Chapter 1: A Passion for Science Leads to Radiation Physics
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In this Chapter, Dr. Travis talks about her family background and the educational track that led her to a career in radiation physics. She explains that she is a second generation Italian-American raised in the small town of Wilmerding, Pennsylvania. Her family owned a bar/restaurant and she grew up working in there from an early age, developing her work ethic in the process. Though her parents had only finished high school, both insisted that their children go to college.
Dr. Travis notes that she knew very early that she was interested in the sciences, but observes that ideas about careers for women at that time were very limited, and she thought of becoming a dancer or a flight attendant until tenth grade (at Westinghouse Memorial High School). At that point her biology teacher, Mr. Smith, had a great mentoring influence. She describes how Mr. Smith brought together all the science-focused students in her class into a community (where gender was not an issue). He helped her parents understand that she should go to college for the sciences, though she was encouraged to become a teacher at that point.
Dr. Travis attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania (B.S. 1965) and notes influences important during this period, including a course in radiation physics and an opportunity she took to work in a radiation physics laboratory at the University of Pittsburg during a summer. Dr. Travis explains her decision to go to graduate school for her Masters program. She mentions her marriage at the end of her first year in graduate school and how that influenced the path of her early career, taking her to South Carolina.
Dr. Travis talks about her involvement in training and the satisfaction she take in developing young minds. She shares her philosophy of mentoring: listening to identify where an individual needs help, offering constructive advice when needed.
Identifier
TravisEL_01_20140324_C01
Publication Date
3-24-2014
Publisher
The Making Cancer History® Voices Oral History Collection, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Elizabeth Travis, PhD, Oral History Interview, March 24, 2014
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - Educational PathPersonal Background On Mentoring Obstacles, Challenges
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So we are recording. I’m Tacey Ann Rosolowski, and this morning I’m on the fifth floor in Pickens Tower on the main campus of MD Anderson in the Department of Women Faculty Programs, and I’m interviewing Dr. Elizabeth Travis for the Making Cancer History Voices Oral History Project run by the Historical Resources Center at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. Dr. Travis came to MD Anderson in 1982 as an associate professor in the Department of Experimental Radiation Oncology. Correct?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Correct.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
She is now the Mattie Allen Fair Professor in Cancer Research in that department, which is part of the Division of Radiation Oncology. She is also a professor in the Department of Pulmonary Medicine. In terms of administrative service, since 2006 Dr. Travis has served as Associate Vice President for Women Faculty Programs. This interview is taking place in Dr. Travis’ office in the Department of Women Faculty Programs, and today is March 24, 2014, and the time is about 10:03. So thank you very much for—
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
My pleasure.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
—taking the time for this project.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
I wanted to just begin with some general background. If you could tell me when you were born and where, and tell me a little bit about your family background.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
So I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I’m second-generation Italian, was born into a large extended Italian family. I only have one sister younger than I am. She’s about four and a half years younger than I am. I grew up in this little town outside of Pittsburgh called Wilmerding, W-i-l-m-e-r-d-i-n-g. It was a mill town. Westinghouse Electric and all the steel mills extended way beyond the city of Pittsburgh. My family owned a small business. My father did not work in the mills, but my maternal grandparents built a small bar and restaurant, basically, in this little town, and so we all worked there at various times. My aunt and uncle had three sons, my three cousins, who also lived in Wilmerding. My one other aunt, my mother’s other sister, also lived there for a while with her one son, and we were all involved in working.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What did you do?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Oh, I would help on Saturday mornings and peel potatoes. (laughs) I was in the kitchen mostly. We were always there. The kids were always there, everybody. Small town. There weren’t very many people in this town, and so everybody knew the family. We frequently after school would stop over there on the way home, because my dad worked there, would stop there to say hi to my dad before we went home, or just stopped in because my mother worked there. Saturday morning she would go up and help get ready for dinners on Saturday nights. It was a bar and grill, but they served typical Italian. Friday night was fish. Fried shrimp, Friday nights. Pizzas, of course. Spaghetti was Thursday night. A traditional night to have pasta in an Italian family was Thursday night and then Sunday. So they had spaghetti and meatballs.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Did having those experiences influence you at all in terms of work environment or work ethic? How did that have an impact?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
I think it had a huge impact from the standpoint of work ethic. Both my parents worked all the time. My mother did not work outside the home until I was sixteen, but she was a wonderful seamstress and so she used to do a lot of tailoring and sewing for people. She made all my clothes. Even when I was in college, she was still making me clothes, even though by then she was working in a small boutique, which was my downfall. (laughs) My mother had marvelous taste, marvelous taste, and she had a real flair for clothes, so I blame her for—I have the same taste as she does.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
That’s nice.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Yes. She did things like sell china and anything she could do to help the family. My parents were both high-school educated, neither of them went to college, but they were insistent that we were going to go to college, both my sister and I, because they did see that, like so many people used to, at least, and still do, as, you know, a steppingstone. It’s so common in families that are first, second, third generation, that education’s the thing no one can take away from you once you have it. You always have it, you know.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Yes.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
And, of course, at that time it was always when you get married, if something happens to your husband, you’ll be able to support your family. There was the underlying supposition that you were going to be married, have children, and that was going to be your primary, which I totally ignored. (laughs)
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So one question I neglected to ask you, will you share your date of birth?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
September 29, 1943.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay. Thank you. When did you know that you were going to go into the sciences?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Pretty early on, actually. I remember in what was then junior high school or even sixth grade, they used to take us down to the planetarium, and we used to have special courses that they’d send us to in the summer down at Carnegie Mellon at Pitt. There were science courses. They always intrigued me, always intrigued me. Actually, I had no clue. I thought, oh, I’d be a flight attendant. Oh, you know, I danced, I took dancing lessons for a long time, and I was very interested in perhaps being a professional dancer, but you have to be really, really, really, really good to do that, and that is, I think, a field and a profession, if you will, where luck really does play a big role.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, I think in that period, too, when you were coming to young girlhood, young womanhood, there was really a different understanding of what the opportunities were for women.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Yes.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So how did you see that at the time? You said flight attendant, dancer, even though science was kind of, “Hmm. That’s intriguing.” When did you come to the realization that you wanted to take a different path that maybe what was traditional at the time?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Tenth grade.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Tenth? Tell me about that. We’ve got a moment.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Teacher, biology teacher, Mr. Smith. He was dynamic. I mean, he had us dissecting all kinds of things. In fact, my mother—I would take things home to dissect, and my mother said, “Don’t you dare put those in my refrigerator.” (laughter) But he just had a love and a passion for science, and he had a love and a passion for students and turning them on to science, if you will. He also taught us how to square dance. He used to take us all over the State of Pennsylvania and do demonstrations of square dancing, and I was still doing other dancing, but this was a lot of fun, and we had costumes. Wednesday nights we’d have to go to his home, and in the garage we’d practice all our square dancing. So he brought us together as a community of all of us who were—at that time, you know, we had [ ] tracks. You were on the college track or what they used to call the business track. So I was in the college track. I guess a year or so before then, I guess one of the counselors had told my parents that, yes, I should go to college, although what I was going to do was not yet clear, although, like I said, I had had exposure to the sciences by then and was interested in them. But it was Mr. Smith in tenth-grade biology, that’s what it was.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And that’s just such an interesting story. I think it’s the first time that anybody’s told a story about an experience so early where someone integrated the science and the social part, which is very interesting, very interesting.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Yes. He was a terrific teacher. There were a number of us from that class that went into science: physicians, myself in science, others in science, some in engineering. He just engendered in us a real love of discovery.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So how did your parents react, or your family, when you said you wanted to try this path?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
They had no clue what it was, and, quite frankly, I had no idea either what it meant, you know. What they did was they said, “Okay, but you really should get a teaching degree, because that way you always have a job in case something happens to your husband.” (laughs) Again, always the expectation that I was going to be married and have children, and I would have a career, but it would be teaching because we always need teachers. So it was in that context, and so that’s how they could wrap their heads around this, and at that time, for me, too, because I didn’t know any scientists. I knew a teacher who taught biology and taught science.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
It’s an interesting dilemma for either a boy or a girl who has a talent in an area that the family hasn’t had experience in, because they really don’t know to advise that child, and you have to kind of make it up on your own unless you’ve got mentors who can really help you.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Well, I think that he helped them understand. Mr. Smith helped my parents understand that it was important to me, but, again, it was still in the context I would be a science teacher and, in fact, I was.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So tell me about your decision to go to Indiana University-Pennsylvania. Am I getting that correct?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Of Pennsylvania. Okay. And you got your B.S., just for the record, in 1965.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Correct. So that’s not where I wanted to go to school. (laughs) So I was the first girl in the family to go to college. I have an older cousin, she’s five years older than me, almost to the day. Her name is Liz too. She always wanted to go to college. Her name is Elizabeth. We call her Liz as well. She was kind of my idol growing up, and she always wanted to go to college, but her father said, “Girls don’t go to college.” He had three boys that he sent to college, but not her. So I was the first girl in the whole family to go to college. The three cousins, the male cousins I just spoke about—actually, they were second cousins—went to Indiana, and my father was most comfortable with that because they had been there, and so he felt like he knew something about the school. It was actually a state Teachers College at the time, and so they thought I was going to be a teacher, and so it all fit together. And, actually, it was also an issue of money. We didn’t have much money, and it was more affordable, although not easy for them. I mean, I worked in college as well. I worked every summer to help pay for college. So that was how the decision was made. And it was far enough away. I didn’t want to live at home. My parents always said they couldn’t keep me in the house and they could never get my sister out of the house, because I was always out and about and always doing things, and she was different than that. So it was far enough away from home, but close enough that they used to come up not every Sunday but frequently on Sundays, and bring a whole bunch of food and take me out to dinner. So it was close, but far enough that I didn’t feel like I was living at home, and I didn’t want to live at home. So it was a matter of familiarity, finances, and proximity to home. So that’s how that happened.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So tell me about what you focused on, your major. How did you feel your gifts, your kind of approach to science evolving during that time?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Again, there was another teacher, as a sophomore, and he taught cell biology and physiology, and I got interested in that. I have to admit that I enjoyed my first couple years of college. (laughs) I studied and I made my grades, but I didn’t probably make the grades that my parents wanted me to make. But he turned me around a little bit back to focusing on science, and I went from there—
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And his name?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Oh, I almost said it. [Frank Liegey.]
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
That’s okay.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
I’ll remember it, but right now it’s out of my head. Mr. Smith was obviously a real giant, of course, and the name Smith is quite easy to remember. Then there was a physics teacher, so I decided to take a course, an elective course, in radiation physics and radiation biology. It just sounded interesting. He had gone to Oak Ridge National Lab, where they used to have summer programs for teachers to learn about the radiation sciences, to then try and interest students in going into the radiation sciences, remembering that this was the sixties, still a lot of focus on atom bombs, etc., etc., and the destructive nature of that, and also radiation as healing. So I took that course, and it was interesting. I mentioned—well, my parents always knew what I was doing. I mean, they always wanted to know, were very involved in how classes were, what I was taking. My father’s personal physician, he had an appointment with him, and he always asked about my sister and I, how was I doing, how was Elizabeth doing. I was always called Elizabeth by my family. “How is Elizabeth doing?” And my dad said, “She’s taking this course in radiation something or other. I don’t know. She seems to like it.” He ran a lab at University of Pittsburgh with a scientist there, and they invited—he said, “Do you think she’d want to come and work for the summer?” It’s amazing how life really is full of these twists and turns. So I went there for the summer, worked during the summer there, and then decided to do my graduate degree there in the School of Public Health in radiation health. So that’s how I got to my master’s degree, but my master’s degree—this isn’t MD Anderson history. We’re only talking about me.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Yes, this is how we do it.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Okay. (laughs) So my master’s degree, actually I ended up again getting a degree in education, with a minor in radiation biology, because I got married at the end of my first year of graduate school, and my husband was in the navy and he was an officer. Before we graduated, we knew he was going to be stationed in South Carolina. Yes, those days, your husband didn’t go while you stayed and finished degrees. You went together, etc. So the only way I could finish and get a degree, which I was insistent on doing, was to switch to the education school, because I couldn’t finish my thesis and research in enough time. So then I got a degree in education and went to South Carolina with him. And from there, again, kind of the—I taught school for a year, which I actually liked. I really like teaching school. I love training. I still am very actively involved in training and mentoring students as well as faculty, but I’m involved with a grant that we have with Puerto Rico, which is a partnership grant between MD Anderson and University of Puerto Rico, and I’ve been involved with it for over ten years now. I’m one of the PIs, but I’m also co-leader of the training program. So every summer we have students come over. In fact, I was just reviewing students now for the summer program. I go over there a couple times a year. I really enjoy that interaction with young minds and mentoring them and seeing them develop and helping them. So it’s been a theme, even though it’s not what I really wanted to do. I didn’t want to teach in a classroom every day. It’s been a theme throughout my whole career.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What’s your style of mentoring?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
It depends.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Or philosophy.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
My philosophy is it’s got to be about the students or the individual. It’s got to be listen to them, what do they think they need, what do they want from a mentoring relationship, and then how can I help them. Sometimes it’s directive, sometimes it’s advisement. I think you have to listen to the individual and talk with them about what they think they need. Then also by reviewing like, for example, with the faculty, looking at their CVs, looking at their summary statements of their accomplishments and identifying the places where they need help and pointing that out to them and trying to direct them. “You want to get promoted, this is what you need. You’re doing well here, but you’re not doing well here, and I would recommend that you seek more opportunities to do this.” Or, “You’re on too many committees. Cut those back. You need to focus more. Your job is to find a niche as an assistant professor.” So it’s really dependent on the individual and on where they are in their career, what kind of advice, but listening is a big part of it, offering constructive advice is a big part of it, and being candid and honest.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
I’m curious since obviously you are now mentoring people who are much more—they’ve already selected a professional path, they’re on that path, but for you, when you were starting out, you kind of didn’t know what direction to go in. Have you ever worked with someone who kind of was a little lost? What’s your mentoring style in that situation? How would you have helped yourself? (laughs)
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Well, yes, I did have great mentors all along the way. All these teachers I’m talking about were guides. They were mentors, they were truly mentors, and high school, undergraduate, graduate school, and then even after graduate school
Recommended Citation
Travis, Elizabeth L. PhD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 1: A Passion for Science Leads to Radiation Physics" (2014). Interview Chapters. 1019.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1019
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