academically that with support from a hockey program, I would be able to go to a college where I fit best. While I had a fair amount of skill, I projected more of a high-energy defensive forward to lock down offensive stars, rather than be an offensive star myself. So, unlike some players at our age and level, I did not believe that the NHL or professional hockey was in my future. So, I narrowed my college search to small liberal arts colleges and Ivy League institutions that I felt would open more doors career-wise. I did not factor in the relative science strength of my college, because I was not sure that was a path I would take.I interviewed at Yale with their college hockey coach. To this day, I respect his forthrightness. He essentially said that I should have no difficulty with admission and to be on the team, but I likely would not play my first two years and perhaps I would have a chance my junior/senior year. My inclusion would be more to bring up the academic average of the team to allow lesser academically qualified but more athletically gifted players to make the team. In contrast, most Division III schools were expecting more immediate contributions to the hockey team. My final college choice came down to Williams and Colby. I was torn between the two, and took 2 on-campus visits to each to get a better feel for the schools. Williams held an edge in academics and I felt the hockey at the two were similar. Ultimately, I enjoyed my visits at Colby and chose there. To me, I felt that it was a better “fit” personality-wise. I do not regret that decision at all, however, I definitely would not fault any student-athlete who used athletics to catapult them into the best academic institution possible. My pragmatic side would’ve chosen that, it’s just that the heart won out.
“Should candidates be interested in veterinary school, my advice to them would be to be getting as much animal experience prior to application as possible. ”
I always performed better academically during sports seasons in both high school and college. Really, it was all about time management. Everything needed to be more regimented. You knew your class schedule. You knew your practice and game schedule. School work had to be scheduled into smaller windows of time. Furthermore, social and extracurricular activities were naturally curtailed during the season. For me, I was able to focus my time and be far more efficient in getting things done in a timely manner. Off-season had less structure and it was easier to get distracted by friends and hanging out. As a result, my classwork would be slightly less diligent.
If this connection between athletics and success in college sounds unusual to you, I can attest that it is actually far more common than one might think. As I wrote in my post on athletic recruiting, the vast majority of NCAA athletes are not going to become professionals, and are looking to get the best education possible. I don’t mean to suggest that the only way one can be successful in school is through athletics, but to point out the fact that having more than one passion can be extremely motivating and, as Dr. Stanglein noted, actually helps keep students focused.
In terms of veterinary science in particular, however, Dr. Stanglein had some other advice:
For veterinary medicine, biology, basic chemistry and anatomy were the most important courses for me. Physics and organic chemistry all will contribute to a medical foundation of knowledge, but if you do not have a strong understanding of the very basic building blocks, then understanding physiology becomes that much more difficult. In addition, my background in Latin made learning medical terminology more logical and much easier to remember.
For veterinary medicine specifically, there are an extremely limited number of veterinary schools so admission is quite competitive. All of the applicants have strong qualifications. I was waitlisted my first year of applications when I only applied to Penn and Tufts. In the next year, I worked as a nurse at an oncology center after which I was admitted when I reapplied. Should candidates be interested in veterinary school, my advice to them would be to be getting as much animal experience prior to application as possible. Whether this be volunteering at a shelter, working as an assistant, or shadowing clinicians, the length and breadth of experience will help candidates to stand out versus other similarly qualified applicants.
Veterinary school will be similar to medical school. There is 2.5-3 years of classroom learning, followed by 1-1.5 years of clinical rotations in the hospital. There is a final board examination to receive your license. Unlike the human side, internships and residences are not as common. A general practitioner does not require any additional training outside of their veterinary school. There are veterinary specialities such as surgery, internal medicine, ophthalmology, neurology, critical care amongst others that require a year of internship and 3 years of residency. Most of the veterinarians you would encounter at a veterinary emergency room will not have a residency in critical care, but the trend in veterinary medicine is that they would be internship trained. I received my veterinary degree from the University of Pennsylvania, School of Veterinary Medicine. Even though I ultimately did not pursue any residency specialty, I did complete a rotating small animal medicine/emergency at MSPCA-Angell Animal Medical Center in Boston. It was important for me to have additional experience outside of my own family practice, not only to raise the quality of medicine but also to feel personally that I had earned it, and my hiring back home wasn’t exclusively nepotism. Upon completion of my internship, I worked as an emergency veterinarian in Long Island for 3 years before returning home to for the past 6 years to work at Stanglein Veterinary Clinic, which I purchased from my father in 2018.
From a medical aspect, compare veterinary medicine best to pediatrics in very young children. Your patients cannot tell you what’s wrong. You need to rely on physical examination, findings, and history from their owner/parent, which is often incomplete and unreliable. Diagnostics help to give more information, but do not always tell the whole story. For those in private practice, the most difficult challenges are not even medical related. On a medicine side, communicating to owners regarding prognosis, and cost/benefit of different treatment plans when many owners have significant financial limitations, since less than 5% of pet owners have insurance, is more taxing that actual patient care. As a small business owner, accounting skills and staff management also are something that isn’t taught in veterinary school but are daily challenges.
Becoming an Environmentalist: A Conversation with Emily Davies
Emily Davies
Biology is, in many ways, the most prominent area of science. But, not all people heading into the field go into medicine. Emily Davies, another friend from high school, grew up with a father who taught biology and environmental science at that same school. Her boyfriend, at the time, actually got stuck in her father’s class, a most uncomfortable year for all three of them!
I asked Emily, who went to Vassar and works as an environmentalist and an environmental educator, about whether family pressure drove her towards science:
Emily’s interest started at an early age, having spent a lot of time outdoors with her brother.
My father’s status as a well-respected science teacher, though definitely a positive thing, didn't influence my decision to study science; it was more that science and general curiosity were encouraged from a very early age growing up. My brother and I spent lots of time outside, with adults and by ourselves, giving us a strong connection to the natural world. I think the fact that I was exposed to lots of different aspects of science — biology in particular — further encouraged my interest in the world and learning about the natural processes that tie everything together. In high school, besides bio, physics, and chemistry, I took marine bio, cell bio, and did a directed study on the natural history of the Red-winged Blackbirds that lived in the swamp behind my house.
Emily double-majored in Environmental Studies and Art History at Vassar College.
I did a double major in Environmental Studies (ES) and Art History at Vassar. Within ES, I did a focus in biology and journalism with the intent of becoming a science writer of some kind. I knew that I was interested in the natural world — more from an environmental perspective than from a pure science perspective — and I thought Vassar would be a good fit for that. I had a vague idea that I liked writing and environmentalism, but wasn't sure on any specifics of where to go from there.
I think that Vassar is a good choice for a pre-med degree, as you can get all the human-focused biology classes taken care of while still majoring or double-majoring with a more humanities type major — something that I think lots of med schools look for. The down-side of a small liberal arts college is that there are not as many courses offered compared with bigger institutions, so the choices are limited. I was drawn there by the pure liberal arts nature of the school — everyone was encouraged and applauded for pursuing multiple areas and that was perfect for me. From a career perspective — if that's all I were thinking about — it was not a great choice, as I left without many practical skills or direction for where to take my career. The education I received did not give me many practical skills or knowledge that I have applied in my work as an environmental educator. I took one field biology course, which I LOVED, and I wish I could have done more classes like that.
Emily’s career path led her from being a field biologist to an environmental educator.
Emily is married to a professor of human anatomy and animal physiology professor at Quinnipiac University, and offered to have me speak to him, but I wanted to focus on what she does, because it is somewhat unique. One of the great failures of education in the United States is the fact that so few elementary school teachers have an extensive background in any particular subject. Indeed, many of them only major in education. Emily, however, as an environmental educator, gets to focus on helping elementary-aged students learn about science as someone who is a specialist in the field:
My career path is particularly circuitous, which is probably relatively normal these days. I started as a field biologist — a job that is wonderful experience, particularly for young people. You get to go to interesting places, meet amazing people, and be part of the scientific process. If I had known that I would be doing environmental education as a career, I would have double-majored in education instead of art history. I think it's important to get across that education happens at all levels and majoring in education doesn't railroad you into "just" being a teacher; it does, however, give you lots of options that can complement any number of other subject-based focuses.
My goal as an environmental educator is to help children build an emotional connection to nature that will lead to them being environmentally-minded adults. I do not actually have the goal that they go into the sciences. However, another one of my goals is to expose children from all backgrounds to the sciences — putting them into the seat of the scientist — so they realize that they can be scientists if they want to be. Also, it is important for students to see themselves represented in the scientific field, so diversity within science is especially important. I wish that I'd been encouraged to get all kinds of hands-on experience in the summers of my later high school and college years, as it was an experience I had just after graduating from college that eventually led me to where I am today. I would have loved to have gotten that experience earlier.
Becoming a Neuroscientist: A Conversation with Dr. Britne Shabbott, Ph.D.
Dr. Britne Shabbott
Emily’s path may seem circuitous to her, but my cousin, Dr. Britne Shabbott, Ph.D. had an even more winding path. She is the only person in this post to attend a public high school, and she now teaches in one! In between, however, she did her undergraduate and graduate work at Penn State, where she was a Division I cheerleader, and was a neuroscientist at Columbia University.
I mention Dr. Shabbott’s high school education specifically because she found it a bit lacking, and had to learn how to learn in a completely different way once she got to college:
To be honest, I felt overwhelmed my first year at Penn State. I took a full credit load of intense science courses my freshman year. There were no midterms or finals given at my high school when I was enrolled, and I can remember feeling unprepared for those cumulative types of exams when I first started taking them. I developed better study strategies that improved my performance, but that took time. One of the courses that really sticks out to me is vertebrate physiology, an upper-level course that I took during my junior year. This course was difficult and the content required discipline to master. I remember making over 1000 notecards for the final exam. Acing that course provided me with confidence to apply for post-graduate programs.
Dr. Shabbott’s experience of the transition from high school to college is, unfortunately, typical. I don’t think that I’m blinded by the love of my cousin when I say that her students today are extremely lucky to have her in the classroom, because she is able to prepare future scientists in a way that she herself was not prepared.
Like many students, Dr. Shabbot was initially interested in medicine, but eventually found a different path:
During my junior year at Penn, I began to explore careers in science that were outside of the medical field. I applied for a summer research experience through the Penn State Institutes of Science and was granted a small scholarship to work in a lab over the summer. After exploring several options, I settled on a movement neuroscience laboratory that combined my interests in athletics and biology. After my summer work, I continued my research with a senior independent study in the same laboratory, and ultimately completed my doctorate in neuroscience under the same principal investigator. My original plan after graduate school was to obtain a postdoctoral position that would enable me to acquire a professorship later in my career.
At Columbia, my area of research was still movement neuroscience. However, as opposed to Penn State — where I focused on the neurological mechanisms of healthy individuals — I now studied the movement deficits associated with stroke patients, and individuals affected by Parkinson's and Huntington's disease. My work at Penn State allowed me to recognize normal movement patterns of the upper limb, which better allowed me to identify and analyze movement problems associated with these various disorders. In the end, while I enjoyed research, it can be a lonely job that requires hours upon hours of data analysis. Additionally, the frustration of grant writing and the time required to successfully maintain a prestigious science career deterred me from pursuing the field further. I wanted a family and children and a career that was more balanced in terms of home/work life. I always enjoyed my teacher assistantships during my graduate work; and during my postdoc, I volunteered to teach STEM content to underserved schools in the city through the New York Academy of Sciences. Given my enjoyment for the teaching field, I decided to pursue it as a more long-term career goal.
I feel like my research and extensive science background have really enabled me to be an effective and creative high school teacher. My interests in science run deep, and I truly enjoy the subjects that I teach. My students really respect the fact that I earned a PhD, and I am sure to tell them about my experiences in the science field. I often have students and parents approach me for advice regarding future career paths in science. Additionally, as a faculty member with a PhD, I am often asked to teach honors-level classes, which I enjoy.
One of the surprisingly common themes I have found among many of the scientists I know is that they have often found themselves married to a different type of scientist.
Dr. Herrin’s husband is a pediatrician, Emily Davies’s husband is a college professor, and Dr. Shabbott’s husband is a meteorologist. I actually considered asking him about his background, because meteorology is such an interesting, and often misunderstood, field. Instead, I asked her what it was like being married to a very different type of scientist:
We talk science at the dinner table, over coffee and in the car. Our kids talk science. My five-year-old knows what photosynthesis is. I think that when you are wired for science and love it, that it naturally spills over to other aspects of your life. For the past two years, my school has worked to implement the new Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which has a large focus on the earth sciences. Being married to a meteorologist has been so helpful. My husband has provided me with links, images, science articles and have explained mechanisms and terminology that I have not been exposed to. He even visited my students as a guest speaker to tell them about his work as a meteorologist in the energy field.
Becoming an Engineer: A Conversation with Lieutenant Robert Curry
Rather than finish off with a meteorologist, I thought it would be good to look at someone in the Engineering section of STEM.
Lieutenant Robert Curry
Lieutenant Robert Curry joined the United States Navy through the NROTC program at Tufts University, as part of the Naval Civil Engineer Corps. He worked stateside for several years on a base in New Jersey, but then got sent to Iraq, where the logistics work he did was a far cry from his previous training.
After the Navy, he attended Harvard Business School for an MBA, and has worked for the Corning Corporation and General Electric. I have known LT Curry for 32 years — since we were 6 — and knew from a very early age that he would go into science, given his obsession over Star Trek. Civil engineering and the Navy was a major surprise, however, and his time in Iraq meant that the best man at my wedding had to pre-record a video for his toast from a bunker in the desert! I saved his story for last, however, because it is unusual, inspiring, and, characteristically for him, short:
I always enjoyed tangible things. Buildings are something that everyone uses and can appreciate. Mechanical and Electrical engineering seemed too abstract to me. Pardon the pun, but Civil Engineering was more “concrete.” My degree taught me how to think and how to learn.
Being an Officer in the Navy was a great place where I could put my technical and scientific learning to use in a practical setting. I was never the technical expert in the room, but I always had enough knowledge to understand what was being discussed to make an informed decision about how to proceed next. I found that very fulfilling. Being in the Civil Engineer Corps of the U.S. Navy is unique both in the Navy and for a Civil Engineer. Whilst in the Navy, I never went on a ship and I was a manager of either projects or people. I was never doing technical calculations. Management skills, while can be taught formally, are really honed with practical experience.
LT Curry’s time Iraq was unusual, in that he was not working as an engineer, despite his training and the very real need for people expert in the construction of buildings. The military had its own ideas about what he should be doing! So, for part of the time, he found himself developing a security program relying on retinal scans, such as you might see in James Bond or Marvel movies. This obviously solidified his managerial abilities, but also gave him a taste for biology. Now, in civilian life, he has managed two different divisions focused on extracting fetal serum from cows for use in a variety of medical and scientific applications. When he first told me about his new job, he admitted that it sounded crazy. However, it goes to show that a background in science is far more flexible than one might expect; civil engineering and cow fetuses could hardly be more different. He wishes he “took more biology courses” in college because, “while being able to grasp the high-level biology concepts is enough, at times, it would be good to go a layer deeper.” Nevertheless, he credits both his high school and college coursework with giving him the tools he needs to function in a biologically-based industry, despite the fact that his training was so different.
I realize that this post has been incredibly long. However, for students contemplating a future in science, this is full of a variety of possibilities, and it only scratches the surface of what someone can achieve in the STEM field.
It notes, however, several things that each and every one of my respondents found in common. First, that a strong high school education in the sciences is helpful, but not always necessary, for future success in field of science. Second, that for many, if not most, scientists, the path towards their career is rarely a straight one, so that students should prepare themselves for struggles and curveballs, making flexibility essential. Third, that practical experience outside the classroom through shadowing and volunteering is among the best training that a prospective scientist can receive. Fourth, that it is less about what you study, and more about how you learn to think that breeds success. And finally, that having another passion outside your field can help students maintain focus and balance.
If you have any questions and would like to learn more, feel free to contact me anytime.
Mr. K
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