CGS summer intern Kay Gomes Saul chose the New York City campus of Pace University for her undergraduate education because she thought it would offer her a lot of opportunities. She also wanted to stay in a major metropolitan city. Saul spent the majority of her childhood in South America, moving to New York during high school, and she feared the discrimination she could face if she moved to a less diverse city.

Double majoring in English and sociology/anthropology, she planned to attend graduate school to earn a PhD in either sociology or anthropology, but her plans were upended. “I was diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease called Keratoconus,” said Saul. “So, I was slowly going blind during undergrad, and I eventually went completely blind at the start of my junior year. I was fortunate to have two corneal transplants, and I started to think about medical school as an option, but I realized it was not the right fit for me.”

After interning at a few non-profits, Saul received a job offer in the private sector right before graduation. She worked with several small businesses and started to notice a significant lack of leadership. “I was motivated basically by having really bad bosses. I realized how many small business owners were looking for direction. A lot of them were first-generation entrepreneurs from immigrant populations, and I saw an opportunity to help guide them with strategy and project management,” said Saul. “The lack of empathy in leadership started to get to me.”

Saul began working for a business that implemented upward evaluations. This meant that the 10-person team she managed had the opportunity to give her feedback. “It was an interesting experience. I scored pretty low on EQ, and I realized that I was contributing to the same problem I had identified in my own managers. I didn't have a mentor in the workplace to teach me how to be a more empathetic leader. I started reading books on leadership, took a ‘leading with EQ’ course, and really invested in being a better manager and leader. The curiosity grew and inspired me to pursue an MBA. I chose the University of Illinois – Gies College of Business because of their mission to democratize graduate education and make MBAs more accessible.” From Saul’s perspective, being an expert in a field is very different than leading people in that field. “It's like the difference between knowing something and teaching something. Leadership is all encompassing; it's teaching and learning to relate to others. It's also about being vulnerable and willing to put the needs of your employees ahead of your own.”

When Saul graduates with her MBA from the Gies MBA program, she hopes to work for a larger company. “I want to help corporations expand internationally in ways that are socially and environmentally sustainable. There are enormous opportunities in other countries, but business expansion should avoid exploitation of the people and the land at all costs.”

Saul says her best advice for prospective graduate students is to find a mentor you can relate to, someone who you see aspects of yourself in. “I went through undergrad and most of my career without that, and I think about how my life would be different if I’d taken the opportunity to find a mentor who I saw myself in. I’m multiracial, multicultural, and an immigrant and I felt I was really different from everyone else for a long time. I had a very complex racial identity, and I didn't know where I fit. If you see someone you admire, tell them, and don’t be afraid to ask for guidance.”

In addition to pursuing her MBA and working, Saul is a competitive power lifter. She’s faced additional health challenges in recent years and says she’s learned lessons from being a competitive athlete that she’s applied to her work and her studies. “Part of my recovery was rebuilding strength, which led me to power lifting. My coach is an extraordinary leader, and he’s been very influential. Watching his leadership in action helped lead me to pursue my MBA and has helped me learn to set small, achievable goals.”

Saul credits her ability to self-motivate with getting her though all the adversity and obstacles she’s faced. “When you realize tomorrow isn’t promised, you feel this internal drive to do more and be better. I look forward to the day when I feel content.” Until then, Saul will be finishing her MBA, working part time, serving as a board member of UIUC’s Students Advising Graduate Education (SAGE) and as a course assistant (CA) for the MBA program, volunteering, and she hopes to be an MBA-program mentor next spring. “From my perspective, leading doesn't have anything to do with being the boss.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact: Katherine Hazelrigg, CGS: (202) 461-3888 / khazelrigg@cgs.nche.edu

Washington, DC — The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) has announced that Lisa Tedesco, currently vice provost for academic affairs – graduate studies and dean of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies at Emory University, has been named the CGS Dean-in-Residence for 2021-2022.  Tedesco, a long-time advocate for graduate education, has served as a member of the boards of CGS and the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) and as president of the Association of American Universities (AAU) Association of Graduate Schools.

CGS established the Dean-in-Residence program to incorporate a campus-based perspective across the Council’s projects and initiatives. The program offers an opportunity for graduate deans and associate or assistant deans at member institutions to spend an academic year at CGS’s headquarters in Washington, DC. Each year the CGS president selects one applicant to pursue projects aligned with the dean’s interests and the Council’s needs.

Tedesco will help the Council on projects connecting best practices for mentoring and mental health/well-being. 

“Lisa has spent her academic career dedicated to building environments where students can do their best work, supporting student mental health and well-being, creating opportunities for interdisciplinary study and professional development, and ensuring equitable access to quality graduate education,” said CGS President Suzanne T. Ortega. “Her expertise in health promotion and wellness will help CGS members better understand the power of high-quality mentoring, in addressing the value of wellbeing for student success.”

In accepting the appointment, Tedesco expressed her readiness to join the CGS team. “I’m so looking forward to this opportunity. Much of my academic career has focused on collaboration across teams. The dean-in-residence role will allow me to work on connecting and expanding best practices representing the commitments and values of CGS and the graduate communities served by our leadership. The Council is an essential resource for anyone interested in graduate education, and I look forward to contributing to its mission.”

Tedesco received her doctorate in educational psychology from the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Before her time at Emory, she was a professor and associate dean in the School of Dentistry at the University of Michigan (UM) and also served as UM’s Vice President and Secretary and as Interim Provost. She will step down from her current role at the end of August; her Dean-in-Residence position begins on Oct. 1.

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As CGS summer intern Lydia Gandy-Fastovich was finishing her bachelor’s degree in human development at the University of California, Davis, she knew she wanted to do something in education. “I was really interested in education and how it’s a springboard for people to expand opportunities. In the K-12 setting, it’s also something that everyone in the U.S. experiences and it’s a very impactful time. But, teaching didn’t feel like a future career for me,” said Gandy-Fastovich. So, she worked in the human resources office at a school district and learned the business side of education and how the administration functions, but she didn’t feel like she was making an impact.

After applying to a few different graduate programs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Gandy-Fastovich settled on the educational leadership and policy analysis doctoral program. She had been drawn to education policy but had no experience in it.  She says, “The ELPA program was one I felt very connected to, and it had a social justice oriented focus that I thought would be important for my training.”

In the early stages of her dissertation research, Gandy-Fastovich will focus on K-12 education, specifically working with parents who have children receiving special education in public K-12 schools. Of particular interest to her is working with parents of color and parents who aren’t native English speakers to learn more about their experiences navigating the system. According to Gandy-Fastovich, those communities are often left out, and data show there’s a disproportionate number of students of color in special education classes, especially Black boys. “I’m trying to unpack that a little bit. There’s federal law about special education that requires a parent be involved and provide a more holistic view of the child. I wonder if there are inconsistencies or gaps in how some parents are included that hinders that holistic view. A child not doing well in school doesn’t necessarily mean they need special education.”

While unclear as to what comes after her doctorate, Gandy-Fastovich has enjoyed working in higher education and could see herself following the higher education administration path, but she’s also enjoyed learning about the public policy and government affairs side of higher education during her time at CGS. “Understanding how advocacy happens, and all the ways you have to be plugged into what’s happening in the public policy arena has been eye opening. I’m learning how to translate complex policy so that it’s more accessible to a broad audience, and I’ve found that to be very exciting and really important work.”

Along the way, Gandy-Fastovich’s been fortunate to have good mentors. As an undergraduate, she had a graduate student mentor who was instrumental in helping her feel confident that graduate school was an option. For the last three years, she’s worked in the UW-Madison Graduate School’s Office of Professional Development. “I don’t know where I’d be if I hadn’t had that job opportunity and met my two supervisors, Eileen Callahan and Amy Fruchtman,” said Gandy-Fastovich. “The focus was always on us as students first, and then leveraging what we learned to build stronger professional development opportunities for graduate students. I actually knew a bit about CGS before my internship, because we used the CGS PhD Career Pathways data to determine programming and develop resources.”

Gandy-Fastovich’s advice to prospective graduate students is simple: connect with graduate students and mentors and learn as much as you can from them. “I’ve found that graduate students really appreciate the opportunity to talk about their work, so if you reach out to someone, they’ll generally be excited to talk to you.” Gandy-Fastovich also recognizes that people’s experiences and levels of comfort vary and believes the hidden curriculum is a challenge for many. “My family always assumed I would go to college; that was never a question. But, that’s not everyone’s experience and keeping perspective is so important.”

That leaves deferral as the only option. More Iranian doctoral students deferred admission last year than students from any other country, a survey by the Council of Graduate Schools found.

Ariana Garcia, a CGS summer intern, is originally from a big city in New Mexico, but she was raised in a small, college town in Washington State. Her dad moved the family to Pullman for the protected environment and better opportunities. As Garcia says, “It was definitely a safe town, which was great, but I could count the people of color on one hand. That experience brought a whole other set of issues, including an identity crisis, as I tried to find my place. So, when I went to college, I wanted to meet other people of color, more people who looked like me.” Garcia chose to do that at Washington State University, in her hometown, but she found her real home in WSU’s McNair program.

The WSU McNair director, Raymond Herrera, encouraged Garcia to consider the program. He knew she would be a great fit, and they both knew that with aspirations to become a counselor, Garcia would need to go to graduate school to be able to practice. Learning to be a researcher is a key part of McNair, and while Garcia knew that it would be great preparation for her advanced study, it wasn’t something she had much interest in at the time. As Garcia says, “I thought to myself, I don't want to do research, but I do want to go to grad school. So, I'll do this program and the research, but just to help me get to grad school.”

Then Garcia joined a research project that looked at how media was related to sexual violence in relationships, and how media informed adolescent college students and their perception of relationships. She got involved in the project and started presenting her findings at undergraduate research conferences. She fell in love with it, but she still wanted a career that would allow her to help people.

So, Garcia applied to master’s programs in counseling and chose to attend Colorado State University, where she earned her master’s degree in counseling. “I liked it, but it wasn't fueling me. The only time I felt very passionate about what I was doing was when I was doing research. I always joke that McNair bamboozled me into liking research and set me on a whole different trajectory,” says Garcia. She started working in realms where she could use her counseling skills, but not as a therapist, and ended up in student affairs. She worked with scholarship groups for First Generation college students and undocumented students and enjoyed it, but she missed research. “I noticed the CSU students were having similar challenges as the WSU students. I realized these are such large systemic issues, and that's what compelled me to pursue my PhD.”

Now, Garcia is a doctoral student in higher education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, focusing on equity in graduate education. Each year, she also mentors five undergraduate students who are interested in graduate school. She enjoys working with the students and helping them navigate the hidden curriculum of graduate education. She credits her mentor, Dr. Herrera, for setting an example of good mentorship. He still calls her the first week of classes to check in and see how she’s doing. Garcia believes that having a good advisor and mentor improves your entire experience. She hopes to continue that work as a faculty member after she finishes her doctorate.

Garcia says her best advice for prospective graduate students is to talk to as many people as possible and to connect with people who are in roles similar to your interests. But, she says, “The number one thing is to look for funding opportunities. Most people have never heard the word assistantship before. When I was beginning my master’s at Colorado State, I met with a professor, who ended up being my advisor, and asked about available assistantships. She said that she was actually looking for someone, and then she hired me. I was the only person in my cohort who had an assistantship and everyone wanted to know how I got it, and all I did was ask. I credit that to McNair, because they prepared me. They told me to ask.”

Other-focused is how CGS summer intern Ahjah Johnson describes the guiding principle of her life. She has big career goals, but at the heart of everything is her desire to help people. As a freshman at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, she was working to get into the nursing program, but by her sophomore year, she was struggling to meet the requirements. She looked at the courses she had and compared them to other options and discovered that public health was a good fit with her academic interests and would still allow her to focus on helping other people. So, she pivoted and says, “Everything worked out perfectly. It aligns with who I am as a person and my values. It felt a little bit like fate.”

Johnson was part of the NASPA Undergraduate Fellows Program (NUFP) at the University of Arkansas. The initiative’s mission is to increase the number of historically disenfranchised and underrepresented professionals in student affairs and/or higher education. She describes the experience as intense, but credits her mentor Jameel Braddock with helping her navigate the program. Johnson says she was over committed in extracurricular activities, and “he called me in and was like, ‘this physiology grade isn't going to come up unless you let something go.’ He may have been the only person on campus who I felt really had my best interest in mind. We still keep in touch.”

After graduating with her B.A. in public health and an eight week internship at Washington University in St. Louis, Johnson pivoted again. This time to The Ohio State University for their master’s in student affairs program. After her time in the undergraduate fellows program, she decided that she wanted a career in student affairs, and that meant going to graduate school. To Johnson the connection between public health and student affairs is obvious: they’re both other-focused fields.

Johnson is currently in the student affairs higher education doctoral program at Miami University of Ohio, where she’s studying various structures of support and curriculum design. Ahjah’s research widely focuses on the identity development of Black women in higher education and beyond, as well as their intersecting oppressions of adultism and adultification.  When she finishes her PhD, Johnson says she’s open to a lot of opportunities, but her long-term goal is to be tenured faculty and someday, dean of a graduate school. She served as a graduate student representative on Miami University’s search committee and found it to be an eye-opening experience, but her biggest takeaway was that there needs to be more people who look like her: in the applicant pool, in the room where the decisions are made, and in higher education more broadly.

In addition to her doctoral work, Johnson is focused on giving back to her university community. She’s a writing consultant on campus, helping undergraduate and graduate students improve their writing, something she says she never thought possible given her dyslexia. Johnson is also the incoming president of the Graduate Students of Color Association at Miami University.

When asked about advice for prospective graduate students, Johnson replied, “Whatever obstacle you think you have, you can overcome them. I didn't find out I had dyslexia or ADHD until I was working full time, right before I started my PhD program. I jumped over a lot of obstacles, a lot of bad grades and a lot of terrible exams, and only recently understood why it was so hard for me. So, anything is possible. Don't count yourself out, count yourself in.”

Sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF# 2100343), Understanding Roles of Masters Education in Entry Into, and Upskilling and Reskilling for, the STEM Workforce will contribute to the development of a data infrastructure for future research on master’s education while providing more nuanced insights into labor market outcomes of master’s degrees by various fields of study, gender, race/ethnicity, and career stages. In particular, the research will shed light on how master’s education may facilitate transitions to STEM careers for non-STEM undergraduate majors. The project will build fundamental knowledge about how master’s education across all fields prepares the STEM workforce for today, and also examine the extent to which skills, expertise, and competencies instilled through master’s align with rapidly evolving jobs and industries of the future.

Over the three-year project, a census of all master’s degree recipients from ten U.S. institutions of higher education within the CGS membership will be conducted through an exit survey, which will serve as a sample complement to the NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED). The ten universities will be chosen through an RFP process that will assess applications based on the number of master’s programs offered and degrees conferred and willingness to field the survey electronically to all master’s recipients for the duration of the project. The RFP will be issued in fall 2021.

Press Release 

New CGS Project Examines Role of Master’s Education in STEM Workforce Preparation and Development

Contact

Hironao Okahana

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this project do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Diamond Cunningham describes her undergraduate experience at the University of South Florida as trial and error. She knew what she wanted to do, but she wasn’t sure how to get there. She’s always been interested in biology and the sciences, but she was also interested in the intersection between science and policy. Cunningham decided to double major in biology and political science but didn’t yet see a connection. During office hours with one of her professors, she finally understood how her two interests would fit together: the field of public health.

Cunningham spent her remaining time at USF learning more about the field and developing her professional networks. She thought about graduate school but decided to take a gap year. “My professors and family members really discouraged me from doing this. They were concerned that the break would deter me from ever going back, but I knew it was the best decision for me especially since I was not financially prepared to start another academic program,” said Cunningham. She spent the year working full time at a nonprofit clinic and part time as a pharmacy tech. She wanted to remain in health and have an opportunity to work directly with people.

In addition to working two jobs, Cunningham spent time applying to master’s of public health programs. The Rutgers School of Public health was the best fit primarily because of their Urban Public Health concentration. Cunningham wanted to understand overall health status and disparities in urban populations and how diverse urban factors and environments influence health status. “I chose to go to grad school for a lot of different reasons. Working at the nonprofit clinic during my gap year, I shadowed and learned from coworkers who had a lot more experience and could efficiently execute interventions for the populations we worked with. I realized that in order to make a real contribution to the field, I needed more experience, training, and credentials. I wanted to learn more and ensure I had a strong foundation, so that I could be a better resource for the communities I planned to serve” she said.

Cunningham says her master’s program really pushed her further into the field and gave her the professional support and mentorship she needed to grow. Her academic advisor, Dr. Devin English, remains one of the biggest role models. She says English helped her manage the competing priorities of graduate school and that meeting with him regularly helped her feel more comfortable and confident.

Cunningham urges prospective graduate students to do what works for them, not anyone else. She believes it’s important that students sit down and be realistic about their goals and expectations and to be open to possibilities. She also says it’s important to be visible, “go to those office hours and professional development opportunities, read the department and college newsletters for scholarship announcements, stay involved.”

Diamond is in her last few days of her CGS summer internship and will begin her doctoral program in public health this fall at Tulane University, and she’s excited for the opportunity to work in Dr. David Chae’s Society, Health, and Racial Equity (SHARE) lab studying social equity and epidemiology. When asked whether she still thinks the break between undergraduate and graduate school was the right decision, Cunningham said, “The gap year changed my life. I would not be where I am now if it had not been for the experiences I had working during that time. It was absolutely the right decision.”

Visit the GradImpact Feature Gallery to learn more about the amazing, innovative research being done by graduate students and alumni across the world.

Philip Hieter is an award-winning biochemist currently working at the Michael Smith Laboratories at the University of British Columbia. By using yeast as a model to understand the causes of genome structure and sequence changes underlying tumorigenesis, Hieter has identified genetic vulnerabilities in tumor cells “that could be exploited for therapeutic benefit in the treatment of cancer.” In addition to being elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as the National Academy of Sciences, Hieter won the 2018 George W. Beadle Award from the Genetics Society of America for his work facilitating collaboration and community among life sciences.  

Before his accomplished scientific career, Hieter was a doctoral student at Johns Hopkins University and winner of the 1981 CGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award. We sat down with Dr. Hieter to learn more about his work and any advice he has for students who want to make the most out of their time in graduate school. 

What are you currently working on?

Genome instability distinguishes cancer cells from normal cells and as such can be exploited as a genetic vulnerability to develop therapies that selectively kill cells exhibiting genome instability. Over the past 35 years, my lab has been studying the molecular components required for chromosome transmission in yeast, with the over-arching goal of relating our work in yeast to human cancer. We are currently fascinated by the finding that inhibitors of the cancer drug target, PARP1, cause cytotoxicity in BRCA1 mutated cancer cells, not because of the loss of PARP enzyme activity per se, but rather from the trapping of the PARP protein on DNA that causes a toxic lesion. We have recently developed a yeast-based screening system that exploits point mutations that more accurately mimic the activity of chemical inhibitors that trap their protein target on DNA. We believe this approach will increase the chance that drug targets will translate into effective therapies, and opens a new avenue for target screening that will identify novel therapeutic targets that would be missed by current approaches.

How did your graduate training shape your current career?

My thesis advisor, Phil Leder, was an inspirational, creative scientist and mentor to me, who truly shaped my approach to research, and opened the doors that I was fortunate to have available to me as my career developed as an independent scientist. The Leder laboratory had incorporated all the cutting-edge recombinant DNA technologies of the time (in the late 70’s; bacteriophage lambda DNA library construction, restriction enzymes and plasmid vectors, DNA sequencing), and had them working very efficiently. This suite of technologies enabled us to tackle previously unapproachable problems in antibody gene structure and function. My experience as a graduate student in the Leder laboratory impressed upon me the critical importance of technology development and its implementation in driving research productivity.  As a result, technology development has been a major theme in my independent laboratory and a key to the success of my students and postdocs over the years. 

What was the most valuable piece of advice that you received in graduate school?

Towards the end of my graduate research work, Phil Leder told me to take time, to explore, talk with people, and try to figure out who I wanted to work with during a postdoctoral fellowship.  Phil Leder’s advice was to pick an exciting research area that was taking off, and that complemented my expertise and knowledge, so that I could “connect the dots” in a unique way for whatever next step I would be taking longer term.  After much consideration and consultation with colleagues, this led me to Ron Davis’s lab at Stanford, moving from the study of mammalian antibody genes using recombinant DNA technology as a graduate student, to the study of yeast chromosome biology using yeast genetics (including the newly developed methods for DNA transformation and gene replacement in yeast) as a postdoc. The intersection between these diverse approaches turned out to be highly productive, and had a positive impact on my career in the long term.

If you could provide one piece of advice to a current graduate student in your field, what would it be?

Pick an important problem, surround yourself with good colleagues (mentor, lab mates, academic environment, collaborators), and go deep. If possible, include a “horizontal” component to your research in which you develop technology that is broadly applicable to the research community. The “vertical” component will be the application of technology to an important problem to go deep into the biological mechanisms.  During your academic journey, be grateful for having the privilege to pursue a research problem as a member of the international community of scientists, and definitely make time for yourself to have fun outside the lab.  Work hard, play hard, and remember - sleeping is highly over-rated!

To learn more about Philip Hieter's work, visit his faculty page on the University of British Columbia website.