Julienne Rutherford
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
I grew up in small-town Ohio near Cleveland. I graduated valedictorian of my class and had already developed an interest in the life sciences, specifically evolutionary biology, but also studied physics, chemistry, and calculus. I was a Zoology-Anthropology double major at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. I knew I didn't want to go into medicine but wasn't sure until after I graduated from college that I wanted to pursue graduate studies. I earned my PhD in Biological Anthropology from Indiana University. While a grad student, I engaged in many different research activities as an intern, research assistant, and volunteer. I volunteered at the Indianapolis Zoo to work with primates. I took (then taught) primatological field courses in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. I worked as a research assistant on a project involving ant social behavior and cooperation. I studied biological anthropology, developmental biology, endocrinology, animal behavior, and anatomy during my PhD tenure. My education has always been multidisciplinary and highly integrative.
2. What exactly IS your job? What do you do on a day to day basis?
I am an assistant professor at a public university. A large part of my day is spent parked in front of a computer, whether at the office or at home, where I work frequently. I engage in a large amount of email correspondence to communicate with students, collaborators, colleagues, and mentees. Lots of email. I do an enormous amount of writing, whether it be grant applications or academic manuscripts. I run statistical analyses of my data from various projects. I am currently involved in five, mostly non overlapping, research projects and am planning on submitting a grant for another. It takes a lot of mental energy everyday to stay focused on the project or task at hand. In addition to research time, I spend a few hours a week teaching or preparing to teach as well as several hours a week on various service activities such as committee work for my institution and professional societies. Only a small amount of my time is spent in the lab but "doing science" is so much bigger than that. All of the time I spend reading, thinking, writing is all part of science.
3. How does STEM relate to your job?How do you use the information you learned from your degree in your job?
As a professor and scholar, my training in STEM is absolutely central to my everyday functions.
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?
I have been targeted with sexual harassment in the form of jokes and unwanted comments about my appearance, my gender, etc. I have also been targeted just by being a woman in a field where women are still paid less than men and shoulder disproportionate burden of family life. It is constant background noise and is sometimes difficult to rise above. I have become engaged in research on sexual harassment and assault in the sciences and that scholarship has been one way that I deal with the reality of being targeted as a woman. My advice for emerging women scientists is to find out your institution's policies about sexual harassment and assault in the workplace (e.g. Title IX at universities) and know your rights and your available mechanisms to report misconduct.
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?
The best part of my work is the satisfaction of working on difficult and important scientific questions that have consequences for improving people's lives. I also love interacting with and inspiring my students and mentees. The hardest part is that a great deal of the business of science is tedious and time-consuming. There is a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy.
6. How do you balance your work and personal life? Any secrets or advice you’d like to share?
I don't believe in balance. My work is my life. I am very much me when I am doing my science or teaching my class, and how I am as a scholar and scientist informs the way I interact with the world outside my office and the way I raise my daughter. You just shove things around to make as much fit as possible. I am also a BIG believer in having leisure time every day. I've never been one of those academics who works 70 hours a week. I just never could do it. I work about 40 hours a week which means that a lot of stuff gets left undone but it also means I have time to watch TV, garden, hang out with my husband and daughter and dog and friends, get my nails done, just be me.
7. What do you define success as?
Satisfaction at the end of the day. Did I do a good day's work? Every now and then, does the culmination of a lot of days, months, years of that work lead to a great publication, a funded grant? That's awesome.
8. What is one personality trait that you think is universally important for a successful career?
That's a great question. Tenacity, I suppose. It's hard to narrow it down to one, so possibly also flexibility to be able to handle closed doors, failed experiments, rejected manuscripts.
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?
Mentor ship has been probably the most important thing in my career. Dr. Suzette Tardif at the Southwest National Primate Research Center took me on when I was a flailing, confused graduate student. I had only the vaguest notion of what I wanted to do for my dissertation research and she made herself available to me, both financially and intellectually. I finished my dissertation eight years ago but Suzette has remained both a trusted mentor and a colleague on current research. She taught me to be thorough and creative in my questioning, to accept my insecurities as being par for the course, and to believe in my ability to do the work. I try to pass that on to my own students and mentees.
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?
There hasn't been on single piece of advice. The best thing that has happened to me throughout my career, starting with my first biology class in sixth grade, was having someone take notice of my enthusiasm for science and foster it. And when those people haven't readily appeared, I went looking for them. I always advice people to take the chance on the cold email or call. Track down the people whose work inspires you and ask them for help. You may get no response (or the response may take months, just like my answers to these questions!) but getting comfortable enough to take that risk of putting yourself out there is an important character-building exercise and can pay enormous dividends in your development as a scientist.
I grew up in small-town Ohio near Cleveland. I graduated valedictorian of my class and had already developed an interest in the life sciences, specifically evolutionary biology, but also studied physics, chemistry, and calculus. I was a Zoology-Anthropology double major at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. I knew I didn't want to go into medicine but wasn't sure until after I graduated from college that I wanted to pursue graduate studies. I earned my PhD in Biological Anthropology from Indiana University. While a grad student, I engaged in many different research activities as an intern, research assistant, and volunteer. I volunteered at the Indianapolis Zoo to work with primates. I took (then taught) primatological field courses in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. I worked as a research assistant on a project involving ant social behavior and cooperation. I studied biological anthropology, developmental biology, endocrinology, animal behavior, and anatomy during my PhD tenure. My education has always been multidisciplinary and highly integrative.
2. What exactly IS your job? What do you do on a day to day basis?
I am an assistant professor at a public university. A large part of my day is spent parked in front of a computer, whether at the office or at home, where I work frequently. I engage in a large amount of email correspondence to communicate with students, collaborators, colleagues, and mentees. Lots of email. I do an enormous amount of writing, whether it be grant applications or academic manuscripts. I run statistical analyses of my data from various projects. I am currently involved in five, mostly non overlapping, research projects and am planning on submitting a grant for another. It takes a lot of mental energy everyday to stay focused on the project or task at hand. In addition to research time, I spend a few hours a week teaching or preparing to teach as well as several hours a week on various service activities such as committee work for my institution and professional societies. Only a small amount of my time is spent in the lab but "doing science" is so much bigger than that. All of the time I spend reading, thinking, writing is all part of science.
3. How does STEM relate to your job?How do you use the information you learned from your degree in your job?
As a professor and scholar, my training in STEM is absolutely central to my everyday functions.
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?
I have been targeted with sexual harassment in the form of jokes and unwanted comments about my appearance, my gender, etc. I have also been targeted just by being a woman in a field where women are still paid less than men and shoulder disproportionate burden of family life. It is constant background noise and is sometimes difficult to rise above. I have become engaged in research on sexual harassment and assault in the sciences and that scholarship has been one way that I deal with the reality of being targeted as a woman. My advice for emerging women scientists is to find out your institution's policies about sexual harassment and assault in the workplace (e.g. Title IX at universities) and know your rights and your available mechanisms to report misconduct.
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?
The best part of my work is the satisfaction of working on difficult and important scientific questions that have consequences for improving people's lives. I also love interacting with and inspiring my students and mentees. The hardest part is that a great deal of the business of science is tedious and time-consuming. There is a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy.
6. How do you balance your work and personal life? Any secrets or advice you’d like to share?
I don't believe in balance. My work is my life. I am very much me when I am doing my science or teaching my class, and how I am as a scholar and scientist informs the way I interact with the world outside my office and the way I raise my daughter. You just shove things around to make as much fit as possible. I am also a BIG believer in having leisure time every day. I've never been one of those academics who works 70 hours a week. I just never could do it. I work about 40 hours a week which means that a lot of stuff gets left undone but it also means I have time to watch TV, garden, hang out with my husband and daughter and dog and friends, get my nails done, just be me.
7. What do you define success as?
Satisfaction at the end of the day. Did I do a good day's work? Every now and then, does the culmination of a lot of days, months, years of that work lead to a great publication, a funded grant? That's awesome.
8. What is one personality trait that you think is universally important for a successful career?
That's a great question. Tenacity, I suppose. It's hard to narrow it down to one, so possibly also flexibility to be able to handle closed doors, failed experiments, rejected manuscripts.
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?
Mentor ship has been probably the most important thing in my career. Dr. Suzette Tardif at the Southwest National Primate Research Center took me on when I was a flailing, confused graduate student. I had only the vaguest notion of what I wanted to do for my dissertation research and she made herself available to me, both financially and intellectually. I finished my dissertation eight years ago but Suzette has remained both a trusted mentor and a colleague on current research. She taught me to be thorough and creative in my questioning, to accept my insecurities as being par for the course, and to believe in my ability to do the work. I try to pass that on to my own students and mentees.
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?
There hasn't been on single piece of advice. The best thing that has happened to me throughout my career, starting with my first biology class in sixth grade, was having someone take notice of my enthusiasm for science and foster it. And when those people haven't readily appeared, I went looking for them. I always advice people to take the chance on the cold email or call. Track down the people whose work inspires you and ask them for help. You may get no response (or the response may take months, just like my answers to these questions!) but getting comfortable enough to take that risk of putting yourself out there is an important character-building exercise and can pay enormous dividends in your development as a scientist.