Shiflet, Angela Buzzett

English

Furman University

Furman MagazineVolume 52Issue 2 Summer 2009 Article 96-1-2009Strength in Numbers: Empowering othersAngela Buzzett ShifletFollow this and additional works at: https://scholarexchange.furman.edu/furman-magazineThis Article is made available online by Journals, part of the Furman University Scholar Exchange (FUSE). It has been accepted for inclusion in FurmanMagazine by an authorized FUSE administrator. For terms of use, please refer to the FUSE Institutional Repository Guidelines. For more information,please contact scholarexchange@furman.edu.Recommended CitationShiflet, Angela Buzzett (2009) "Strength in Numbers: Empowering others," Furman Magazine: Vol. 52 : Iss. 2 , Article 9.Available at: https://scholarexchange.furman.edu/furman-magazine/vol52/iss2/96    FURMAN | SUMMER 2009Building on mutual respectrarity of women in the academic ranks  in chemistry. My mentors in graduate school were men and women.  My advisor and my colleagues provided me with job training.  My colleagues offered much needed support.  They were also friends.  We respected each other as we worked toward the same goal — enough research to allow us to move to the next phases of our careers.Graduate school was a heady time for a self­professed geek.  Every day was a new opportunity to learn.  When things would go well, my fellow graduate students would offer praise; when things went south, they provided much needed commiseration.  And I did the same for them.When I left graduate school, I realized how valuable a support group my lab mates had been.  My first academic job was at a brand new college — Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University — which did not have most of the infrastructure you take for granted at an established institution like Furman.  I yearned  for the collegiality, the solidarity and the joy  of being surrounded by people who understand where you are going and what you need to do  to get there.At the time, I did not have anyone close by to offer the support I desperately needed.  Laura Wright helped me make a valuable contact — her sister Amy, who is currently the director  of the Center for Marine Biomedical and Biotechnology Research at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute of Florida Atlantic University.  In subsequent years, Laura has provided me with much needed advice on how  to handle sticky issues.  Her support has been invaluable.Now, as a tenured professor at Butler Uni­versity, I still have mentors.  Some are colleagues and some are former associates.  Some are men, some women.  They all supply a much needed support network.  But, in some ways, the women offer an additional level of support.  They under­stand the challenge of childbearing (especially  as a synthetic chemist), the difficult balance  of family and work, and the isolation of women in science in academia.When I think about the cohort that Laura has joined as part of her NSF grant, I realize she has found a group of people much like my friends from graduate school.  This cohort is built upon mutual respect.  They are friends, cheerleaders, critics and sounding boards.  Her group provides the truthfulness needed from a mentor, with  a healthy dose of good will to keep everyone going.  Most importantly, her group is cooper­ative.  They mentor each other. I do not know how my career will continue to evolve.  But I would like to believe that I will have help along the way.  If it is possible for Laura and her group to find each other, then it should be possible for others, including myself. — LUANNE McNULTYHaving earned her degree from Furman in 1993, the author has taught at Butler since 2003.  She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.WHEN I WAS A CHEMISTRY MAJOR AT  Furman, Laura Wright was the only woman professor in the department.  I never thought much about being a woman in chemistry, perhaps because Laura was there or perhaps because the faculty in the department seemed to care only about whether you loved chemistry, not about your gender.I did not realize how rare it was for her to be the sole tenured woman until I was in graduate school.  But knowing that there was at least one female chemistry professor out there provided proof that it was possible for me to be a chemist, too.Laura was my first mentor and first role model, the first female working chemist that I knew.  At the time, in the early 1990s, it was insignificant that she was a faculty member.  She was a woman in chemistry.I met other women in graduate school, but they were mostly graduate students, not chemis­ try professors.  Soon I began to understand the R. BRENT SMITHFURMAN | SUMMER 2009    13Introduction to Computational Science: Modeling and Simu lation for the Sciences was published  in 2006 by Princeton University Press.As partners and colleagues, we have exper­ienced the excitement of learning new things, making connections among disciplines that have often been too isolated, helping others develop their own computational science programs and,  in particular, empowering under graduates to participate in a revolutionary new field — and imagining what they can achieve.— ANGELA BUZZETT SHIFLET The author earned her doctorate from Vanderbilt University.  She is the Larry H. McCalla Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Wofford.JUST IMAGINE!  IMAGINE WHAT AN undergraduate can achieve!  Imagine what  an undergraduate can become!Just imagine!  Amanda, a biology major, using statistics and databases, analyzed the relationship between diet and birth defects during a summer internship at a genetics center and presented her research at a national conference.  After a year­long fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, she pursued doctoral studies of genetic associations with obesity.Just imagine!  David, a double major in com­puter science and mathematics, helped develop software for the science operations interface  of Mars Rovers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.  In part because of this research, he was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship to study computer graphics in a doc­toral program at Columbia University.Just imagine!  Diana, a double major in computer science and Spanish, was an intern  at Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories.  After completing a master’s degree, she returned to Los Alamos to work in the Inter­national Space and Response Division — and  to run her own Web design company.Just imagine!  Lena, a biology major, interned with the Cardiac Mechanics Research Group at the University of California­San Diego.  Her work on optimization of large­scale computations in electrophysiology helped to change the direction of the group’s research.  She is now attending medical school.Just imagine!  Frank, a double major in physics and mathematics, completed two intern­ships at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).   He developed software to access images of specific moving objects from JPL’s extensive observational archive.  The breakthrough resulted in the naming of an asteroid in his honor.  Since completing his Ph.D., Frank  Empowering othershas done research at the Johns Hopkins Univer­sity Applied Physics Laboratory.These stories of undergraduates I have taught and mentored bring a rush of memories:  encour­aging, reassuring and sometimes prodding those who do not know their own capabilities; contact­ing scientists to ask that they mentor the students; sharing their joy at obtaining positions; helping them gain funding; arranging presentations on their research; encouraging them to network with others; celebrating their acceptances for post­graduate opportunities; and hearing stories of exciting work that would not have been pos sible without their internships and their education.Small liberal arts colleges such as Furman and my institution, Wofford College, foster this kind of mentoring between faculty and students.  The education that Wofford has provided these students is in a revolutionary new academic discipline, computational science, which  is at the intersection of computer science, mathematics and the traditional sciences.Much important scientific research today involves computation as well as theory and experiment.  Realizing this, I have had the joy  of being present at the formation of one of the first undergraduate programs in this field (Wofford’s Emphasis in Computational Science).  I have helped others develop programs, written educational materials for such programs, and collaborated with others to advance education  in this new area.Collaboration has been most rewarding with my husband, George Shiflet, chair of the biology department at Wofford.  Little did we know when we sat together in calculus class at Furman that we were forming a career path as well as a close relationship!Sharing a passion for learning and for help­ing others to learn, George and I wrote the first textbook designed specifically for an introductory course in computational science and engineer ing.  MARK OLENCKI

Strength in Numbers: Empowering others

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Strength in Numbers: Empowering others

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