Chapter 09: Research and Grants Related to Gender and Diversity
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Description
In this Chapter Dr. Travis describes her grant supported work on gender and diversity projects. She begins by describing the “Gatekeepers and Gender Schemas” project (run through the Office of Women Faculty Programs) –a real-time study of recruitment in the sciences. She also describes her contributions to an NIH U54 Partnership Grant in which MD Anderson is partnering with the University of Puerto Rico to build a cancer research center, a cancer hospital, and to train physicians and researchers. Dr. Travis is a PI on that grant and on the training program. She describes why she enjoys working with students and also what is involved in the training program. The MD/PHD program, she says, is the “jewel in the crown” of the program and this summer its first two graduates will receive their degrees. She notes the commitment of the Puerto Rican students to return to their home country to practice.
[The recorder is paused briefly.]
Dr. Travis notes some differences in the way that gender issues play out in Puerto Rico and in the United Sttes, then describes how the project is administered. Next she observes that her interest in teaching, training, and developing young minds has worked underneath the surface of her career.
Identifier
TravisEL_02_20140325_C09
Publication Date
3-25-2014
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Elizabeth Travis, PhD, Oral History Interview, March 25, 2014
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - The ResearcherThe Administrator The Educator Institutional Mission and Values Beyond the Institution Education at MD Anderson Discovery and Success Women and advancement Diversity at MD Anderson
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
That brings us to the topic, too, of the research that you have done and grant-related projects you have done in this office. Would you like to talk about that now?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Sure. So five years or so ago, the NCI came out with an initiative where they were looking for—it was a dedicated request for applications that was focused on causal factors—they’re called the causal factors grant—causal factors that interfere with women’s advancement. So this office, along with Virginia Valian, who is the well-known sociologist who wrote the book Why So Slow?, initially talking about women’s lack and slow advancement, particularly in the sciences, and then two sociologists from Rice who were also working on this issue. One is Mikki Hebl, H-e-b-l—it’s M-i-k-k-i H-e-b-l—and Randi, R-a-n-d-i, Martin. The four of us wrote a proposal called “Gatekeepers and Gender Schemas,” and the question we were asking and what we were looking at, a number of things. First of all, from this office, we were doing a real-time study of our recruitment of associate professor tenure-track position in the basic sciences—or in the sciences, let me put it that way, because we have a relatively prescriptive process. There’s a national call. There’s an interview, etc. So that was the one project done from this office. [The other project that was done, that Virginia did, was looking at award nominations for women. I mean, we know that over and over and over again women are not getting awards and not prestigious honors and awards. What we don’t know is if it’s because they’re not being nominated or they’re not being chosen. So she is doing that study and she’s looking at neuroscience awards in particular.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
I’m sorry. At?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Neuroscience awards.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Neuroscience. Okay.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
So our study is complete, data is being analyzed, but basically what we did was we took the CVs, we quantified, we gave numbers to everything on a CV you possibly could, you know, including what was the world rank of their institution, their undergraduate, graduate institution, did they do postdocs in the labs of Nobel laureates and IOM members, National Academy members. So we quantified everything you possibly could, including publications in high-impact journals, in all the journals, and then we asked the question, were women underrepresented in the offer pool. The data are not published yet, so I’m not free to say, but I can tell you that that was not the conclusion of the study. So that’s been a lot of fun, because I always say that if you’re a scientist, grant writing is in your DNA, you know, and so it was an opportunity to write a grant for this office instead of for my research lab, which was fun. The other grant I’m involved in is a very different grant, but it’s also an important grant, and it has to do with a minority institution. So, again, the NIH has an initiative, they’re called U54 Partnership Grants, and ours is between MD Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Puerto Rico, all the various campuses. Overall, the goal was to build a cancer research center, which we’ve already built; it’s to build a new cancer hospital, which they just broke ground on last month; and then to train physicians and scientists to do cancer medicine and cancer research. So I’m a PI on that grant and I also am the co-leader of the training program. So it goes back to, you know, my early life being involved with students and developing young talent, and I like the project because I like students. They keep you fresh, they ask questions that you usually can’t answer, they make you think, and they just keep—you know, they remind you that there is hope. (laughs) Sometimes it looks pretty bleak. You see these young people who are so bright and so engaged and so enthusiastic, and they are going to make a difference, and it’s nice to—I mean, they do—it’s up to them, but what we do is help guide them and point them in the right directions. So that’s a fun grant too.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So this is training with leadership in mind or [inaudible]?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
No, this is just training them to be physicians and scientists, cancer medicine. So we bring them over for a summer. There’s an application process that they have to undergo, and we bring ten or twelve of them over every summer to work in the lab and sometimes to shadow physicians, because they’re not quite sure what they want to do. Probably the jewel in the crown of the program is our MD/PhD Initiative, so we have a partnership and an agreement with the University of Puerto Rico where they get their medical degree, and then the University of Texas, the graduate school where they get their PhD degree. And we run it the same way, it’s done the same way the MD/PhD. program is run over at UT.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Wow.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
And so they do three years of medical school in Puerto Rico, they have to get accepted into the graduate school here, and then the fourth year, what would be their fourth-year medical school, they come over here, do their PhD and then go back to finish their fourth year. We will be graduating our first two MD/PhD students this summer from that program. They’re both outstanding. They’ve both been accepted to residency programs.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
] Wow.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
So that’s very exciting. So they’re the first two that we’re going to do our best to recruit and keep in Puerto Rico. And there it’s interesting because a lot of these young people really do want to go back to Puerto Rico because they have very strong family ties, their families are there, and they feel some obligation that they want to help the people of their island, their people.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Very, very refreshing.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
It is.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Let me pause the recorder just for a second. [recorder paused]
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay. We’re back again after just a few seconds of break. Now, you run that through that office. Are you monitoring the balance of women to men in that program as well? How is that working out?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
It’s interesting. You don’t have to monitor that one. There are equal, if not more, women applying.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Really?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
It’s a very interesting culture, actually. I noticed that immediately when I went there, that there were a lot of women in leadership positions, and there are a lot of young women who are applying every summer.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Do you have any insights into that?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
No, I don’t, actually. I mean, it’s quite remarkable that you would have thought quite the opposite, considering what we think we know about the culture. Obviously, we don’t know everything about it, or at least I don’t. And, yes, we have—let’s see. The two who are graduating this year with their MD/PhD’s, one woman and one man, and I think it’s just about 50/50 in the MD/PhD students.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Wow. That’s pretty amazing.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
That is pretty amazing. So it’s not run out of the office here. So there are four PIs. Gabé Lopez —so this is again one of these multi-PI grants. Dr. Lopez-Bernstein [phonetic] is the—he is what we call the contact PI, but it’s actually run out of—Sherri De Jesus and Sunita Hamilton are the administrators who they do all the hard work. They keep track of everything. I mean, Dr. [Michelle] Barton, Shelley Barton, is another PI on the grant, and David Wetter from Outreach. So it’s—the grant is—
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Spread.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Yes, it’s spread out. So there’s a research component, there’s an outreach component, there’s a training component to the grants, to try to—the research is to have them do small research projects and then have them get grants to continue this and become independent funded investigators.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Now, when did this project start?
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
This actually started in the late nineties. I think I became associated with it probably in 2002. I had a part-time appointment in Steve Tomasovic’s office—I’d actually have to look back at my CV to see exactly when that was—which preceded this position. And he was one of the—
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
2004 to 2006, Associate Vice President, Academic Affairs, 30 percent appointment.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Right. So it was then. It was then. It was in 2004 that I became associated with the program. So he was getting busier and busier because of the global programs, a lot of things going on, and so I then took over. At that time, I took over only the training program, and probably that didn’t happen till really 2006, and then I became a PI in—the year I can’t remember, but it was shortly after that. It was probably when we did a competitive renewal of the grant. When he kind of stepped back from the grant totally, I became a PI. It must have been 2008. So that’s a really fun project. I get to see all these young people frequently. I go there a couple times a year, and we actually do a lot of teaching over there now. We send people over to do short courses in cancer biology and cancer genetics, and they are eager to learn. So it’s a lot of—I like it because I think it is doing some good and it’s a lot of fun. And to me, developing the future generation is really what it’s all about at this point in my career, you know. It’s about what legacy do you want to leave in your years in this institution, basically, because this is pretty much where my whole career has been. And for me, it’s leaving a cadre of outstanding women leaders and who will become leaders, and leaving or developing a cadre of young people to be physician scientists and physician scientists in Puerto Rico. When I ran my lab, of course, there it was developing students to be scientists. My former graduate students now have positions in various—some of them chose to step away from the bench and go into—one of them is working in patents and one is an associate professor at a university. So, again, I think what’s always has been under the surface with me has been this issue of teaching and training and developing young people. When I taught school, I loved it. I really did. I just knew that I didn’t want to do that only for the rest of my life, which is why I took the position in South Carolina.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Well, it’s an interesting balance. I mean, training other people to have accomplishments versus having your own accomplishments and helping them, others do it too.
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
Right.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Yes, and I think when women of our generation were going into teaching, that’s what we were told we should do, was help other people make their accomplishments. (laughs)
Elizabeth Travis, PhD:
That’s right. Yes, that’s true. That’s right. Absolutely. But you know, for me it’s very satisfying, particularly to see these two young people who have just finished their MD/PhD’s, you know, it’s very satisfying to see that and know that they will have a—I’m sure they will have a productive career. We’ve given them—it’s like I told my son, I told him, “I’ve given you as much as I could in terms of making sure you got educated.” He went straight through for his master’s degree at Texas, and I said, “You know, after this, you’ve got to do it. All I can do is provide you with the skills and the opportunities, and then after that—.” It’s the same thing with these people, with young people. You provide them with the knowledge and the skills and open doors, but then they have to walk through those doors and they have to perform.
Recommended Citation
Travis, Elizabeth L. PhD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 09: Research and Grants Related to Gender and Diversity" (2014). Interview Chapters. 1027.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1027
Conditions Governing Access
Open
