WOMEN IN PLANT BIOLOGY

Following Your Heart

by Elisabeth Schussler
Assistant Professor, Department of Botany, Miami University

Elisabeth Schussler

When I entered graduate school at Louisiana State University in 1992, I had every intention of getting a PhD in botany with a research focus in ecological physiology and (I think…) getting a job in academia. Five years later, I had acquired a PhD in plant biology with a focus in anatomy, a love of teaching and learning, an academic significant other (in the same department), and a fairly hazy view of my career prospects. What I quickly had to come to terms with was the fact that, by gaining an academic partner, “my” career decisions had become “our” career decisions, and that navigating science career paths in tandem was not for the faint of heart. Today my husband, Charlie, and I both have tenure-track jobs in academia (I as an assistant professor at Miami University and he as an assistant professor at Wittenberg University), but our path to these positions was neither linear nor quick and, along the way, I gained a new career.

My first realization of the difficulty of being part of an academic couple came as I was approaching my dissertation defense in 1997. My adviser was encouraging me to pursue postdoctoral opportunities, but Charlie was still collecting data and anticipated being in graduate school for at least two more years. I had a decision to make, and I chose to step out of the academic career path to stay in Baton Rouge with him. We’ve all heard of the leaky pipeline for women in science—as a founding member of the Association for Women in Science chapter at LSU, I was particularly well aware of it—and yet I found myself dripping from the pipe! I figured I wouldn’t be heading for a tenure-track job in academia anymore, so I sought an alternative career in science. I had a strong interest in science education, so I worked briefly at the campus Museum of Natural History coordinating its education program, and then worked for two years as an instructor of introductory biology courses at LSU. Those years shaped me as a teacher (thanks to all my friends there!), and when it was time for us to move on, I left that job with regret.

Charlie, however, had acquired a two-year postdoc in South Carolina. I remember driving there thinking, “What am I going to do in South Carolina?” I went with literally no job prospects. My favorite part of the trip was when the car broke down in Atlanta, and my husband, I, our cat, and our dead car ended up at a Saturn dealer, but that’s another story….My point is that there are two emotions you will most likely experience as part of an academic couple: (1) One of you will follow the other with nothing but faith that things will “work out” at the new location, and (2) whomever is heading toward a job will feel guilty for asking their partner to take that leap of faith.

What I discovered in South Carolina was that PhDs can find jobs outside academia! I contacted museums, science centers, and nature parks (and even toyed with the idea of working at a coffee shop), and ended up landing a job as the education director at a nature park . . . a swamp nature park. Later, I worked as the education coordinator at a science center affiliated with a university. Both jobs entailed designing and delivering school field trip programs on science topics to (mostly) kindergarten through fifth-grade students. Working with young students will quickly help you appreciate the allegedly short attention span of university students, but it also makes you wonder why the 18-year-olds can’t retain the same amount of information as the third graders! In the five years we were in South Carolina (oh yes . . . it’s important to remember that two-year postdocs can mysteriously become five-year postdocs . . .), I had five job interviews and four job offers, so finding a job never turned out to be impossible.

Every good postdoc should come to an end, however. Charlie was applying for jobs, with the agreement that I could veto any I chose, when he ran across a job ad for me. Miami University (Ohio) was looking for an assistant professor of biology education in a science department. He handed the ad to me and I laughed. Then I thought, “Why not?”

Two months later I had a job offer in hand, and we were amused by the coincidence of Charlie also getting a job offer “at” Miami—sadly, though, his was in the city of Miami, Fla., and not at the university in Ohio. Deciding between the two positions was extremely difficult because neither job offer came with anything other than vague assurances that something would “come up” for the other one of us. We ended up heading for Ohio, and so my husband got to experience the leap of faith and I got stuck with the guilt. What goes around comes around, I guess.

At Miami, my research focuses on how people learn about plants and how students learn about the nature of science. My tenure home is in a science department, botany, which suits my graduate school origins perfectly. Looking back, I can see how my career path led to this job, but I would not have guessed this outcome. For Charlie, there was no tenure-track job at Miami, so he acquired a part-time visiting assistant professor position. We preferred it to be part-time because we knew that full-time teaching jobs often leave little time for research, and if his research went away, so would his opportunities for a tenure-track job. We were lucky we had the financial flexibility to make that choice, however. In the fourth year of my position, Charlie started his tenure-track job. However, because his university is located an hour and a half away, he spends four nights a week there and comes home on weekends. So now we have shifted our concerns from career sacrifices to quality-of-life sacrifices—a paradox confronted by many academic couples.

As an academic couple, we understand that we gain by understanding the other’s academic field and lifestyle. As such, we can each provide a unique professional and personal support system to the other. But both of us have experienced sacrifices in our quest to have satisfying jobs while also living together (or at least in close proximity). I am lucky that my sacrifices were also gains; I might not be doing research in biology education if I had felt free to pursue a postdoc after graduation. That career shift allowed me to find my way back into the pipeline that I fell out of in 1997. Navigating a career path for two necessitates patience, faith, and the self-awareness to know what you are willing to sacrifice and what you aren’t, and for one or both of you, career flexibility may be a necessary component as well.