[Laura Lee Sumpter]

Post a reply to this discussion if you are interested in working on Mentoring Teams for the advancement of the STEM Ed PaCER Postdoctoral Research Fellows.

Please include responses to:

1. My research focus.
2. Why I enjoy mentoring.
3. My professional values.

• This topic was modified 5 months ago by Laura Lee Sumpter.

[Julie C Libarkin]

My research focus. Model-driven, community-engaged research, mentoring, and administration addressing access, inclusion, equity, and justice in science, engineering, and academia. Discipline expertise in earth science, natural resources, physics.

Why I enjoy mentoring.  Helping others achieve personal and professional goals is the best part of my job. Ultimately, I want people I work with to identify goals, build activities and gain achievements aligned with those goals, and establish themselves in the lives and work they most desire.

My professional values. Individual and collective well-being means that each of us should be well and our communities should also be well. “Wellness” looks different for each of us – figuring out how we can navigate different norms and needs is the hardest aspect of my job.

[Sophie Huss]

My research focus. Community-engaged research focused around building capacity for ethical engagement in extractive spaces – from mining to museums. Disciplinary training in near-surface geophysics and archaeology.

Why I enjoy mentoring. I enjoy seeing folks grow into who they are as they find their path in life. Mentoring is a great way to be part of that process – through building relationships and getting to know people for the whole person they are, providing support and facilitating paths to folks’ goals, and co-learning with mentees and other mentors in unique ways!

My professional values. Above all, I value loving-kindness and compassion. Work often plays a central role in our lives, but it is only part of what makes us who we are – we are all complex and whole people! Recognizing that other life happenings are going on outside of work, embracing our shared humanity, and holding space for grace and compassion in the workplace are at the forefront of how I operate as a professional.

[Emiko Blalock]

My research focus: My background is in higher education, and I tend to use organizational and sociological lenses. I consider myself a critical qualitative researcher using community- and narrative-based methodologies to address problems of social inequity in spaces where communities and STEM+Medical education intersect.

Why I enjoy mentoring: I love to riff, I love to share, and I love to learn from others. I love talking about ideas and helping people try them out or making connections if I don’t have the right area of expertise. I enjoy supporting other colleagues to achieve their visions and ideas, even if the path we travel involves getting a bit “messy”

My professional values: Rest. I rest in whatever way it means for each day, whether walking, staring out windows, thinking, singing, sleeping, napping, playing. Without rest I could not “work” with kindness, generosity, curiosity, and care.

[Joshua Drew]

1. My research focus.  I work on community based conservation – mostly with an aquatic focus, mostly through combining ecology, history and conservation biology. I have projects working with communities (and friends) in Fiji as well as those within New York State as well.
2. Why I enjoy mentoring. I like helping people explore the multiple paths and futures that lie within them. I enjoy the chance to help make other peoples’ journeys easier through learning from the (many) mishaps I’ve had along my own journey, and I love helping people learn how to define their own meaning of success.
3. My professional values. There’s a great quote “In academia, everyone is smart, distinguish yourself by being kind”. I may not always live up to that, but it’s what I fall back to whenever I need guidance in my professional life.

[Miles McNall]

• My research focus: I have 25 years of experience with the evaluation of programs that support the health and well-being of school-aged children. I bring this evaluative lens to my current role, where I coordinate professional development opportunities for researchers in the principles and practices of community-engaged research and broader impacts. I am interested in understanding what community-engaged research practices truly benefit communities – from the perspective of community members, not researchers.
• Why I enjoy mentoring: I have always learned as much from mentees as they have learned from me. I appreciate and am inspired by the energy and passion of emerging community-engaged scholars and love helping them find they pathway toward making a difference.
• My professional values: Creating a culture of caring and respect. Fiercely resisting the pressure to treat other human beings as a means to one’s professional ends.

[NICOLE BUCHANAN]

My research focus.

My research foci are: 1) identifying structural barriers to the full inclusion of marginalized faculty (e.g., BIPOC, queer and women faculty) in STEM and higher education more broadly. Specifically, I look at the ways in which the research conducted by marginalized faculty, particularly when they focus on non-traditional topics and populations, is devalued (e.g., epistemic exclusion) and the consequences of this exclusion on faculty careers and well-being. 2) applying Intersectionality Theory to understand harassment and victimization at work and in educational settings (e.g., racialized sexual harassment) and the consequences for women of color.

Why I enjoy mentoring.

Mentoring junior scholars, particularly BIPOC, queer, and women scholars, is one of the most effective ways I know to transform higher education. Their work has the potential to fuel research innovation and create an inclusive and welcoming academy where more faculty and students thrive.

My professional values.

I aim to use my work to foster a more inclusive space where traditionally excluded people can thrive in higher education. For me, this requires transparency regarding the often unstated rules of higher education, broadening inclusive practice, and embodying servant leadership to ensure we meet the diverse needs of our academic community.

[Kate Flick]

My research focus: My background is in community and environmental sociology, forestry, and community-engaged ways to make sense of climate change.  I like using artistic, western scientific, and cultural lenses to apply research in K12 to Elder educational settings.  Most recently I have been exploring geoscience and what place-based and Indigenous-focused geosciences look like here in the Great Lakes region.

Why I enjoy mentoring: I love being part of lightbulbs popping on in people’s heads and then seeing what happens when those light bulbs turn into a field of whirling fireflies.  I get excited to do Mind Wanderns with folks and nurture people in their sense-making and “doing” journeys.  Specifically, I try to encourage Place-Thought that gives a central agency to the Place/land and fosters individual and community animacy.  As Watts 2013 articulates in Indigenous place-thought & agency amongst humans and non-humans: “It is necessary to tease out what the land’s intentions might be and how she tries to speak through us. …To be animate goes beyond being alive or acting, it is to be full of thought, desire, contemplation, and will.”

My professional values: Everyone has different realities and experiences that are valuable.  However, our dominant reality sometimes has trouble allowing space for this diversity.  I strive to work towards healing landscapes that include more biodiverse knowledge, relationality, and senses of community wellbeing.

[Rebecca Carina Jordan]

My research focus.  My research focuses on understanding how individuals reason with scientific data. In particular, I seek to understand how individuals generate and test explanations for complex phenomena.  I have worked with several audiences (e.g., grade 6-12 students, undergraduate and graduate students, and the public involved in citizen science) to test general research questions about causal reasoning with regard to individual decision-making in environmental contexts. I have a need for a scholar who is interested in doing a side project helping others to understand PFAS and its health effects.

Why I enjoy mentoring.  I enjoy working with people because of the creative solutions, perspective-taking, and discussions that arise. I enjoy facilitating peoples’ journeys toward goal attainment, whatever those goals may be.

My professional values.  I enjoy the creativity, open discourse, and the collaboration of research.  I want to see community engagement in the research that affects their lives.

[Tasia Kendrick]

1.  My research focus: My educational research program is focused on creating, implementing, and assessing learning outcomes and objectives that align with curricular aims to prepare Animal Science undergraduate students for their careers. I am developing my program and ‘niche’ in the area of educational research. My other research domain is within animal disease and genetics. Primarily I focus on Bovine Leukemia Virus (BLV) in cattle, working with farmers and veterinarians on diagnosis, prevention, management and control within their herd. Most recently, I have a goal to incorporate high school students (think AP biology) with graduate students and community members (farmers and veterinarians) to complete some of the needs and lack of knowledge in BLV research. I have contacts but would love the assistance to get things organized and started. [However, I am open to really anything with this program!]
2. Why I enjoy mentoring: I feel mentoring is my way of giving back to the community and providing a very small “stamp” in the world. [Responsibility is high on my StrengthsQuest profile.] I hope that any individual I mentor, becomes something greater than myself – whatever that might look like. The gained knowledge and enthusiasm for something once considered difficult or unachievable, while I too learn new things from each mentee is what ‘charges my batteries and keeps me going.’
3. My professional values: I enjoy people, communication, transparency, and collaboration in research. My goal is for collaboration to turn into friendships that last a lifetime. For example, the farmers I work with share life successes and challenges with me (not research or even farm related) long after a project has ended.

[Beth Herbel-Eisenmann]

1. My research focus. My scholarship has used various types of participatory methodologies and includes long term partnerships with educators both in and outside of school. We’ve drawn on a range of ideas from sociolinguistics, critical discourse studies, critical mathematics education, intersectional feminism, positioning theory, and postmodern theories to critically challenge ideas, methods, and practices in mathematics education. By doing so, the work generated within the partnerships not only explores theories/ideas in practice but also speaks back to the theories/ideas. Our overarching goal in the work is to create experiences where youth feel they are valued and engage in learning that is relevant, affirming, and conceptually deep. In the partnerships that have involved youth participatory action research, we also work to support youth to do research related to issues they care about and to create change in their communities.
2. Why I enjoy mentoring. Every day I collaborate with people, I learn new things about myself, the world, my scholarship, etc. I enjoy mentoring because I love to hear about people’s perspectives and dreams about the world and their work and support them to enact their desires in ways that honor their perspectives and journey. It brings me hope that we can work together, learn from one other, and create change toward more just systems and structures.
3. My professional values. First and foremost, I try to create relationships built on critical hope, dignity, trust, and mutual respect. As a white, cisgender, monolingual woman, I work to be diligent about attending to and challenging long-standing systems that have disenfranchised and dehumanized many people. This is particularly relevant to STEM as one considers the epistemic, material harm that it has done in the world, alongside considering the potential for STEM education to create spaces where people thrive and find joy. We all have important ideas, feelings, and visions for how the world could be, and I recognize that ‘objective’, impersonal knowing is often privileged over experiential, emotional forms.  Thus, I value conversation, time, listening and brainstorming with people and am committed to doing work that prioritizes the perspectives of people most marginalized by the policies and practices of dominant institutions (e.g. schools/universities) because these perspectives can reveal power and possibilities for liberation in ways that sanctioned forms cannot.

[Preeti Nain]

My research focus. With eight years of experience in academia and industry, I provide data-driven solutions for end-of-life renewable energy systems by investigating pollution prevention solutions through life cycle assessment and experimental studies. I specialize in human health risk assessment, mass-transport modelling, sustainability, environmental compliance and audits, life cycle assessment of products and research project management.

Why I enjoy mentoring. I have been mentoring and guiding Masters and PhD students from last seven years which made me realize that I love helping students to identify their goals and establish themselves in the environmental engineering research. The process of mentoring make me learn new things everyday and gain new perspective. It brings me joy and satisfaction to guide a new PhD student on his/her initial years of research. I also love organ sing K-12 outreach activities and educate students about the renewable energy systems, and the role they can play to mitigate global warming and reduce carbon emissions.

My professional values. I enjoy working with other people, brainstorming new ideas, collaborating and researching on a new aspect of environmental research. My love for environment and make the world a better place motivate me to work with different researchers and find sustainable solutions for the various pollution issues. I want the community, especially the upcoming young generation to think and play their part to make our environment a better place with sustainable energy and less pollution.

• This reply was modified 2 months ago by Preeti Nain.

[Jose Mendoza-Cortes]

1) My research focus;
is on the development of theoretical and computational techniques for Quantum Simulations, Machine Learning, and Multiscale simulations to study energy, processes, and materials, especially structural, electronic, transport, and optical properties, low-dimensional systems, and nanostructures.

2) Why I enjoy mentoring;
I love the interactions, and how is a two-way street. Sometimes my experience helps, but sometimes I get to learn something new, or have a conversation with someone who is as passionate about the same topic as myself.

3) My professional values.
I am a theoretical condensed matter physicist and material scientist, that specializes in computational – physics/materials science/chemistry/engineering, and many-body theory. In other words, I study methods for solving the Schrödinger’s or Dirac’s equation, machine learning equations, among others. These methods include development of computational algorithms and their mathematical properties.

[Jose Mendoza-Cortes]

1) My research focus;
is on the development of theoretical and computational techniques for Quantum Simulations, Machine Learning, and Multiscale simulations to study energy, processes, and materials, especially structural, electronic, transport, and optical properties, low-dimensional systems, and nanostructures.

2) Why I enjoy mentoring;

I was part of the APS national committee on diversity and inclusion (9 persons), which developed
the Bridge program. This is now expanded into the Inclusive Graduate Education Network (IGEN),
which is made of 30 societies (including ACS, MRS, APS), corporations, and national laboratories,
funded with a 5-year $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation. This created one of
the most influential programs in post-graduate education for minorities in the USA. This program
has helped to enroll a total of 246 PhD students comprised of minorities throughout the country
enrolled in 31 PhD programs in Chemistry. From these students, ∼1/3 are women, ∼1/3 are
African-Americans, ∼2/3 are Hispanics/Latinx and several are indigenous students.

I have focused on computational training for underrepresented
students in STEM fields to enhance diversity and inclusion. The goal is to increase the
exposure and expertise of students for the growing needs of industry, national labs, and academia.
The Mendoza lab has hosted 31 trainee-students, from which at least 80% are considered from
underrepresented minorities in STEM fields. From the former undergraduate researchers, 5 are
currently in graduate programs in a STEM field, 11 in industry, and 1 created her own company.
An undergraduate, K. L. Lucht co-authored 3 papers with me; a first author published paper with
only two authors [Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 2015] and other 2 second author papers [Journal
of Chemical Physics, 2018 and Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 2018]. A minority female undergraduate
published a paper and now is in graduate school [Macromolecules, 2018]. Undergraduate
Alex A. Aduenko co-authored a seminal paper on sorption theory [ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces,
2018]. Another female undergraduate, Stephanie Marxsen published a pre-print/ArXiV that
is in the process of submission to a Journal on Quantum Chemistry. More recently, Dr. Mendoza
has been working with two undergraduates on using machine learning for chemistry and mathematics,
and the pre-print is being deposited on ArXiV. I have also directed 3 undergraduate theses
for minority students [Leon Gonzalez, 2015; Stephanie Marxsen, 2018; and Jose Castro, 2020].Research Experiences for Teachers. I have hosted two middle school teachers from Florida State
University School and Swift Creek Middle School through the Research Experiences for Teachers
(RET) at Maglab. I will continue doing this through different programs because the teacher go back
to their classrooms and teach more students the tools some basic tools we used in the lab through
many years, thus it is a compound effect.

3) My professional values.
Honesty, transparency, rigorous scientific thinking, and debate.

 

 

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