Overview: This post is part of series of interviews with 23 scholars about their research process and path that will be conducted until the end of 2023.
Dr. Jennifer Carter founded the Mesoscale Science Lab at Case Western Reserve in 2013 and is now a tenured associate professor and director of the Case School of Engineering Swagelok Center for Surface Analysis of Materials. Her research involves interface-rich materials and those results have helped her earn both an NSF CAREER award and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. You can explore her publications on Google Scholar.
We have known each other through our involvement with the Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society (TMS) and I am appreciative that she made the time to participate in this blog. I emailed her a list of questions that I wanted to discuss, she emailed back some initial responses and then we met virtually to discuss further. I summarized her thoughts, and our editor Kate Epstein did light editing for clarity.
What stood out to me in the interview was Dr. Carter’s strong identity as an academic rather than a researcher. Academics focus on knowledge development (research) but also spend a significant amount of their time developing human capital. As we chatted, it became clear how much of her time as a faculty member is focused on the training of early career scientists (undergraduates, graduate students, etc.). If this surprises you, you should read the article “If you love research, academia may not be for you.” In it, David Mathews sorted through data from the Rathenau Institute on faculty in the Netherlands and showed that professors spent just 17% of their time on their own research with the rest of their time teaching, research supervision, and “management and organizational tasks” taking up larger percentages.
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Q: What is your favorite part of the research process currently?
Dr. Carter: I adore being the first to make an unexpected connection. For example, coastlines and dendrites look alike if you get rid of the scalebars. If we look at approaches from other fields, we sometimes stumble upon elegant solutions for emergent questions in our discipline.
Q: What made you “feel” like a researcher at the different stages of education?
Dr. Carter: At different stages of my career, it has taken different contributions to make me feel like a researcher.
As a second-year undergraduate, I felt like a researcher as I was polishing samples and setting up experiments.
As a second-year graduate student, I felt like a researcher on the weekends when I was operating the scanning electron microscopy. In that time spent collecting EBSD [electron backscatter diffraction] scans and simultaneously running the dual-beam FIB-SEM [focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy] to extract TEM [transmitted electron microscopy] foils, I felt excited to discover things no one else had ever seen.
Now, as a faculty member, I feel most like a researcher at the beginning and end of a project. As an academic, my time spent doing research is limited and most of the allocated research time is either spent mentoring others who get to do the hands-on work. Where I get to contribute now is in determining what research questions we as a team should focus on. That is, what challenges facing society need our attention and how our team could tackle an aspect of those challenges.
Q: How do you explain your role as a “researcher” to family or friends?
Dr. Carter: I have always struggled conveying my role on research projects to friends because it depends on each specific project objective and the team assembled. As a faculty member, my technical contribution on research projects are typically aligned with those in mechanical engineering, materials engineering, physical metallurgy, experimental mechanics, microscopy, and data science. Often, I am stretching or pulling across discipline boundaries to bring to light new connections.
Though in reality, I see myself as an academic more than a researcher. When I reflect on the last eight years, my role most commonly is as an enabler for early career researchers, a translator between researchers as we explore science at the interfaces of disciplines, and a facilitator for the research process. While I did not expect this last role to be so prominent, I have found myself really asking the research team members to reimagine the biases that they bring with them and consider solutions that may lie outside of conventional norms. As researchers, it is important to ask ourselves if we as asking the right questions and considering all the solutions.
I think when people outside of research and academia, they think “professors” work on a single area of focus or question for their entire careers. While this is applicable to some professors, I explain to my friends and family that my role as a “professor” means that I am a guide for early career researchers as they learn the research process and make discoveries across a wide array of topics. I am passionate about the research process, rather than a specific research question, and enjoy this role.
Q: Why did you decide to pursue a career that involved research? What was your motivation?
Dr. Carter: I enjoy identifying meaningful research questions that when answered could have a large impact on society. I decided that I wanted to be an academic because I find joy in helping students find happiness and fulfillment. I can encourage engineering students to take appropriate technical risks and identify engineering solutions for challenges.
Q: Where there any skills that you thought you would need but don’t as a researcher?
Dr. Carter: Honestly, I have been more surprised at the skills I didn’t think I would need but are important. The most surprising thing is the value of storytelling and the art of communication.
Q: What is your advice for an early-stage researcher (undergraduate or graduate student) who wants to be a lead researcher within their field?
Dr. Carter: I have three key pieces of advice.
(1) Learn how to clarify your role on a project and be critical about what you need to continue in the research process. It can feel vulnerable to any researcher to voice that they are unclear of their role or the group’s expectations to the rest of the research team. However, colleagues on a research project expect their peers to speak up for themselves, to self-regulate to meet the group deadlines, and produce the required results.
(2) Learn to sit uncomfortable with criticism. This is hard. It can feel personal. However, you will need to learn to move past your emotions and calmly listen to input.
(3) Be your own advocate. No one is going to look out for your well-being as well as you. Ask for any support you need.
(4) Clarify your motivation. Ask yourself, “Why am I excited to get out of bed in the morning?” and give it real thought. Don’t just answer this question with an idealized answer, but instead write an authentic response. Knowing your true motivation(s) will help you make better career decisions.
(5) Integrate reflection into your calendar. I reflect at the end of each month before planning the goals for the next month. This allows me to be more proactive rather than reactionary. During this reflection, I answer the following questions:
a. What were my big wins this month?
b. What worked well this month and what didn’t work?
c. What do I want to do more of next month and what do I want to do less of next month?
d. What is on my mind and needs some attention?
e. What things do I think I need help with and who can provide that help?
(6) Cultivate a support group outside of your work colleagues. There are going to be challenging times and you will need to have support. However, this is something that your advisors or work colleagues may not be able to provide. If you need it—get a therapist!
(7) Make sure that your planned work week allows you time to think, talk with your colleagues, be healthy (mental health) and spend time on things that matter to you outside of work (for me that is my family). Watercooler conversations with colleagues have really been a benefit for my career by helping me to think about technical puzzles in new ways. We tend to jam so many meetings into our weeks, that we remove the opportunity for spontaneous chats with our colleagues. We should all have the space in our calendar to walk down the hall and chat. This is not (always) procrastination but an active effort of doing collaborative science.
Q: There are so many *management tools* to help researchers improve their productivity or impact today. Can you highlight one management tool you think researchers should consider utilizing?
Dr. Carter: Hands down, a citation management system. I use Zotero.
Q: I keep hearing the suggestion to “align your research with your passions.” Is this something that we should encourage researchers to do in all cases?
Dr. Carter: I have seen this advice also and I am not sure it is the guidance I would give. My “passions” have ebbed and flowed while my focus on the structure, properties, and processing of materials has been constant. For example, I am passionate about helping students with mental health. I can make an impact on student mental health without interweaving it into my materials research.
I think a better idea is to align your research with your mission, the impact you want to manifest in the world. When I reflect on how I choose what research projects to pursue, I ask myself if the project will allow me to enable early career researchers at our institution (Case Western Reserve) to solve challenges related to energy or human health. So, while I still apply for single investigator grants, I really want my portfolio to include projects where I can assemble larger groups of principle investigators. For example, I want to look at the collective needs for instrumentation in our region and then apply for a National Science Foundation Major Research Instrument grant. Or can we engage in Research Experiences for Undergraduates to provide training opportunities that highlight that microscopy and computer vision are ubiquitous challenges in engineering solutions.
Q: What journal article are you most proud of and why?
Dr. Carter: I still get super excited whenever a journal article is published. After all the work that goes into doing quality research and writing, I am thrilled when editors accept the manuscript and still do a happy dance. At this stage as a faculty member, I don’t often take the lead on a paper. It is normally one of my students who is the corresponding author and I think that they all do great work!
So, I am going to change this question to include opinion pieces instead of articles. I am really proud of one that I cowrote for JOM in 2019 with Laura Bruckman: The Elephant in the Room: Where is the Empathy in Science? There is a real need for our technical communities to both understand the impact of mental health challenges and to be inclusive of researchers who are impacted by those health concerns. A recent international study indicated that graduate students in STEM are six times more likely than the general population to experience clinical symptoms of anxiety and depression. That was so alarming that I grabbed Laura to write something that would present tools and techniques to other faculty on how they could support students while also enabling research advancements. Both can be and should be done synergistically. I really hope that publication helped others with mental health challenges in research to know that they are not alone.
Q: You relatively recently earned tenure in 2020. That process takes grit but comes with rewards. When did you first “feel” tenured?
Dr. Carter: My stress while on the tenure track eased when I received one of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and that letter still hangs on my office wall. So, I did not “feel” different the day that I got my official letter.
However, I did notice a change in my empowerment. When I earned tenure, I was more likely to both voice my opinion and remain resolved when engaging in discussion. I have also been empowered to take on additional roles that impact my institution and not just my research group. For example, I was asked to lead our electron microscopy facility. I LOVE directing this center. Working with the center staff to sculpt its offerings so that its focus aligned with the mission of our institution strengthened my visionary leadership. I am proud of what the staff have done. This past year, they have helped 150 unique early career researchers to conduct materials characterization for 93 funded grants.
On a personal level, my tenure coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic. We had lockdowns go into effect in March 2020 and my tenure letter arrived in May 2020. Like many other working professionals with children, I was challenged to balance my work obligations with the additional roles of a kindergarten “teacher,” interpreter of the often-conflicting recommendations by state and national organizations, “daycare” provider, etc., while also trying to work from home. Having tenure helped me approach this really difficult situation calmly. Looking at our responsibilities (work and home), I honestly could only dedicate 20 hours a week to my responsibilities as a faculty member and I strategically put new research projects on ice until society returned to its new normal after lockdowns. I felt relatively prepared for the pandemic compared to other faculty because during my tenure process, I take taken two maternity leaves. Those periods gave me the confidence that could put research projects “down” for a short period and then pick the work up again successfully. It won’t be easy or pretty, but it was a choice I was allowed to make again because of the privilege of tenure.
Q: What skills are critical for researchers to thrive at an academic institution?
Dr. Carter: It is vital that your mission aligns with that of your academic institution. It is impossible to thrive when your convictions or personal mission are misaligned or opposing with the institution provided the framework for. If, and when, that ever happens, I would encourage you to find another institution to work at.
When you are in the right institution, you will still need to have a thick skin and a strong backbone. A thick skin is needed to function in an environment where you have a lot of input on your work from reviewers, administration, peers, students, etc. That can feel overwhelming. The strong backbone is to stick with your own internal research plan and not deviate in response to a reviewer or colleague without strongly thinking about the impact.
For those joining us in academia, know that you cannot measure your success in the time scale of a single day. The seasons of success and failure can be much longer. Some days I feel like I am not doing well. However, these are balanced with days that I am thriving such as when we have nucleated a new synergistic collaboration or a new idea.
Q: My spouse and I are both researchers with career goals. Yet, we have found that there are seasons when each of us needs to invest more at work to obtain our goals. Do you have any recommendations for navigating careers that you could share with us?
Dr. Carter: During your career, you may need to put a project or goal on “hold” because it isn’t the right season for it. You can only pick apples in the fall and harvest maple syrup in the spring. You can have all the things you value and want; you just can’t have them all at the same time.
For navigating the dual-career issue, communication is key. A simple communication trick we have learned is to use shared calendar events. For example, we send the other person a calendar event that says ‘Can I travel’ when we are considering a work trip. If the other person accepts the invite, we immediately know that they can manage the homefront for those days. And honestly, there are times when this breaks down and you have to apologize, pick up the broken pieces of that day, choose to continue to communicate and try to make it work.
Q: Is there anything else you wish I had asked that you would like a reader to know?
Dr. Carter: I think many people have an idealized view of what academic research is. While tenure in some sense gives us the freedom to study what we want, funding (and funding agencies) dictates the focus of our research teams in engineering and science fields. A key part of a faculty’s role is helping to educate funding agencies on how our work is valuable to their needs.
As we educate early career researchers, we need to have honest conversations with them about their expectations when entering saturated fields (fields where many researchers are already contributing and competing for a limited number of funding opportunities). Early career researchers, no matter how brilliant, will have a hard time winning the attention of program managers away from established groups with large research teams. Program managers are expected to show results and therefore can be risk-adverse. However, that also means that funding is not based on the proposal alone but instead social capital of the research group. This is a complex issue fraught with emotions surrounding societal inequities, and I don’t have an answer. What I do know is that it is hard to change a system from the outside, and now that I have tenure, I have an obligation to continue to ask if the systems we have are still appropriate.
Acknowledgements: I must acknowledge Kate Epstein of EpsteinWords who edited this post. She specializes in editing and coaching for academics, and she can be reached at kate at epsteinwords.com.