Career Stories: Navigating From Research To Teaching with Angela
A series on careers in chemistry
I recently got to catch up with my former colleague and friend Angela who worked in the lab next to mine during graduate school at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Angela was the very model of a modern graduate student in my mind. Angela’s research focused on polymer modifications for fuel cell applications and she was a fantastic synthetic organic chemist that worked as hard as I did (i.e. weekends and nights). Whenever I was stumped on something I was trying to do Angela was the first person outside of my lab that I would ask for advice.
The small part of our conversation that I want to share here is focused on Angela’s journey after she graduated. She left upstate to New York for California to work for The Navy at NAVAIR in China Lake to do research on energetic materials. Angela then returned to upstate New York and worked at Global Foundries for just under a year. I didn’t know this prior to talking with her, but she wasn’t really that happy in either of those roles. The first being a purely synthetic organic chemistry job with quite a bit of freedom and the second being on the cutting edge of semiconductor fabrication.
Angela would move again (this time with her husband Nihar) to live in Washington State. This was primarily driven by Nihar getting an opportunity to work at Oculus. This is where Angela did a lot of work trying to figure out what exactly she might want to do with her career. She had opportunities to be an organic chemist that she didn’t take. After a bunch of informational interviews Angela ended up teaching chemistry at a local community college. Based on the tone of her voice she sounds happier than most people I know. Here is an excerpt of our conversation that has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Tony: Tell me about your job at The Navy, it was energetic materials from what I remember?
Angela: We did make a lot of energetic materials. That always made me a little nervous going into the lab. That was another thing you always have to think about when you're going to work. But then, also in that job, it was very, very open. When I joined, I wasn't really clear on what projects or what I should be working on or what I should be doing. They just left it open and gave me freedom to do whatever I thought was a good idea to explore.
Tony: In energetic materials you mean in terms of being wide open?
Angela: Within the context of making better energetic materials, or working on scaling up large scale production of certain materials. So I did learn a lot about the procedures they had to go through for scaling up the organic synthesis of certain materials. We were scaling one reaction into a 50 gallon reactor. I think that was the biggest when I got there. We would just step outside the lab where they had the large reactors and we would do it outdoors. Then we had a whole bunch of safety precautions. We would have remote control of the reactor and we were at pretty safe distance.
Tony: Okay, so you got like, what, eight months into that job? And this was like a permanent federal job, right? This wasn't a postdoc.
Angela: Yeah, this was a permanent job. But things were really wide open there. I didn't like so much freedom in the research. I struggled a little bit with just generating my own ideas. The reason that I worked really well with my graduate school adviser was that he was good at coming up with some initial ideas. I would feed off of that and expand on those ideas. We would have great back and forth discussions. I found that I wasn't really great with just generating the ideas myself.
I also found that even though I was making new materials, I felt that doing the typical organic synthesis steps got repetitive. You set up a reaction in a round bottomed flask, stir it, purify it, and then check purity. Then you do that again and again. It just wasn't as fulfilling for me anymore. So that's when I started thinking what would be a more fulfilling job for me?
Tony: I think that's a question that I struggle with now. It's not an easy question to answer. So you're eight months in, you're thinking, “do I really want to stay here? Do we really want to move our lives here?” And then you decide to leave right?
Angela: Yeah, I was starting to have the feelings of not really feeling fulfilled and missing that sense of purpose in what I was doing. One of our friends just happened to let me know that a position opened up at Global Foundries back in upstate New York. So I thought that I would just go ahead and take that for now and move back with Nihar. I just worked there for a while to try and figure out what I really wanted to do.
Tony: What was Global Foundries like?
Angela: I was supposed to be improving the lithography process in manufacturing microchips. When they etch the photoresist on microchips there are always little defects and wavy lines. Ideally, it is a perfect straight line for making patterns for the circuits. When I was there their big thing was they were trying to use extreme UV (EUV) light. That was a new thing for the semiconductor industry at the time. It was supposed to be better and move them into the 7 nm technology node, but it's more expensive and more difficult to implement.
They had some issues and they ended up scrapping the EUV research because they just weren't making great progress. A lot of people got laid off in the Research Division. Now they are sticking with the older technology nodes, such as 14 nm and above. In that job I came home every single day and I thought I have no idea what I'm doing.
I didn't actually do any hands on stuff anymore. It was all done on the computer. Everything was performed in the fab and I controlled it all remotely on the computer. I was just sitting at a desk working on the computer all the time. I just personally didn’t find that to be enjoyable.
Tony: I'm surprised it was like that. I'm surprised they weren't having you look at different photoresists resins or something involving chemistry in some way.
Angela: Even if we did test out new photoresist you wouldn't be doing it hands on in the lab. You would coordinate with the photoresist vendors, where they would prepare the materials and ship them to us, then I would set it up on the instrument in the fab. And then you'd go to your desk and everything would be done remotely on the computer. I quickly learned from that job that I do not want a desk job where I'm sitting at the computer and trying to do all these automated things all the time.
I was surprised to learn that if you work in the semiconductor industry you have to be a person who enjoys working on the computer and setting up process flows and stuff from your computer.
Tony: So while you are at Global Foundries, your husband Nihar is at Tokyo Electron and he gets an offer to go work at Oculus right? Then you guys move to Washington State?
Angela: Yeah, because I really didn't like the job at Global Foundries I told him Yes, please just take this job. I'll move with you. And I'll figure out what I'm gonna do once we get there.
Nihar was also reaching a point in his career at Tokyo Electron where he felt that he had learned all that he could. He was ready to do something more challenging. So this was a really good opportunity for him, because it allowed him to stretch his skills and abilities and also just explore something new. He really likes innovative research and working on next generation challenges. He is the type of person that can just come up with ideas. He has been loving this job so far at Oculus.
Tony: When you two got to Seattle what were you thinking? What was your thought process at that point?
Angela: When we got there I did start searching for organic chemist positions. I interviewed for a couple places, but every time I went in for the interview, I thought, This just doesn't sound meaningful to me. It just didn't feel right. So I turned down some of the offers and I also got rejected from a few, which I was happy about.
In the meantime, I was also researching every possible job a chemist could get that were non-traditional careers. I was working hard at finding a person in every one of those jobs and interviewing them.
I would reach out to people in those jobs and do an informational interview with them and ask things like, “what it's like working in that type of job?” That really helped me a lot because I started to figure out what I might enjoy doing without having to actually work in that job myself. When I was talking to these different people if I found that they described something that I already knew that I wouldn't really enjoy, I would cross that one off my list and say, “Okay, I'm not going to pursue that.”
Tony: So what were the jobs that you were looking at?
Angela: I looked at a whole bunch of stuff. Jobs at medical companies, regulatory compliance, consulting, science communication, patent law. I went through every single career listed in the non-traditional careers for chemists book.
One career that has always kind of been in the back of my mind was teaching. I've had several people tell me they thought I would be a good teacher, but I always pushed it aside because I have a fear of public speaking. I was at a career event and I met this really nice lady who was a chemistry teacher. She was asked me, “Oh, do you want to just come to my class one day and observe how I teach the class?”
I went and while I was observing her that's where I felt the spark. After leaving I realized that I just had so much fun learning about how she teaches and how she thinks about how the students learn. That's where I started seriously thinking about teaching.
Then after I thought about that I started reaching out to some of the schools nearby and asking around. One professor at University of Washington, Seattle recommended that I check out their sister school where there are usually a lot of openings for adjunct instructors to teach part time. There happened to be one class open that I could teach and when I got that position I was just going to try it out for that one class—to see if I liked it.
I found that I liked it, but I still had the fear of speaking in front of people. I really enjoyed helping the students, but I was so nervous all the time. Eventually, I did some research and found a speaking coach and I started going to meetings with her. Her main thing is she likes to help career women. She likes helping to build their confidence in their voice and helps with people's public speaking skills. I saw her once every two weeks and eventually once a month. She helped me with building up my confidence and speaking in front of people. Once I felt comfortable with the public speaking aspect I started to really enjoy teaching more.
I also feel that teaching is a lot more fulfilling for me now too. I just love that aspect of helping people.
I love the challenge of when students are really struggling with chemistry and I have to figure out how they learn and how to help them. I actually still feel like I’m doing research but in a slightly different way, because I’m always researching how to improve my teaching skills and how to best accommodate every person’s unique learning style. So I still feel that I’m utilizing many of the research skills that I had learned in graduate school. I also still get to do hands-on stuff, because when I teach the labs I do demos for them and help them out in the lab. It’s fun to get that experience back from the early days when we were first learning our lab techniques in a teaching lab, and now I get to share that experience with other students who are trying to discover their future pathways.
I also still love learning about how things work in our world and I get to share that stuff with the students by attempting to relate every topic we're talking about and how it's actually relatable to what's in the real world.
Tony: Yeah, I try to do that too through the newsletter. You sound really happy.
Angela: I am definitely happy now that I've gone into teaching. I am still learning more about the specifics of what I like in teaching. I've realized that you don’t have to become a professor at a university to teach. I never even considered teaching at a community college before. After I got a part time position at a community college, I realized that I fell in love with teaching at community colleges because I get to interact with and inspire a diverse set of students from a wide range of ages, races, ethnicities, and backgrounds.
Tony: Just like the First Lady. I'm guessing the stress level is probably pretty low?
Angela: Yeah, just like the First Lady, haha! It's definitely low stress, which is really great. The only stressful thing is when you initially start teaching you have to make everything for your class from scratch, and typically when people start out teaching at community colleges they might have to jump around to a few different schools in part-time adjunct positions for a year or more. So it is hectic in the beginning. But when you start reteaching classes then you can start improving things and making things how you actually want them to be. And after you gain some experience at a few different schools, you start to learn what environment would be the best fit for you. But also in these extremely busy times, it still doesn’t feel like it’s too stressful because I feel so much more meaning and purpose in what I do now. I’m excited to share that just last week I was offered a tenure track position at Tacoma Community College!
Conclusion
The big thing I took away from this conversation with Angela was that we often do not know what we want to do after finishing school. I think a lot of PhD level scientists and engineers tend to fall into research because that is what our doctoral degrees focused on, but research isn’t necessarily always the right path for everyone. There are other opportunities out there that might provide more fulfillment; it just takes some time to find them.
In listening to Angela’s story I felt a real sense of navigation. She went out and tried things and found that they were not for her. Often, we think in graduate school if I can just get XYZ then I’ll be happy or I’ll have the time to just figure things out. Eventually, Angela figured things out for herself. As someone who is trying to figure things out for himself this conversation gives me confidence that I will eventually figure it out too and hopefully I’ll get to share it with everyone here.
More Career Stories
If you liked this issue of the newsletter you are in luck because I’ve done some additional writing on chemistry careers:
How To Get a Job In The Chemical Industry As A Chemist: My thoughts on how to land a chemistry career as told through my own story.
You Can Only Get So Far On Your Own: I’ve had some great mentors in my career, but I didn’t necessarily know that I had them at the time. Maybe reading this will help you identify the potential mentors you might have right now.
Career Stories: Navigating The Chemical Industry: Part of my interview with the senior technical team at BPS Agriculture when we were talking about their new product launch Evofactor. Job hopping every few years isn’t necessarily a bad thing, you could end up being a Vice President of Product Development.
My goal with this series of issues for the newsletter is to talk to people in the chemical industry. If you have a story you want to share with me just respond to this email. You don’t have to have a PhD or anything, but I would like for you to be a chemist, chemical engineer, biochemist, or materials scientist and what I am looking for is a great story that I think would be helpful to the rest of the audience. I’m looking to publish about 12 a year.
Talk to you Friday,
Nice interview! Angela must have taken a severe pay cut—did she comment on that?