Chapter 05: A Doctorate in Public Health and Appointment to the Faculty
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Description
Dr. Elting begins this chapter by explaining that her Master’s program gave her confidence in the quality of her own research questions and helped spur her to pursue doctoral work.
Dr. Elting explains why she never considered leaving MD Anderson.
Next she sketches the skills her doctoral program helped build, particularly computer skills. She observes that computers were not much in use in research at MD Anderson during the eighties.
Next Dr. Elting explains MD Anderson rules that made it difficult for her to be promoted to the faculty. She also notes that it was difficult to get some physicians to see her as a colleague when they had known her for years as a nurse/technician. She describes her duties once she was promoted to the faculty.
Identifier
EltingL_01_20150219_C05
Publication Date
2-19-2015
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Linda S. Elting, DrPh, Oral History Interview, February 19, 2015
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - Professional Path; Professional Path; MD Anderson Culture; Institutional Processes
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 A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah. Well, what happened after you got your master's? What then? What turn did your career take here at MD Anderson?
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
I liked the work that I was doing. But I came to the conclusion that my research questions were better (laughs) than the questionsand more interesting than the research questions of the people around me. And I recognized that I was not going to be able to address my own research questions unless I was a member of the faculty. So I resolved to pursue doctoral work in order to gain additional skills, but also to have the credentials that I needed to build a program to address my own questions.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Did you ever consider going anywhere else?
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Anya different number
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Any other institution?
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Oh, other than MD Anderson?
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Oh, no.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Why?
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Because it's the best place. (laughter) Despite all the bad press, it still is. I mean, there is no place else as big with as many patients with as many resources. And my experience has been that even if you do stuff, as I often have, that's far outside the mainstream of research in the institution, there's always an opportunity to do it. There's nobody who shuts you down and says, "Oh, that shouldn't be done here." You know? So it's not easy, but it is possible to do all kinds of stuff at a place this big, partly because of money and partly because of the number of patients, and that sort of thing.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
So tell me about that next step. So you're committed to staying here.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Yeah.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
So you go for your PhD. Tell me about that.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Yeah. Well, it was five years out of my life that I don't even remember, to tell you the truth! (laughter) I worked full time and I went to school, and I had teenage kids, and it was horrific. But I got a lot of math skills, statistical skills that I had not had previously. That was a big plus for me. I honed computer skills. That was a really big plus for me, because the late "˜80s, and early "˜80s, we weren't using computers much at MD Anderson in everyday research. The Statistics Department did, but just the everyday use, people weren't doing that, so getting a computer and starting to put all of this into easily-searchable information that meant we could reuse the data from clinical trials for other things. That was a big step for our department and a big step for me in learning how to manage databases and design them, so you could ask future questions, and those sorts of things. So I got some very good skills, but more importantly I got the piece of paper that I needed. (laughter)
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And just for the record, that was a PhD in epidemiology?
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
No, it's a Doctor of Public Health.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Doctor of Public Health.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Yeah, DrPH.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh, okay.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Yeah.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay, great.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
And my focus was in epidemiology.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
And my minors were statistics and infectious diseases.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And that was, again, through the UT School of Public Health?
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay. So, and your degree was conferred in "˜88.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Mm-hmm.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And that was also the year that you had a big change in status, and so you became
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Yeah. Yeah.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Tell me about that next step.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
So, I asked Dr. Bodey to appoint me to the faculty.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Mm-hmm?
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
And he finally agreed. (laughter) Now, what was the hold-up, or do you think
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Well, he didn't think anyone would say yes.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
He said, "Well, nurses can't be on the faculty." And I said, "Well, I'm not a nurse anymore, now I have this doctoral degree." And so, but he says, "You're not my nurse anymore?" (laughs) I said, "I'll still be your nurse if you'll appoint me!" But he did not expect for that to beg approved.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Okay.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
And, but they approved it. I'm not sure why; it wasn't something that was done.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And again, it was because you had a nurse status, or
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Well, it wasn't just that. I was a classified employee.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh, I see.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Classified employees don't get promoted to faculty, ever. I don't know if they do now, either. You know? And I washe felt strongly that I would not be able to succeed as a faculty member because all the rest of the faculty knew me as a nurse. And he felt strongly if I wanted to succeed as a faculty member, I needed to go elsewhere, and that was a very reasonable thing, except that this is the best place to be. So I told him I would take that risk, and it wasn't his problem if it didn't happen. But I wanted to try to make it work. And he was right, it was hard to get physicians who had known me for a decade as a research nurse to give me a chance to prove that I was credible as a faculty member, and as a peer. It took a while. But it wasn't impossible. And there were lots of people who were very open-minded about it, you know, who agreed to work with me from the very beginning. So it's a big enough faculty that you can usually find another reasonable human (laughter) for every project.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Lots of doors to knock on.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
That's right.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Now, so in "˜88, so you were an instructor, an Assistant Epidemiologist, from 1988 to 1991.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
About that, yeah.
Recommended Citation
Elting, Linda E. DPh and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 05: A Doctorate in Public Health and Appointment to the Faculty" (2015). Interview Chapters. 709.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/709
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