Chapter 22: Cultivating Talented People Willing to Dedicate Themselves to a Research Life
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Description
Dr. Elting talks about her mentoring strategy of identifying talented people who can dedicate themselves to the demanding life of a researcher and principle investigator. She talks about the role of senior faculty in weeding out junior faculty who will not be worth a department’s investment.
Next, she explains that leadership involves a wide range of skills, including presentation and fund-raising skills and the ability to sell their ideas to for-profit companies.
Dr. Elting observes that too many women accept roles that involve a lot of work, but that do not showcase their skills. She talks about her style of mentoring women for leadership.
Identifier
EltingL_04_20150423_C22
Publication Date
4-23-2015
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Linda S. Elting, DrPh, Oral History Interview, April 23, 2015
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - Researcher; Leadership; Mentoring; The Life and Dedication of Clinicians and Researchers; On Texas and Texans; Women and Minorities at Work
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:
Well, I wanted to ask you. In terms of you passing on a leadership legacy to people, to junior faculty, what are some of the strategies that you've used in your own commitment to bringing women and a more diverse population into this field?
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
I will say honestly that I don't work hard to find women or minority people of any kind. I just look for talented people. And what I try to do is help junior people discover whether this is really what they want. There are too many people who think they want to be principal investigators and want to be full professors, and they want to do all of this, and they make those decisions and set those goals having no experience of what the life is really like, and having no notion that there are other things you could do that are equally important contributions and you don't have to have that life.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
What are you referring to when you say that life?
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
The sixty to seventy hours a week, seven days a week, no vacations, everything hanging in the balance on reviews that you get from grants. That's an extremeparticularly when you're an associate professor, and that's usually when you have family, children that really need you. And there just is no time, none, to establish an academic career is just an all-time-consuming thing. You can't do it in fewer than sixty hours a week. And lots of them are ninety-hour weeks. And unfortunately it's often seventy hours a week for many weeks in a row. And then less. And on average it may be sixty hours a week. But there are months when you never do anything but work and sleep. And there are many times when you spend as much time worrying about money as you do thinking science. And I think we don't train graduate students at all in any of the skills that are needed to do that. They don't learn how to write grants. (laughter) They don't hardly know how to write, in my experience. And so finding people. And then weeding out people who really have no promise or really don't have the drive to get there I consider an important job of senior faculty. It's not about opening doors for as many people as possible and seeing who walks through. That's too time-consuming, not only my time but theirs. Because it takes a while to fail at academics. So I think that identifying the people who are capable of making it and then the ones additionally who are committed enough to make it is a hard job. But it's the most important first job. And then I think that's a long term commitment. Somebody who has both of those characteristics is somebody you invest in for a decade, getting them onto committees, getting them into organizations outside the institution. Having them meet people all around the country and around the world. Opening doors, giving them ideas of your own so they can have success early on. Those are the kinds of things it takes to make the next generation of successful people. And so I never have more than one or two people I work with. And now that I'm retired I only work with one person at a time. Because it takes a lot of time to mold a faculty member. I'm not saying you can't get there without that. I certainly had no one who mentored me like that. But I also got promoted slowly and moved through the ranks slowly because so much of that I had to learn on my own.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Is there anything else that you wanted to say about education, mentoring, developing leadership skills?
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
I don't think so. I think it's a bigger package of skills than most people perceive. I think it involves presentation skills, short elevator talk skills, formal professional presentations, how to tell your story on the telephone. How to raise money. Those sorts of notions. How to sell your idea to a for-profit company. All of those things I think are very important. And then I guess the biggest thing that's gender-specific that I tell women is that it's not at all unusual for women to get appointed to be secretary of an organization or get appointed to committees that are low profile but huge amount of work. Things that have to get done, they need a person who is efficient and will get the work done and will work hard and do it efficiently. And there are an awful lot of women who spend too much of their career doing those jobs and they don't get any credit for it. It doesn't move them forward. So I guess the one thing that I do look at real carefully when I work with younger women is to ensure that they don't end up being the workhorse of the institution who is never on the podium. That's a real danger for a really competent person. And it's even worse for someone who isn't assertive and outgoing, because they gravitate to those kinds of jobs. So I guess that's theand I will say that it's very common in women. Particularly foreign-born women. I've had students who walked behind me because they were taught to do that. They grew up doing that. It's second nature. And things like that will sink a career. And it's such a silly thing to have a career damaged over. So I have been accused of being culturally insensitive. And I'm not. They can walk behind everything, everyone they want, on the street. (laughter) But in these halls, I have insisted that they change. I recognize they shouldn't have to do that. And I don't disrespect them for doing it. I appreciate the respect they show to other people when they do. But it will sink a talented person's career. So maybe there'll be a time when we don't have to be concerned about things like that. But those sorts of things, or sounding when you talk like you're a hick, the way you pronounce words, the way you express yourself, your diction, all of those things unfortunately can really sink your career.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Or always making statements that sound like a question.
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Oh yes. (laughter)
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Am I right? Am I right?
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Am I right?
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Do you like me? Do you like me?
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
Yes. That's correct. (laughter) I agree completely.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Very interesting. Is there anything else you wanted to add on that subject?
Linda S. Elting, DrPh:
I don't think so.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
I'm really glad you covered that. I mean I think one of the uses we hope to put this to is with Women Faculty Programs, faculty development. I think these kinds of statements will be very very important for people to hear.
Recommended Citation
Elting, Linda E. DPh and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 22: Cultivating Talented People Willing to Dedicate Themselves to a Research Life" (2015). Interview Chapters. 726.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/726
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