Professionals In Science

Simone interviews Professor of Physics Mary Hudson and Dean of the Thayer School of Engineering Elsa Garmire to find out more about their careers and the paths that led them there.

Earlier this term, historian Jill Ker Conway visited the campus for several days as the college's Montgomery Fellow. During her visit, I snuck into the lunch held at the Montgomery House for graduate students. Actually, no one ever asked me what year I was and I kept my mouth shut while I helped myself to lunch. My cover was blown once all of us sat down and Dr. Conway asked us to each tell her about our graduate work. After asking each of us about our studies, she spoke for a while about her life and elaborated on many of the themes touched on in her memoir, True North. Aside from her candor about her life and her encouragement to all of us about embracing tough decisions, what stuck with me when I left Montgomery House was her enthusiasm for her career as a historian and professor.

Weeks later, as I sit writing this article, the memory of that luncheon comes back to me as I reflect on my interviews with Professor Mary Hudson and Professor Elsa Garmire. Both of them conveyed the same intensity about their work that I glimpsed in Conway. Also, like Conway, both women have been a part of the initial tiny wave of women into their fields.

But the thread that most strongly linked these three conversations was each woman's assertion that having a fulfilling professional life was what sometimes kept them going when everything else fell apart. As Professor Garmire said near the end of the interview, "Most of my life I would have paid for the jobs I had." From the enthusiasm expressed by Professor Hudson about her jobs, I think she would echo those sentiments. Garmire commented that she felt the key to a fulfilling career is finding something you love and "sticking with it." She drew an analogy to gambling saying that "you roll the dice and then you go with it."

But the thread that most strongly linked these three conversations was each woman's assertion that having a fulfilling professional life was what sometimes kept them going when everything else fell apart.

When I began thinking about interviewing Hudson and Garmire, I steered away from asking them the staid questions about balancing careers and personal lives. Rather, I asked them to tell me about the trajectory of their careers and the important choices they had made along the way. In particular, I was curious to hear about the biggest risks they had taken and how their professional gambles had paid off.

Professor Mary Hudson, currently the chair of the Dartmouth Physics Department, spent her undergraduate and graduate career at UCLA where she was usually the only woman in her physics classes. Growing up in the era of Sputnik and Apollo, she was always intrigued by space physics and astronomy. But what solidified her decision to enter the field of space physics was her first post-college job. After graduating from college several months early, she was hired immediately by The Aerospace Corporation. She commented that the wonderful aspect of working there was that she was immediately treated as a colleague and was allotted her own entry-level projects [such as calibrating research equipment that would eventually go up on the space shuttle]. Hudson enjoyed her job so much that she continued working there for her first two years of graduate school.

Firmly committed to a career in space physics research, Hudson began her dissertation under the guidance of an encouraging advisor. During her final year of graduate school, she needed data for her thesis on rocks in the ionosphere. Some scholars at Berkeley

This job, in addition to her earlier job at The Aerospace Corporation, had a long-lasting effect on her career. Both of the decisions had been made somewhat by chance.

offered the data, and during a visit to the university, she found that she really "connected" with the people at the Berkeley labs. Though she had several post-doc offers, she elected Berkeley based on the inspiring people she had already met. This job, in addition to her earlier job at The Aerospace Corporation, had a long-lasting effect on her career. Both of the decisions had been made somewhat by chance.

Hudson remarked that the research environment at Berkeley was terrific. She stayed there for ten years and never cost them anything because she brought in so many grants on her own. While laboring as a post-doc, Hudson taught several classes at UC and also at Mills. But without a faculty position, she had no influence over the direction of research. Slowly becoming frustrated with her lack of influence, she began to question her professional trajectory.

At 35 years old, she made the wrenching decision to depart from California after growing up and succeeding professionally in her home state. It was 1984 when she and her husband had just been offered faculty positions at Dartmouth. The lure of tenure track positions for both of them in different departments was too attractive to ignore after some of her frustrations at Berkeley. In addition, Hudson was eager to work with some of the leaders in her field who were busy researching on the Hanover Plain. Though it was a tough decision, Hudson still sounds enthusiastic about her choice. She mentioned that her annual trips back to Berkeley every summer to interact with colleagues at the Space Sciences lab have helped ease her pangs for California.

Despite her description of a fairly smooth and fulfilling career, Hudson reminded me that her path has often been lonely. During her first two years of college, she was the only woman in all her physics classes. Junior and senior year, another woman joined her. But again, in graduate school, Hudson was the lone female. At Dartmouth, she has been the sole physics professor in the department since her arrival in 1984. But finally, this fall, another woman will be joining the department.

Hudson did point out that the gender balance in the hard sciences is finally beginning to

shift. For example, three of the six people in the upper level seminar she is currently teaching are women. "Once you get a seed population, it gets easier," she commented. With more women in the undergraduate and graduate programs, eventually more women will hold faculty positions. With that, Hudson excused herself. She had to	With more women in the undergraduate and graduate programs, eventually more women will hold faculty positions.
run to a department meeting. Actually, she had to chair the meeting - a meeting at which she would be the only woman.

Garmire's path has not been quite as smooth. Like Hudson, she knew from an early age that physics and research science fascinated her. As a young student, biology seemed quite rote while physics seemed to be the cutting edge of science. But if she was a student today, Garmire commented, she would probably follow a biological career path.

As the end of high school approached, Garmire faced several problems‹two of the main ones were her height (6'2") and her intelligence. She wanted a school where the men to women ratio was fairly high so she elected Radcliffe where the ratio was three women to ten men and everyone was smart. There she met a man, also a budding physicist. As college drew to a close, Garmire worried that she would not be accepted at a good grad school. Though her insecurities about her academic abilities stymied her, Garmire's professors saw her potential and wrote her recommendations for graduate programs at Harvard and MIT. Faced with deciding between the two schools, she enrolled at MIT after coming to the conclusion that she was sick of the Harvard library.

When she arrived at MIT, she found herself assigned to the only woman on the faculty as an advisee even though the woman was not in Garmire's field of interest.

When she arrived at MIT, she found herself assigned to the only woman on the faculty as an advisee even though the woman was not in Garmire's field of interest. Discouraged at this turn of events, Garmire came close to quitting, but her husband urged her to look for another professor. Coincidentally, a professor named Charles Townes was looking for a student assistant. Working for him determined the course of her career in laser research.

Townes' research was already so advanced that two years after Garmire began working for him, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work.

Unlike Hudson, Garmire did not set out to establish a career in science. But she had no desire to be a housewife either. She met a woman whose husband had died, so this woman had become a secretary... and she loathed her job. Realizing that the pay for secretaries and grad students was comparable, Garmire decided that staying a grad student was preferable.

For her, achievements doubled up at times. Her baby's birth and the awarding of her Ph.D. both transpired at the same time. After four weeks of staying home with her baby, she returned to her post-doc position, dissatisfied with staying at home. For nine years, she labored as a post-doc doing research first at MIT and then at Cal-Tech. At Cal-Tech, she taught her first class. It was a junior math class and the all-male class of twenty-five students were some of the brightest in the world. Math had never been her strong subject, and after that experience, she did not teach for the next decade. Also, since she was always working part time while raising two children, she never advanced professionally. She just concentrated on her research, undistracted by teaching or administrative commitments. Meanwhile, after nine years, her marriage had unraveled and she and her husband divorced.

With a seven year old and ten year old in tow, she found a new position at USC‹a full professorship with tenure. There she stayed, ensconced for twenty years until applying for the deanship of the Thayer School. Dartmouth was attractive to her because of the close attention to students in contrast to the research-focused nature of USC. Also, she appreciated the interdisciplinary nature of the engineering school and the balance of liberal arts and an engineering education for Thayer students.

Like Hudson, her career trajectory also sounded smooth during the interview. But Garmire also encountered the loneliness of being a woman in physics. Additionally, she commented that during the hardest times, particularly when her marriage ended, there was "something very centering and grounding in having my own science."

...she commented that during the hardest times, particularly when her marriage ended, there was "something very centering and grounding in having my own science."

As members of a generation which often told them, as Conway wrote in True North, that "Every verbal and visual message of the world I'd grown up in telegraphed that a young female belonged with somebody else, preferably a male partner, but failing that, family, friends, anything that would signal to the world that she was going about the business of being a helpful and charming female bent on caring for the needs of others." This message has not changed all that much for my generation. As the careers and professional fulfillment of Hudson and Garmire show, pursuing an academic love is a viable and perhaps preferred alternative to the traditional female paths. More and more women are treading the paths pioneered by Garmire, Hudson, and their peers as the rising female enrollments in the engineering and physics departments show.

...they both reminded me that I should spend my next few years finding something I love and then pursuing it. As Garmire told me, "roll the dice and go with it." It's worth the gamble.

The inspirational feeling that I garnered from both interviews had nothing to do with science. Rather, they both reminded me that I should spend my next few years finding something I love and then pursuing it. As Garmire told me, "roll the dice and go with it." It's worth the gamble.