Gina Schatteman
Interview Posted By: Ashley Smith
1. Can you tell us a little about your background? i.e. Where you grew up, what education do you have, a summary of your resume, did you always want to do what you are doing now, when did you start to become interested in STEM, what internships/ volunteering
My dad was an engineer and I can remember spending hours on logic and spatial puzzles that he gave me and my siblings when I was young. I loved it when my older brother showed me the math he was doing in school, and I begged my parents to send me to math camp after second grade. After 6th grade I went to a summer program during which we were supposed to solve a science problem. I couldn’t figure it out. I was frustrated and annoyed at myself for not getting it, but I was totally hooked on science. It was fun doing something that made me think so hard.
I didn’t like high school so I dropped out after my junior year and went to college without graduating. I started in political science but eventually majored in chemistry. Other than the unbelievably good social life, the best part of college was doing research. I hadn’t grown out of my love for science. After college, with no clue as to what I wanted to do with my life and being in debt, I worked two jobs for a year. The following year I entered graduate school mostly because I didn’t know what else to do. I am a champion of test-taking anxiety so I can’t say I enjoyed my coursework in graduate school, but I still loved doing research. That was enough to make me stick it out and get my PhD.
Now, some highlights of my work life. While writing my PhD thesis, I managed ice cream stores to feed myself. I even went to ice cream school and become a professional ice cream maker. I did post-doctoral training with a Nobel prize winner who I really disliked. After my post-doctoral work, I became a research scientist in a lab built by Ross Perot (who ran for president and got a lot of votes).
I worked as a research scientist for about twelve years and then took a faculty position at a university. I did that for eight years, but took a leave of absence for two years to accept a science education policy fellowship in Washington DC. When I came back to my faculty position, my heart was no longer in it. I spent too much time doing everything but research in my faculty job. I decided to leave and continue my work in science education policy instead. I co-founded and am currently Co-Director of a STEM education non-profit organization.
2. What exactly IS your job? What do you do on a day to day basis?
As a faculty member I spent about 4 hrs/day preparing course materials, meeting with students, grading, and dealing with teaching and advising bureaucracy. Another 2 hrs/day was devoted to reading, writing, and attending meetings related to professional service. This might be committee work or grant review, for example.
The remaining 4 hrs/day were spent on research related activities. That meant filling out paperwork so that I could work with animals, humans, cells, and chemicals, making sure my lab workers were all properly trained and current on their many required certifications, managing the lab budget and personnel, writing grants, and on the rare occasions that time permitted, reading and writing papers, meeting with my lab folks, doing experiments, and analyzing data.
Currently, I work about 25 hrs/wk for the non-profit. About 20% of my time is spent on reading, 10% fundraising and writing grants, 5% managing finances, 45% meeting with people to get ideas and develop partnerships, 10 % doing event planning, and 10% having fun analyzing program evaluation data.
3. How does STEM relate to your job?How do you use the information you learned from your degree in your job?
My PhD is in theoretical chemistry, which is pretty much physics. It sounds crazy, but even though I got my PhD in it, I found I wasn’t that well-suited to physics. I decided I needed to do a different kind of science for a career. It’s a long story, but somehow I wound up working in a cell biology. I love it and worked in cell biology for more twenty years.
How does someone go from theoretical chemistry, where you never touch anything but a computer, to cell biology where you spend your time using pipettes, manipulating cell culture dishes, and working with animals? It is much easier than you think. What graduate school really teaches you is how to do science, use engineering principles, and apply math to solve problems. Yes you learn lots of “facts”, but it is learning to internalize the process of science that is really important. Scientific training teaches you to look at the world in a different way. Once you learn to think scientifically it is easy look at a set of data, any data, and analyze it scientifically. You can always look up “facts”.
I apply so many of the math, computer, and logical thinking, and engineering design skills that I learned in school even in my non-profit work. They have made it easy for me to organize events, manage finances, understand program evaluation and science education research, and work with scientists and engineers across a multitude of disciplines to create STEM programs and do STEM policy advocacy.
4. Have you faced any discrimination/ challenges being a woman in a stem field? If so, how did you deal with it? Do you have any advice for up and coming women in STEM?
Every woman faces discrimination in the workplace whether in a STEM field or not. Sometimes you can do something about it, sometimes you can’t. Fighting back can be difficult and may makes things better or worse. Choose your battles carefully.
I’ll give you a few examples of discrimination that I faced. My college research advisor agreed to write me only a few letters of recommendation for graduate school because he said I would just get married and have babies. When I was in graduate school, everyone assumed that I was sleeping with my mentor. How else could a woman be succeeding in the man’s field of theoretical chemistry? When I was faculty, my Chair told me that I was not ready to apply for tenure even though I had more grant money than anyone in the Department. (I ignored him and got it.) He also told me I needed to learn how to work on a committee before he could appoint me to one, even though I was on the board of directors of two national professional societies and the president of the state chapter of another.
On the few occasions where I tried to confront discrimination directly, for example, by complaining, I had little success. A better tack was to find work arounds. So, rather than demand that my Chair assign me to departmental committees (something I needed for promotion) I made sure I was appointed to university level committees. When I was offered a prestigious fellowship, I copied the Dean on the letter asking my Chair for a leave of absence to take it. Thus, if he declined my request, he would look foolish to the Dean. Also, it meant that I would not have to appeal to the Dean, forcing her to choose between making a Chair look bad or losing an opportunity to bring prestige to the University.
Don’t feel sorry for yourself. There are lots of kinds of discrimination out there. Sex discrimination is just one. Yes be annoyed, and definitely push back as much as you can, but don’t get obsessed about it.
5. What is the best and worst part of your job? What do you look forward to in your job on a day to day basis? What do you wish you could change?
As a faculty member –
The worst part of my job was teaching a large introductory lecture course at 7:30 in the morning. Who is awake at that hour anyway? It is not fun trying to engage an audience of half (or completely) asleep students. We should have all been home in bed.
As for the best, I loved playing with and analyzing data. I could do it for hours and hours as long as I had lots of caffeine. I also really liked helping my students prepare presentations for scientific meetings. It was painful because we were all nervous, but it was also fun to see how excited they were about the opportunity to show their work to the scientific community.
As a Director of a STEM Non-profit -
I find fundraising is the worst part of my job. I don’t mind writing a grant, but I hate having to ask someone for money face-to-face. Of course, the best part of the work is analyzing the data I get from our program evaluations. Yep, I am still a science nerd.
6. How do you balance your work and personal life? Any secrets or advice you’d like to share?
I never have figured this one out. Fortunately, my husband of 25 years has never found this to be a problem. Also, we don’t have kids, so that helps.
7. What do you define success as?
That’s pretty much a moving target for me, because it is achieving whatever goal I have set for myself at the time. I could say to be happy, since what makes me happy is achieving my goal. It also makes people around me happy because they are normally joint goals, so we all succeed. It’s hard to be happy if the folks around you aren’t.
8. What is one personality trait that you think is universally important for a successful career?
Flexibility, and if I may have a second, I would say respect for others.
9. Who was a mentor to you throughout your career? (can be more than one!) What did they teach you? How did they impact your life?
I had only one mentor. Ironically, he was once falsely villainized in a sex discrimination suit. He taught me how to network, introduced me and my work to his colleagues, helped me write better grants, shared in my frustrations and successes, and kept me motivated. The most valuable thing he taught me was how to be a mentor. He showed me that helping my own students succeed is an amazing reward. He taught me to respect the differences in my students and to help them achieve their goals, not the goals I wanted them to have.
Though he and I look at the world through totally different lenses, we have been friends for twenty years.
10. What do you think is the best advice you've ever received ? What advice would you give your younger self if you had the chance? What’s one piece of advice you can pass on to us?
The best piece of advice I ever received was to respect others and treat them fairly.
The best piece of advice that I have to give other than the above, is, don’t make excuses. Yes, some of us are thrown a lot more curves than others, and the world is often unjust. Yet, even if shabby treatment or bad luck keep us from getting where we planned or hoped to be, we shouldn’t use adversity as an excuse to give up trying to do something that is good, to achieve a scaled down goal, or treat others fairly.
My dad was an engineer and I can remember spending hours on logic and spatial puzzles that he gave me and my siblings when I was young. I loved it when my older brother showed me the math he was doing in school, and I begged my parents to send me to math camp after second grade. After 6th grade I went to a summer program during which we were supposed to solve a science problem. I couldn’t figure it out. I was frustrated and annoyed at myself for not getting it, but I was totally hooked on science. It was fun doing something that made me think so hard.
I didn’t like high school so I dropped out after my junior year and went to college without graduating. I started in political science but eventually majored in chemistry. Other than the unbelievably good social life, the best part of college was doing research. I hadn’t grown out of my love for science. After college, with no clue as to what I wanted to do with my life and being in debt, I worked two jobs for a year. The following year I entered graduate school mostly because I didn’t know what else to do. I am a champion of test-taking anxiety so I can’t say I enjoyed my coursework in graduate school, but I still loved doing research. That was enough to make me stick it out and get my PhD.
Now, some highlights of my work life. While writing my PhD thesis, I managed ice cream stores to feed myself. I even went to ice cream school and become a professional ice cream maker. I did post-doctoral training with a Nobel prize winner who I really disliked. After my post-doctoral work, I became a research scientist in a lab built by Ross Perot (who ran for president and got a lot of votes).
I worked as a research scientist for about twelve years and then took a faculty position at a university. I did that for eight years, but took a leave of absence for two years to accept a science education policy fellowship in Washington DC. When I came back to my faculty position, my heart was no longer in it. I spent too much time doing everything but research in my faculty job. I decided to leave and continue my work in science education policy instead. I co-founded and am currently Co-Director of a STEM education non-profit organization.
2. What exactly IS your job? What do you do on a day to day basis?
As a faculty member I spent about 4 hrs/day preparing course materials, meeting with students, grading, and dealing with teaching and advising bureaucracy. Another 2 hrs/day was devoted to reading, writing, and attending meetings related to professional service. This might be committee work or grant review, for example.
The remaining 4 hrs/day were spent on research related activities. That meant filling out paperwork so that I could work with animals, humans, cells, and chemicals, making sure my lab workers were all properly trained and current on their many required certifications, managing the lab budget and personnel, writing grants, and on the rare occasions that time permitted, reading and writing papers, meeting with my lab folks, doing experiments, and analyzing data.
Currently, I work about 25 hrs/wk for the non-profit. About 20% of my time is spent on reading, 10% fundraising and writing grants, 5% managing finances, 45% meeting with people to get ideas and develop partnerships, 10 % doing event planning, and 10% having fun analyzing program evaluation data.
3. How does STEM relate to your job?How do you use the information you learned from your degree in your job?
My PhD is in theoretical chemistry, which is pretty much physics. It sounds crazy, but even though I got my PhD in it, I found I wasn’t that well-suited to physics. I decided I needed to do a different kind of science for a career. It’s a long story, but somehow I wound up working in a cell biology. I love it and worked in cell biology for more twenty years.
How does someone go from theoretical chemistry, where you never touch anything but a computer, to cell biology where you spend your time using pipettes, manipulating cell culture dishes, and working with animals? It is much easier than you think. What graduate school really teaches you is how to do science, use engineering principles, and apply math to solve problems. Yes you learn lots of “facts”, but it is learning to internalize the process of science that is really important. Scientific training teaches you to look at the world in a different way. Once you learn to think scientifically it is easy look at a set of data, any data, and analyze it scientifically. You can always look up “facts”.
I apply so many of the math, computer, and logical thinking, and engineering design skills that I learned in school even in my non-profit work. They have made it easy for me to organize events, manage finances, understand program evaluation and science education research, and work with scientists and engineers across a multitude of disciplines to create STEM programs and do STEM policy advocacy.
4. Have you faced any discrimination/ challenges being a woman in a stem field? If so, how did you deal with it? Do you have any advice for up and coming women in STEM?
Every woman faces discrimination in the workplace whether in a STEM field or not. Sometimes you can do something about it, sometimes you can’t. Fighting back can be difficult and may makes things better or worse. Choose your battles carefully.
I’ll give you a few examples of discrimination that I faced. My college research advisor agreed to write me only a few letters of recommendation for graduate school because he said I would just get married and have babies. When I was in graduate school, everyone assumed that I was sleeping with my mentor. How else could a woman be succeeding in the man’s field of theoretical chemistry? When I was faculty, my Chair told me that I was not ready to apply for tenure even though I had more grant money than anyone in the Department. (I ignored him and got it.) He also told me I needed to learn how to work on a committee before he could appoint me to one, even though I was on the board of directors of two national professional societies and the president of the state chapter of another.
On the few occasions where I tried to confront discrimination directly, for example, by complaining, I had little success. A better tack was to find work arounds. So, rather than demand that my Chair assign me to departmental committees (something I needed for promotion) I made sure I was appointed to university level committees. When I was offered a prestigious fellowship, I copied the Dean on the letter asking my Chair for a leave of absence to take it. Thus, if he declined my request, he would look foolish to the Dean. Also, it meant that I would not have to appeal to the Dean, forcing her to choose between making a Chair look bad or losing an opportunity to bring prestige to the University.
Don’t feel sorry for yourself. There are lots of kinds of discrimination out there. Sex discrimination is just one. Yes be annoyed, and definitely push back as much as you can, but don’t get obsessed about it.
5. What is the best and worst part of your job? What do you look forward to in your job on a day to day basis? What do you wish you could change?
As a faculty member –
The worst part of my job was teaching a large introductory lecture course at 7:30 in the morning. Who is awake at that hour anyway? It is not fun trying to engage an audience of half (or completely) asleep students. We should have all been home in bed.
As for the best, I loved playing with and analyzing data. I could do it for hours and hours as long as I had lots of caffeine. I also really liked helping my students prepare presentations for scientific meetings. It was painful because we were all nervous, but it was also fun to see how excited they were about the opportunity to show their work to the scientific community.
As a Director of a STEM Non-profit -
I find fundraising is the worst part of my job. I don’t mind writing a grant, but I hate having to ask someone for money face-to-face. Of course, the best part of the work is analyzing the data I get from our program evaluations. Yep, I am still a science nerd.
6. How do you balance your work and personal life? Any secrets or advice you’d like to share?
I never have figured this one out. Fortunately, my husband of 25 years has never found this to be a problem. Also, we don’t have kids, so that helps.
7. What do you define success as?
That’s pretty much a moving target for me, because it is achieving whatever goal I have set for myself at the time. I could say to be happy, since what makes me happy is achieving my goal. It also makes people around me happy because they are normally joint goals, so we all succeed. It’s hard to be happy if the folks around you aren’t.
8. What is one personality trait that you think is universally important for a successful career?
Flexibility, and if I may have a second, I would say respect for others.
9. Who was a mentor to you throughout your career? (can be more than one!) What did they teach you? How did they impact your life?
I had only one mentor. Ironically, he was once falsely villainized in a sex discrimination suit. He taught me how to network, introduced me and my work to his colleagues, helped me write better grants, shared in my frustrations and successes, and kept me motivated. The most valuable thing he taught me was how to be a mentor. He showed me that helping my own students succeed is an amazing reward. He taught me to respect the differences in my students and to help them achieve their goals, not the goals I wanted them to have.
Though he and I look at the world through totally different lenses, we have been friends for twenty years.
10. What do you think is the best advice you've ever received ? What advice would you give your younger self if you had the chance? What’s one piece of advice you can pass on to us?
The best piece of advice I ever received was to respect others and treat them fairly.
The best piece of advice that I have to give other than the above, is, don’t make excuses. Yes, some of us are thrown a lot more curves than others, and the world is often unjust. Yet, even if shabby treatment or bad luck keep us from getting where we planned or hoped to be, we shouldn’t use adversity as an excuse to give up trying to do something that is good, to achieve a scaled down goal, or treat others fairly.
