Choosing Academia by Turning Points

GATEWAY STUDY OF

LEADERSHIP

TURNING

POINTS

SCHOOL OF

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Choosing Academia

Turning Points Series Discover nuggets of unconventional wisdom through the excerpts of student interviews with Rice University faculty. Copyright 2012 Rice University. All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the School of Social Sciences at Rice University. Requests for permission should be directed to ipek@rice.edu.

Other books in the 2011-2012 series: Finding Inspiration Fostering Curiosity Sparking Enthusiasm Overcoming Obstacles

Rice University School of Social Sciences

Gateway Study of Leadership TURNING POINTS {series I | 2011 - 2012}

Choosing Academia

Gateway School of Social Sciences Rice University 6100 Main Street Houston, Texas 77005-1827 U.S.A.

Turning Points Series PRODUCTION TEAM

Ipek Martinez, Director of Gateway and Turning Points Mark Seraydarian, Gateway Post Baccalaureate Fellow Kaitlin Barnes, Daniel Cohen, Neeraj Salhotra, Amol Utrankar, and Catherine Yuh, Gateway Study of Leadership Fellows Brittany Fox, Editor Vinita Israni, Graphic Designer The 2011-2012 Turning Points series is made possible from excerpts of faculty interviews conducted by the following Gateway students: GATEWAY STUDY OF LEADERSHIP LEADERS & FELLOWS:

Nadia Khalid, Joe Pullano, Mark Seraydarian. Kaitlin Barnes, Nivriti Chowdhry, Daniel Cohen, Navtej Dhaliwal, Chris Keller, Sherry Lin, David Liou, Abby Marcus, Zachary Marx-Kuo, Asia McCleary-Gaddy, Marc Sabbagh, Neeraj Salhotra, Rohini Rao Sigireddi, Amol Utrankar, Pin-Fang Wang, Catherine Yuh. GATEWAY INTERNATIONAL AMBASSADORS & SUMMER FELLOWS:

Kelsey Lau, Dylan McNally, Kelly Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Connor, Christine Pao, Emma Stockdale

A NOTE FROM THE GATEWAY DIRECTOR

The 2011-2012 Turning Points series shares excerpts from student interviews with the School of Social Sciences faculty to bring a slice of life experiences to view for the Rice University community and beyond. In the fall of 2011, the School of Social Sciences Gateway program initiated Gateway Study of Leadership (GSL), which brought three undergraduates together to organize and lead a group of sixteen student fellows in interviewing social sciences faculty and hosting distinguished guests to discover career journeys and inspiration behind research endeavors. The GSL team hosted twelve guest speakers and conducted and transcribed thirty-seven faculty interviews. They found many thought provoking life experiences and interesting stories during their candid conversations. Most interviews had an essence of a â&#x20AC;&#x153;turning pointâ&#x20AC;? regarding the decisions involved in attending college, selecting majors, pursuing advanced

degrees, encountering mentors, finding inspiration for research topics, and developing a refreshing new approach to handle criticism in order to build knowledge and propel ahead. The faculty shared tangible advice for current and prospective students, sparking their enthusiasm and fostering their curiosities. We gathered few excerpts from these conversations to share as the GSL Turning Points series, in five booklets titled: Choosing Academia, Finding Inspiration, Overcoming Obstacles, Fostering Curiosity, and Sparking Enthusiasm. Ipek Martinez

CONTENTS

Ashley Leeds, Ph.D. Figuring out How the World Works

2. Dominic Boyer, Ph.D. 5 Pivotal Events 3.

Fred Oswald, Ph.D. Promise and Flexibility of Oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Degree 9

George Zodrow, Ph.D. Engineering to Economics

John Ambler, Ph.D. Reforming the System

Justin Denney, Ph.D. Just Seemed Like a Natural Fit

Margaret Beier, Ph.D. Back to School

Melissa Marschall, Ph.D. Exploring Abroad

9. 10.

Mikki Hebl, Ph.D. A Real Commitment to Education

Nia Georges, Ph.D. Total Immersion Experience

11.

Phillip Kortum, Ph.D. The Really Fun Stuff

12. Randi Martin, Ph.D. 41 Something You Should Think About 13.

Robin Sickles, Ph.D. Positive Feedback Loops

14.

Ruth Lopez Turley, Ph.D. Embrace the Unexpected

15.

Sarah Burnett, Ph.D. Far Ahead of Her Time

16.

Siyang Xiong, Ph.D. An Economic Frontiersman

17.

Songying Fang, Ph.D. Following Oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Father

18.

Steve Murdock, Ph.D. You Can Do This

19. Ted Temzelides, Ph.D. Intellectually Curious About the Contributors Acknowledgements

63 67 77

TURNING POINTS ONE

Figuring Out How the World Works Ashley Leeds, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Political Science, Rice University

Well, I certainly did not think I was going to be a professor. Actually early on, probably from the time I was about ten, I was really interested in journalism, and I always said when I was about in fifth grade that I was going to be the Walter Cronkite of the 21st century, which really dates me. I always focused more on career, I think, than a lot of women at that age did. When I was in elementary school, most of the mothers of my classmates didn’t work and my mother didn’t work. My mother did start working later and has a very high-powered job now, but at that time, I don’t think that’s what most girls were focused on. And yet I definitely remember that I was always very focused on what my career was going to be and my family was very supportive of that. 1

I went to college to study journalism. I thought that I wanted to be a Washington correspondent or something like that, and I went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and they have a very good journalism program. A joint major in journalism and political science was my plan, but what I found out when I got there was that I was really interested in political science and, in particular, that what I really wanted to do was figure out how the world worked. To me, the people who did that were journalists. I thought they were the people who report whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going on in the world, and what I learned is that if I was going to be a journalist, I would start out reporting on the town fair or whatever, and not start out in Washington. What I really wanted to do was figure out how the world worked and there were researchers who did that. So I got more interested in that. I think pretty shortly after I got to college I decided I was more interested in political science, but I actually had a rather non-traditional college experience. I went to college for a year, then I took two and a half years off and worked, and then I 2

finished in another year and a half or so because I had a lot of college credit from before I went to school, so I wasn’t there for very long. I went back and I was doing sales during the time I was out of school, and was good at that, so when I was graduating from college I thought, “I kind of want to go to grad school, but I’m not sure I do.” I thought, “Do I really want to be that poor and work that hard if I’m not sure it’s what I want to do?” So I took another sales job. I graduated college in 1991 and the Gorbachev coup happened that fall. I was really glued to that, saying, “Wow, this is really important. This is something that our children are going to be learning about.” I was 21 and I would go into work and say, “Oh my goodness, this is so important!” And people would say “Huh? What?” It just wasn’t something that really interested them and that made me feel like I wasn’t in the right place. And that moment was when I decided I was going to apply to grad school in political science. When I got there, I didn’t really know much about what grad school would be like. I had a big state university education, which didn’t give me the kind 3

of experience that Rice students have where you do your own research, where you work closely with faculty and all that. So I was very surprised but really excited when I went to grad school because I felt like there were all kinds of people interested in exactly what I was interested in. So suddenly I was around a lot of people who I thought were like me, and it turned out to be a really good fit for me.

TURNING POINTS TWO

Pivotal Events Dominic Boyer, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Anthropology, Rice University

I’ve known I wanted to be an anthropologist since I was eleven. Why I knew that I am not sure, I can’t really reconstruct that, but I remember very early certainty. I think I had a very good sixth grade geography teacher who inspired me to become interested in anthropology. It’s a little tricky because anthropology isn’t offered in high schools typically in the United States, so I had to put that dream on hold until I got to college. I went to college at Brown University. I did major in anthropology there, but it was sort of a transitional moment in that department’s development. They had a faculty that was aging. It was not as up-to-date with current research. It was a little bit moribund even. It wasn’t quite as intellectually challenging as I’d hoped, although I still loved the topics and 5

the material. The classes themselves weren’t as exciting to me, so I double majored in a department that was very passionately committed to pushing undergraduate education, especially in matters of theory and philosophy, literary criticism—that was the department of modern culture and media. So, I double majored and I’ve had an interest in media studies ever since. For graduate school, I did want to return to anthropology and sort of do it right, so I went to the University of Chicago and did my PhD work there. Although I’m not sure what my idea was going in, I belonged to that generation of people who experienced 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Cold War system as being the pivotal events of my formative years. There were many of us who came into anthropology in the late ’80s or especially the early ’90s with a desire to explore Eastern Europe and to get to understand post-socialist transitions and so I was swept along with that and became interested because of my background. My father’s a political-historian of Austria. So I had some knowledge of German. I had 6

been studying German for a long time, so I became interested in the former East Germany and especially in German unification as that process took shape and the effects of German unification. So my dissertation work was focused on a topic that connected media to German unificationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;what happened to former East German journalists after unification. That became the major focus of my first major field work in the mid 1990s and eventually my first book many years later.

TURNING POINTS THREE

Promise and Flexibility of One’s Degree Fred Oswald, Ph.D. Professor, Psychology, Rice University

I didn’t have a set career path in mind early on. I didn’t have the, “Oh, I want to be a doctor,” or those sort of early focused aspirations. I was still pretty attuned to what my specific interests were, so it’s not that I had diffuse interests and felt like I could be a pro-football player or an English professor...I mean, these were things I was pretty sure that knew I didn’t want to do. But my career goals really didn’t narrow until there was some external pressure to do so. I think a lot people face this: You’re toward the end of college, you figure you need to get a job at that point, you have a liberal arts degree—so what are you going to do? And at that point, it’s a combination of being frightened because there is no set path, like there is in some specialties. But at the same time, it’s exciting. The fright is also exciting because there’s 9

so much promise, there’s so much flexibility in your degree. There are so many things you can do with it. Students in liberal arts certainly go pre-med and pre-law, get the liberal arts degree and then go on their way with those specific intents. But I would say even a lot of those people who think they’re going to be pre-med and pre-law end up changing because their eyes are opened to other fascinating options that their degree affords. So I was kind of in that boat. I didn’t know exactly where I was going to go until there was some external pressure, and then I knew that grad school was the next step in order to obtain specialized knowledge about IO psychology. Once I was in grad school, my eyes were then open to even more career options I didn’t know about as an undergrad, that once I had my PhD I could work in the applied setting working for companies that develop employment tests, for example, or I could work in-house; many large companies have industrial psychologists in-house, like Proctor & Gamble, FedEx, or Pepsi. Or I could work for the government or for agencies or non-profits that work closely with government contracts and do sort of more scientific research, but not in pure academics. 10

So there were more options there that I was open to through most of grad school, before I eventually settled on academics.

TURNING POINTS FOUR

Engineering to Economics George Zodrow, Ph.D. Professor, Political Science, Rice University

My parents were Polish immigrants, and my dad was 40 when he came to the Unites States. Although he had a college degree from the University of Warsaw, it really didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t count for much here. He started out at a low level job and moved to Detroit, where I spent the first five years of my life. He worked for ACF (American Car and Foundry) Industries, and he was transferred to Houston when I was five and a half. My dad was convinced that the best career path for me was in engineering, and, since I was pretty good at science and engineering, I pursued that for quite a while. In fact, my undergraduate education was at Rice, and I have a masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s degree in mechanical engineering that I earned here. I worked for several years as an engineer but I think I knew, at some level, that economics was really what I wanted to do since I took my first 13

economics course as a senior in high school. I had double majored in economics when I was at Rice, and my favorite professor and mentor, Charlie McLure, strongly encouraged me to pursue a career in economics since he knew that was the subject that fascinated me the most. It took me a while – I did not want to go straight to graduate school after Rice in any case – but after a few years in engineering, I decided to go back to graduate school in economics. My buddies in graduate school used to kid me that I was the only guy in the program who had a significant opportunity cost for going to school, and I guess that was true. It was pretty painful to go from my engineer lifestyle in sunny Southern California to an eight-by-ten dorm room at Princeton University. In any case, I got my degree in economics specializing in tax policy, my first teaching job was here at Rice, and I have been working on various aspects of tax policy ever since. And because my work consists not only of academic research but also includes a lot of projects on tax reform in the United States as well as in many foreign countries, I have never missed the “real world” aspects of a life in engineering. 14

TURNING POINTS FIVE

Reforming the System John Ambler, Ph.D. Professor, Political Science, Rice University

When I was about a sophomore in college, I decided I didn’t want to be a lawyer, I didn’t want to be a businessman, I didn’t want to be a doctor. I had two very respected aunts who were teachers, so I was going to be a teacher. I wasn’t going to be an ordinary teacher; I was going to reform the whole American educational system. I was going to be superintendent of schools, and I had gone to a public school, and I knew exactly what had gone wrong. I thought I was going to solve this and so I was really a very ambitious, rather arrogant man. After a year at Stanford where I got a master’s in education and my secondary teaching certificate, a year in France Fulbright, a couple of years in the army, I ended up at Ulysses S. Grant High School in Portland, Oregon teaching social studies. The summer that I arrived, the principal said to me, “Our business 15

law teacher just died this summer. You’ve studied some political science, haven’t you? Isn’t that close to business law?” And I said, “No, not really.” So I ended up teaching two classes of business law about which I knew nothing. As it turned out, they had a history there that the last two periods of the day had all the goof-offs in the senior class and I lost disciplinary control of this group very quickly. I did not follow the advice, “Don’t smile before Thanksgiving.” I tried to be one of the boys, and I was pretty young. I really did enjoy my history and civics courses, which I taught in the morning, but this business law class… I had two of them in a row, and they quickly got out of control. I discovered the route to be principal went through the dean of the students, which was essentially a disciplinary job. So what I learned in that year was that I very much enjoyed teaching but I was not all that great at disciplining teenagers. I decided to move on to the university level. I went on to Berkeley and got a PhD there. I went back to France and did some research and came back and taught at Berkeley. I decided I did not want to spend my career in a university with 27,500 students, and I came to Rice. 16

TURNING POINTS SIX

Just Seemed Like a Natural Fit Justin Denney, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Sociology, Rice University

My family greatly influenced the underlying desire to—in some broad, undefined way—contribute to society. I grew up with very supportive parents who everybody dreams of having. They were always proud of me, always had high expectations of me, but never put pressure on me at the same time to do any one thing in particular. I would say with sociology in particular and the path that I have taken for a career, it just seemed almost like a natural fit for me in a lot of ways. I can remember as a very young child thinking about the ways in which external forces impact individual lives. I didn’t know at the time that it was sociology that I was interested in, but I was just sort of struck by the fact that as I grew up in a small town in a rural area, it seemed liked the decisions that people were making and the 17

decisions that people had available to them were very much structured by these outside forces. The local economy, the families, the types of families that people spent a lot of time with, the groups of friends that people had, all had a way of directing peoplesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; behaviors in certain ways, and I found that just in of itself fascinating. As I was finishing high school and going to college, I started getting interested in how all of those things play into this greater issue of inequality, that certain opportunities are given to certain groups of people, and it seemed like those opportunities had less to do in a lot of ways with how hard you were willing to work and more to do with where you came from. I found that interesting, and I found it potentially even more interesting to realize that as a society in a lot of ways we support that mantra. Whether we know it or not, we provide preferential treatment to certain groups of people not based on anything in particular other than where they come from and where they stand in the social hierarchy. My take on that was, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Why is that the case and why do we continue to allow that to happen when so 18

many of us would say that that shouldn’t be the way that decisions are made or that opportunities are granted? That they should line up more closely with the American ideal of hard work and being motivated and pursuing your aspirations?” Those should be the things that determine whether or not you are successful, but that’s not the reality that we face. I found that interesting and continued to pursue that, and that’s how I started on this path. I came from very much of a working class family, so we didn’t have a lot of the economic privileges that some people have, but I was also white, so I realized early on that my race contributed to the opportunities that I was given and the things that people expected from me. When things would go awry or things would go well, I couldn’t help but reflect on some of the social privileges that I had being a white individual in a very rural area. I often wondered what direction my life might have taken if I hadn’t been white in a predominantly white area. I think all of those things came to a head, and I think one of the things that sociology does really well is it teaches us to be eternal skeptics, that reality is never 19

what it seems. It helps us dig deeper, to find out what sorts of things are going on and why they are going on that way rather than take for granted the way things are. I think my background contributed to that. One of the areas I am also interested in is how, very broadly, context shapes individuals. When I say context, one of the things that I mean is how families shape individual opportunities and behaviors. In my own case and in my research, I think that there are powerful effects that family members, or people that you are very close to, have on influencing you and your trajectory and which way you can go, and that can go either good or bad. A lot of times we focus on when it goes good but it can go poorly as well, either through the opportunity to behave in ways that are not good for your health or also the sort of resources that families can provide in terms of economic or social capital as well. So yeah, in thinking about it, I think definitely my personal experience has in a lot of ways influenced what I am most interested in today in figuring out how these different arenas, be they family, or neighborhoods, or internationallyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;we can 20

even talk about national contextsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;how those shape individuals who live in those situations. I would say all of those things have contributed to my interests and my focus in my own research.

TURNING POINTS SEVEN

Back to School Margaret Beier, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Psychology, Rice University

I was very undecided about what I wanted to do. I always knew that I liked learning and I liked learning about a lot of different things. I think I always anticipated that I would be in school forever and ever and ever. I remember asking my dad whether I could stay in school for the rest of my life, and he basically said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Well, it might not be the best idea but you certainly could.â&#x20AC;? I have a very strange career trajectory. When I went to college, I went to Colby College in Maine starting in 1984. I knew I was good at math and so I decided I was going to be a math major. I was a math major for about a year and then I also took French classes there. I decided that I would get my French requirement out of the way by doing a semester abroad in France. I went to France and I really 23

loved it. I loved observing people. I loved the social science aspect of it, now in retrospect. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know that then. I loved the difference in cultures, loved observing people and just learning about different cultures. When I came back, I changed my major from math to French. I ended up going back and spending my whole junior year abroad. While I was at Colby, I lived in France for about a year and a half. Then it was really easy for me to get a French major because all I needed were a couple credits. Of course, I had to call my parents and tell them that I was changing my major from math, which is maybe not directly marketable but certainly more marketable than French literature. They took everything in stride and were very accepting of everything. They allowed me to do a lot of exploration, which I really appreciated. But when I graduated from college, it was 1988 and the stock market had just crashed and the job market was similar to the way it is now. It was very difficult to get a job and I realized the French major was probably not a great idea because French people spoke French better than I did, and many of them 24

spoke English better than I did too. I got a job working at a large company in Minneapolis. I went back home, and I started as an executive assistant. I worked for somebody who was high up in this company. And I went through a lot of the market research for them and kind of combined my love of social science and human behavior and math. I became very interested in research, and I went back then to the University of Minnesota and took some research methods classes in psychology. I took some business classes as well and kind of decided that what I wanted to do was return to school eventually and get a PhD in psychology. And thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what I did. I actually started graduate school in 1998, about 10 years after I graduated from undergraduate. I got my PhD in 2004. I was a non-traditional back-to-school student. I had worked for a number of years, and I think that helped me in terms of organizing my study time. I knew what I wanted to do. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have any questions as to why I was there.

TURNING POINTS EIGHT

Exploring Abroad Melissa Marschall, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Political Science, Rice University

When it came time for college, my mom had her ideas of what I should do. I should play tennis, I should get a scholarship. And my dad was like, â&#x20AC;&#x153;You should explore and think about other things.â&#x20AC;? So I was a double major in German and international affairs, and I studied in Germany and loved being in a different culture, in a different setting, learning about different countries. I studied abroad in Germany my junior year, and I changed majors because I was a business major and when I came back, I was really interested in East-Central European history and political and economic development. One of my history professors encouraged me to apply for a Fulbright. He was very strategic about it because he knew 27

it was very difficult for undergraduates to get. Especially—I went to a public university so I didn’t have the private, elite school kind of credentials. So he said, “Well you don’t want to go back to Germany because that is really difficult. You should think of a place that is maybe less popular.” And so Turkey had a lot of English speaking universities, and it was really a great place for me to be because I was interested in political and economic development. So I applied for a Fulbright there to a university in Istanbul. I didn’t end up getting the Fulbright but the university there had encouraged for me to come anyway. So I said, “Okay, well maybe I’ll go for a year.” I ended up staying for two years and writing my thesis and getting my degree there, so that’s how that worked out. From there I guess what was missing was the feeling that I had good skills in doing actual research. So I went to graduate school with the idea of being in a place where I could really develop that. I really hoped that that would be true because I 28

had never known anybody who was a professor. It just wasn’t a career path that I was familiar with at all, and I always felt like I didn’t quite know what I should be doing to be successful. I had really good research skills, and there were a bunch of people who dropped out of my program that went on to find jobs in the private sector or with government agencies, so I wasn’t really worried that I wouldn’t find a job, but I wasn’t sure about whether I would be somewhere where I wanted to be. You take whatever job you can get. The market back then was also very bad, so the idea of being a professor in the middle of Kansas or something didn’t sound very appealing to me. Hard work and persistence paid off.

TURNING POINTS NINE

A Real Commitment to Education Mikki Hebl, Ph.D. Professor, Psychology, Rice University

I am from Pardeeville, Wisconsin. It’s a very small town in the Midwest with only 1,300 people. I had the privilege of going to a prep school for my junior and senior years of high school. I got a scholarship to go, and my father agreed to drive me to this prep school that was an hour drive. But he drove me to and from the school twice a day (four hours out of his day for two years) because my parents didn’t want me driving while I was exhausted from school and had to face winter road conditions in Wisconsin. Thus, my dad made a real commitment to education in a relatively provincial place that didn’t focus on higher education. So when I went to that prep school, it opened my eyes in a way that a lot of people have their eyes opened in college. I then applied early decision to Smith College in Northampton, 31

Massachusetts, which is an all womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s college that focuses squarely on thinking about, reflecting on, and acting on issues of social justice. When I first got there, I was not really informed at all, and four years of an education at Smith College will change all that. I graduated feeling much more aware of social issues, in particular of womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s issues and of appreciating immensely all of the opportunities I have today because of the brave and courageous pioneering women who went before me and paved the way. Certainly four years of learning about gender differences both in and outside the classroom really focused my energies on thinking about social justice and discrimination. My parents were so thrilled that I was going to college. I never felt pressure from them. I did feel pressure, just like I feel on the Rice campus, by being surrounded by outstanding people to be some sort of success at something. I felt like I had to do something that external people would really value, and I reflect on that and think thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just blatantly misdirected. I think that the way people in our society (and even our own college students) tend 32

to value certain professions (i.e., medicine) over others (i.e., elementary education) is skewed and problematic.

TURNING POINTS TEN

Total Immersion Experience Nia Georges, Ph.D. Professor, Anthropology, Rice University

After the exposure to my first anthropology course, which was on Latin America, I thought that this was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life, just with that one course. So I applied for a Fulbright Award, which I got, to go to Colombia. I lived in Colombia for a year after I got my Masters, and I studied anthropology for a semester at the University of the Andes, which is a wonderful private university in Bogota. At the end of that semester, I was invited by an anthropologist to be his field assistant in the Amazon. I thought, this is it, if I survive this, then I know I can be an anthropologist. It was in fact quite an experience because we had to be flown in by missionaries, and once we were there, there was no way out essentially. In an emergency, you could radio the missionaries, and eventually they would come get you. It was a total immersion experience, and 35

I discovered that it just reinforced my decision to go into anthropology. So when I returned from my Fulbright, I applied to grad school and eventually ended up at Columbia University in NYC. I went to Columbia University and got my PhD in Anthropology, and I worked in Latin America for the first 10-15 years of my career.

TURNING POINTS ELEVEN

The Really Fun Stuff Phillip Kortum, Ph.D. Professor-in-the-Practice, Psychology, Rice University

My mom was a teacher, and my dad was a judge. They had gone to college, so I had a good template that this was a way to be successful, to go out and get an education. They didn’t put any restrictions on me. You know, “You must study to be a lawyer,” or “You must study to be a teacher.” It was find something that you love to do and then apply yourself in that. I had good templates about what it meant to be a good lifelong learner, but I wasn’t restricted into you must do this or that. With my undergraduate degree, I went right into industry, and I found industry to be very stimulating, lots of fun, interesting, and I worked on good projects that really were challenging. And so I enjoyed that, but I immediately noted that if I 37

wanted to do the really fun stuff in industry, that I needed an advanced degree. After I got my Master’s degree, I decided that if I wanted to do the really, really interesting stuff, I needed a PhD. I could see from my peers that the people with bachelor’s degrees got to do some of the fun work, that the people with Master’s degrees tended to get to participate in some of the planning, and the people with PhD’s were the ones who were setting direction and coming up with the ideas, and I thought that was great. But I had assumed that I would always work, or that I would initially work, in industry. I think as I got older I knew that I wanted to come back and teach. But I’m not sure that I had thought that I would make the switch immediately to academics. I thought maybe I would combine the two. But when I was afforded an opportunity to come back full time, it was just too good to pass up. I’d been in industry for almost twenty years before I came back. It wasn’t just like, “Yes I want to be a professor.” It was, “I want to do this kind of work,” and I was able to do that in industry and then I had this wonderful opportunity to be able to come back 38

and not only do that in academics, but also teach the next generation of scientists as well.

TURNING POINTS TWELVE

Something You Should Think About Randi Martin, Ph.D. Professor, Psychology, Rice University

No one in my family had ever gone to college except for my older sister, so it was kind of a big deal to go to college in the first place. My mother was determined that we were all—the four of us—going to get college degrees. It was her expectation that we were going to do that. My father was not so sure that girls needed to do this, so in a family of one boy and three girls, they started saving up money for my brother to go to college but not for any of the girls. By the time I finished high school, I had to be sure to have money or financial aid to make it possible. Luckily, my older sister and I did very well in school, so we did get scholarships for tuition. Beyond that, I didn’t really think about graduate school. I certainly didn’t have any thoughts originally 41

about being a faculty member for sure. I thought after getting an undergraduate degree—and that was a big deal—I’d probably just go off and get a job, and I did that. In fact, I got a job right after graduating, and I didn’t find it all that interesting. I had a low-level management position at a telephone company. It was about managing the allocation of how many circuits you needed between different cities, and what was called the emergency network management – that is, when circuits were brought down by natural disasters. As an undergrad, I’d started out majoring in math because it’s something I’d done really well at. I had people encourage me to go to graduate school. I was doing really well in the classes and had good test scores, so people would say, “It’s something you should think about.” I thought about math for a while, but I got to the point where I really didn’t want to pursue graduate work in math. I remember being at the University of Oregon, hanging around with the graduate students in down in the basement of the math building, and seeing them writing those equations on the board. I thought, “Oh gosh, I can’t 42

imagine doing this for my career.â&#x20AC;? Luckily, I had taken some psychology classes at Oregon, which had a great psychology department. They had people like Mike Posner and Steven Keele, who were really famous people in cognitive psychology, teaching the lower level intro classes on learning and memory. I took all those classes, and I just really found that stuff fascinating because it was scientific and dealing with topics that were really interesting, like memory and language issues.

TURNING POINTS THIRTEEN

Positive Feedback Loops Robin Sickles, Ph.D. Professor, Economics, Rice University

I grew up in the 1950s in Orlando, Florida. My mom and dad had moved down from Pittsburg when I was young. My mom was a very intelligent woman but had to leave college at Columbia during the Depression basically to make ends meet and never finished her degree until I was in college. Education was always important because she had not been able to finish hers in due course. My father was a music major, very accomplished in composition. He went to Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon) but had to drop out because of the Depression. At one point, Aaron Copland wanted him to be his understudy. He had a very interesting career and ended up in radio and television. He was a television personality when I was growing up in Central Florida. At the end of the day, education was very important in our family. My mom was a teacher. She taught early 45

childhood. Her training was in early childhood education and so she taught Kindergarten and first grade. I had visions of doing a variety of things. I was a very accomplished athlete. I played baseball, and my father told me after I had been in college for a year that the St. Louis Cardinals had come to ask him if they could recruit me, and he had told them that I was going to college. I could have probably played some Class D ball, would have been on a bus travelling around small, podunk towns in Florida. In any event, I went to Georgia Tech. I was in aerospace engineering, and I wanted to be an astronaut. I was the most physically fit person in our class at Georgia Tech. I sort of nailed the tests, and I was also a walk-on baseball player. I was 17 when I went away to college. When I was home right before my 18th birthday, I blew my knee out playing some pick-up football. It got misdiagnosed as a slight sprain. It ended up being a torn ACL, and I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t find that out until about a month later when I got back to the team. The team physician told me that there was no way to operate at that time. They didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t 46

have a procedure back in 1967 to repair an ACL once necrosis had set in. So here I was at 18 and I had to sort of rethink things. Athletics was out. And then I got astigmatism, so I couldn’t pass the flight physical for Air Force ROTC and pursue the astronaut idea. By about the third or fourth year, I realized I wasn’t that interested in aerospace engineering anymore. It was about that time that the aerospace industry was tanking, so it wasn’t the best place to be. Then I took a course from a Jesuit priest who had left the Order and had decided to become an econ professor. They had just opened up an economics degree—they did not have one when I started. So I took a course in economics, the history of economic thought. Because of all the maths I had done when I was in aerospace engineering, the econometrics and statistics were fairly easy for me to work through. I finished the courses in about a year and was encouraged to go to graduate school. I didn’t have a clue about what I could do so I went to graduate school at North Carolina. I applied to two graduate programs—Duke and North Carolina. I went to North Carolina because they paid me $500 more 47

than Duke did. I saw myself becoming a professor when I started doing well in classes. Positive feedback loops are not a minor reason of why you pursue things. I was very good at math, and in programming, so I worked for a professor. I had gone there to work in population economics and demography with a very famous economist, Harold Hotelling. Hotelling died the summer I got to graduate school, so I had to switch what I thought I would do. There was a very young and very talented econometrician, so I worked for him as a research assistant. We published a couple of papers in the top journals in Economics, and I said, “Well this is kind of easy.” Of course, it wasn’t that easy. But you know, I got very positive feedback and one thing led to the next and I finished the PhD in four years and went to George Washington University. I stayed there a few years and continued to work hard and all of a sudden, people seemed to think that I knew what I was doing, so I was offered a job at the University of Pennsylvania.

TURNING POINTS FOURTEEN

Embrace the Unexpected Ruth Lopez Turley, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Sociology, Rice University

I did not expect to go to college, and certainly not at the places that I went to. I should mention why I didn’t expect that, because I know for a lot of people that are in these settings that it’s pretty much taken for granted from a very early age that they have a certain trajectory. But for me that wasn’t the case because I grew up in a very poor family, a very poor setting. My mother went to the eighth grade and my father third grade. Those were the highest education levels. So for my family, graduating from high school was a very big deal, and that would have been amazing in and of itself. But some really strange things happened. You know how everybody responds to life challenges and stressful situations in a different way? My reaction to the stresses at home was to really focus on school. I 49

actually probably took it too far. It was probably an unhealthy obsession with school, to be quite honest about it, but that really kept me going. I just fell in love with my teachers, and I worked really, really hard to get their approval. All throughout elementary school, and especially high school, I was always just working to get the approval of my teachers, and the more attention I got from them, the harder I worked. So obviously that obsession then lead to the opportunity to go to college, even though I didn’t expect to go to college because I had assumed that college was only for rich people. And in many ways, that was the case. I wasn’t too far off, now that I study this. And that was my big turning point in my life—when I discovered that actually it’s the most expensive private, elite institutions that have the most financial aid to offer. The hard part is getting in, of course. Very, very competitive, very difficult to get in. But once you get in, if you’re poor like I was, I was able to go to Stanford for free, basically. My mother was not able to contribute anything because we were very, very 50

poor. Most people with my background don’t even consider applying to those places, much less get in. But if you get in, oh my, they’ll take care of you. I would have ended up with more debt at UT Austin—a lot more debt, I can guarantee it—than what I did, which is go to Stanford, and I got a tiny bit of debt. But considering how much it cost, it was nothing. So yes, that was a very big surprise—going to college, and ending up at a place like Stanford, which is a whole other story that I’ll spare you for the moment. And then even there, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I ended up taking a sociology class and fell in love with it, but before I got there I didn’t even know what sociology was. Even what I ended up studying was a surprise. And then going to graduate school was a surprise. That was a result of one of my professors really pushing me to do that. And I didn’t know what being a professor was all about. In many ways, I’m very glad that I was very naïve about all of this because if I had known what I was getting myself into, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have done it. 51

I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think I would have had the self-confidence or the guts do to that. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m pretty sure I wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have done it if I had known how competitive it was all going to be.

TURNING POINTS FIFTEEN

Far Ahead of Her Time Sarah Burnett, Ph.D. Professor, Psychology, Rice University

I came from a very large family. My mother was 40 when I was born. My parents went through the Great Depression and World War II, which had a huge effect on the way they viewed the world. They had seen very wealthy people go broke and end up standing in soup lines; in WWII everyone used rationing books and went without a lot of things like sugar and butter. People who experienced those two events felt insecure, I think, for the rest of their lives. Education was viewed by my parents as important for security—if one got a good education, then one could probably have a good job. And for women, my mother considered education even more important because there were not that many jobs or careers that women could go into. Women could be teachers, nurses, and secretaries—that was just about it—very few women were allowed into 53

graduate or professional schools. So in my family, it was a given that all of us would go to college, and we all did. I guess I would have to call my mother a feminist even though she was a housewife who stayed home and raised her family. I think she felt trapped that she was unable, because of various events, to go to college. Even though my mother was born in 1905 and living in a very small town, she was always very concerned about what was happening to women in society. I recall vividly her telling me and my sisters that we needed to get a good education and have a career “to fall back on” because there were so many women whose husbands divorced them or who died, and the women were left with no way to support themselves and their children. She also made sure my brothers knew how to cook, clean, and do simple sewing (like sewing buttons on a shirt). She could change electrical plugs on a lamp or iron. She had no patience with the idea of men’s work and women’s work—she was far ahead of her time, especially for a small-town woman born in the South.

I remember thinking in high school that women at that time were getting a very raw deal from society, and I decided that I wanted a career so that I could always take care of myself. I never wanted to be dependent on men. That attitude came from my mother even though she stayed married to my father for 60 years. Had it not been for her inspiration, I might not have worked as hard as I did to go to college and to graduate school and have a career. Her attitude had a huge effect on my life and still does. The organizations I support with the most enthusiasm are Planned Parenthood and Emilyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Listâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;two organizations dedicated to helping women have control over their own lives. Becoming a professor was a bit of an accident. It seems like everybody in my family went into either teaching or medicine. Even nieces and nephews and other relatives are still doing that. I thought that I would probably either go to medical school, law school, or graduate school, but the first psychology course I took really convinced me that I wanted to pursue psychology.

I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think of myself as necessarily becoming a professor, but I wanted to do psychology. To me, there is nothing more interesting than why people do what they do and think what they think. Once you get into graduate school, before you know it, they have you shaped into thinking about being a professor. Even though I had thought about becoming a clinical psychologist at one time, the graduate school I went to was very much oriented in the direction of research, and I really, really admired a certain person with whom I wanted to work who was in the field of learning. It was probably the influence of that professor, Arthur Irion, that led me into the field of learning and the thought of teaching.

TURNING POINTS SIXTEEN

An Economic Frontiersman Siyang Xiong, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Economics, Rice University

I actually have a long path before I become a professor at Rice University. I graduated in 1998 from college, and I came to the United States in 2000. I first went to Ohio State University, and I was in the PhD program in agricultural economics there. In my first year I took the same course as the PhD students in the economics program. And after I took those courses, I found out that I was more interested in economic theory and that I wanted to pursue a career in economic theory, so I decided to go to a school with a better program in economic theory. But before that I went to Indiana University to study mathematics for two years. After that I went to Northwestern University and got my PhD in 2009. Then I came to Rice University in 2009. I lived in China before I came to the United States. 57

I majored in international trade while I was in college in China, which frankly speaking is basically a subfield in economics. I actually did not have a clear picture of what economics does, but I knew I was interested in economics because China is facing huge changes regarding economics, politics, everything. My decision to come to the United States was largely influenced by my fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s path. He actually went to Japan to study. He was a doctor, and he studied abroad for one year and he told me that he learned a lot from that experience and that influenced my decision a lot. So I thought, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I ought to study abroad. I want to come to the frontier of economics and study economics.â&#x20AC;? That was the biggest factor for me to come to the United States.

TURNING POINTS SEVENTEEN

Following One’s Father Songying Fang, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Political Science, Rice University

My mother was a teacher, and my dad was a researcher, though he was not at a university. He was at an academic unit studying philosophy. Growing up, I was always drawn to a life style similar to his. I think what impressed me was that I would wake up at midnight and see the light still on in his room and I knew he was reading and writing…I can’t quite describe the intrigue I felt. I felt that intellectual life was something very appealing, and the idea of thinking about something deeply is meaningful. So going through graduate study to become a professor—teaching and doing research---was a natural choice for me. I did my undergraduate in China, and I started my graduate study there as well. Then I applied to schools in the United States. I studied economics at first in 59

graduate school, then realized that I was most interested in politics, and international relations, in particular. I did not just want to read and know about what happened; I wanted to know why things happen the way they do. In other words, I wanted to understand the reasons. So I decided to transfer to the political science program at the University of Rochester.

TURNING POINTS EIGHTEEN

You Can Do This Steve Murdock, Ph.D. Professor, Sociology, Rice University

My mother was very insistent that all of her kids were going to go to college. There was never any doubt even though she only had a high school degree, and my father had an eighth grade education. She was very insistent. So we all knew we were going to go to college. My parents were also very public service oriented—that you did something that made a difference for people, not that you just made money. They weren’t against making money, but they didn’t push us to be in banking or be in a business profession. As a result, I have two siblings and they both spent their entire lives as schoolteachers, and very successfully I think. Of course I’ve been a college professor since the beginning of my career, basically. We all had, I think, socialization on us to both be educated and to also serve. It was very important in how we were taught 61

by my parents that service to others was critical. I did not see myself as a professor until I got to college and had a couple of very instrumental experiences. I think that everybody has a professor or several professors who encourage you. I had that happen when I was an undergraduate when I did well in the first courses. From the beginning, I was very interested in social phenomena. Social phenomenon and later demographic phenomena became key interests. Professors at both levels encouraged me. At the undergraduate level, a professor who was in a small state university encouraged me from the beginning to get through an undergraduate degree program and then go on for graduate studies. When I got to graduate studies, I had a professor who was also very important in terms of encouragement. There were people along the way who said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;You can do this, you should be able to do this, and it would make a difference if you did this.â&#x20AC;?

TURNING POINTS NINETEEN

Intellectually Curious Ted Temzelides, Ph.D. Professor, Economics, Rice University

I don’t come from the sort of family where people traditionally have been very well educated. My mother was a high school graduate and a stay-athome mom, and my dad was an engineer in cargo ships, so he was away from home for the majority of the year. So there were no expectations for me. If there were any, I exceeded them. I should also say that going to college in Greece is not as common as going to college here. It’s about ten percent of the population that goes to college, so it’s something. There’s an extremely competitive process to get in, so most people graduate from high school and go on to something equivalent of community college before getting a job. In Greece, you live a subsidized life as a student. Everything is paid for you, so there were no financial costs for them. Of course, my parents knew enough to understand that going to college 63

increases your set of responsibilities, so they were fairly pleased. The decision to go into academia is something that comes at different times for different people. I like to joke about it and say that I wanted to postpone getting a real job as much as possible, and that I’m not an early morning person. All this is true. If you try to delay getting a real job and are not a morning person, you really have very few choices and academia is one of them, but that’s sort of the joke. The real reason is from the time I went to college. I didn’t go to college thinking that I was going to be more specialized, or that I was going to get a job in industry. I went to college because I was intellectually curious. I had decided from the time I went to college, or even before that, that what I wanted to do was research in the field that I was intellectually curious about. So I pursued a doctorate degree and then an academic career, because that’s what allows me to do research in what I want to study. I went through a little bit of a transition from issues related to monetary economics, like 64

money and banking, to what Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m interested in now. Although I still have some work in money and banking, and even some work on game theory, what Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m mainly interested in now is energy economics.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

John Ambler is a Professor of Political Science. He has published a number of books and articles on French politics in comparative perspective. His recent work has focused on comparative social and education policy in Western Europe. In both 1994 and 2002, Dr. Ambler was recognized for his outstanding teaching with the George R. Brown Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Alumni have also chosen Dr. Ambler for the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching four times. Dr. Ambler earned a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. Margaret Beier is an Associate Professor of Psychology. Her research interests broadly focus on adult intellectual development, working memory, domain specific knowledge, gender differences in cognition, and predicting success for adults in organizations and educational settings. Dr. Beierâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work includes examining the role of cognitive ability, personality traits, and demographic factors in learning. She earned a Ph.D. in industrial/ organizational psychology from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dominic Boyer is an Associate Professor of Anthropology. His research focuses broadly on expertise, knowledge, media and journalism. He is currently working on projects investigating late socialist aesthetics of parody and modern political discourse, the politics of renewable energy development in Mexico, and transformation of news practices among German and American journalists in Europe and the United States. Dr. Boyerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s books include

Spirit and System: Media, Intellectuals, and the Dialectic in Modern German Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2005) and Understanding Media: A popular philosophy (Prickly Paradigm Press, 2007). Dr. Boyer earned a B.A. from Brown University, an M.A. from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. with distinction from the University of Chicago. Sarah Burnett is an Associate Professor of Psychology. Her research interests focus on health psychology and memory. She started teaching psychology courses at Rice University in 1972 as the first woman hired in all of social sciences and later the first woman to receive tenure from the School of Social Sciences. She has also been involved extensively with the growth and changes to the university over the past 40 years, previously serving as Dean of Students, Vice President for Student Affairs, Jones College Residential Associate, and now as a Martel College Founding Associate. Originally from Tennessee, Dr. Burnett earned her B.S. at Memphis State University (now University of Memphis) then earned her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Tulane University. Justin Denney is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of the Urban Health Program within the Kinder Institute of Urban Research. As a health researcher with sociological and demographic training, he is principally interested in identifying individual and structural conditions that jointly contribute to health and mortality inequalities. His publications have focused on both domestic and international settings and have addressed topics such as the effects of family formations on individual suicide risks, neighborhood contributors to obesity, and the effects of nation-level social and economic

development on socioeconomic gaps in unhealthy behaviors such as cigarette smoking. Dr. Denney is currently involved in multiple projects aimed broadly at clarifying the effects of context on individual health and mortality prospects and hopes his work can inform public policy and ultimately lead to healthier populations. Songying Fang is an Assistant Professor of Political Science. Prior to joining the faculty at Rice in 2009, she worked as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on how international institutions influence state behavior using both game-theoretic modeling and empirical analysis. Dr. Fang received her Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. Her work appears in leading scholarly journals such as American Journal of Political Science, International Organization, and Quarterly Journal of Political Science. Nia Georges is a Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Department of Anthropology. Her major interests are in medical anthropology, the cultural study of reproduction and new reproductive technologies, and transnational labor migration and development in Latin America and Greece. Her most recent research is on the social movement to reform childbirth practices in Brazil. She is the author of “The Making of a Transnational Community” (Columbia University Press) and “Bodies of Knowledge: The Medicalization of Reproduction in Greece” (Vanderbilt University Press). She has been a four-time recipient of the George R. Brown and Nicholas Salgo awards for excellence in teaching. Mikki Hebl is a Professor of Psychology. She is an applied psychologist who is part of the industrial/organizational

program at Rice University. Her research focuses on issues related to diversity and discrimination. She is particularly interested in examining subtle ways in which discrimination is displayed and how such displays might be remediated by individuals and/or organizations. Research in the Hebl Lab focuses on issues related to identifying, understanding, and remediating discrimination. She blends a social, interpersonal with an organizational perspective to investigate discrimination. Dr. Hebl has earned numerous teaching awards throughout her career, including the George R. Brown Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2003. Phillip Kortum is a Professor-in-the-Practice and Faculty Fellow of Psychology. His research is focused on the development of user-centric systems in both the visual (web design, equipment design, and image compression) and auditory domains (telephony operations and interactive voice response systems). For the last twenty years, he has studied hands-on human factors in the telecommunications and defense industry. This work was performed across a wide variety of human interfaces, from telephones and television set-top boxes to assembly aids and jigs. Dr. Kortum earned a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Ashley Leeds is an Associate Professor of Political Science. She specializes in the study of international relations, and particularly, in the design and influence of cooperative agreements and international institutions. Much of her recent research has focused on the politics of military alliances. Dr. Leedsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; recent articles have appeared in American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, International Organization, Journal of Peace

Research, and International Interactions. In 2008, Dr. Leeds was the recipient of the Karl Deutsch award, which is awarded annually by the International Studies Association to a scholar in IR under age 40 who is judged to have made, through a body of publications, the most significant contribution to the study of International Relations and Peace Research. Ruth Lopez-Turley is an Associate Professor of Sociology. Her research focuses on educational inequality in the U.S., with the aim of closing socioeconomic gaps in achievement and attainment. Her work includes the study of the transition from high school to college, college expectations, the Hispanic-White college application gap, college proximity, parentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; contributions to college costs, living on campus during college, K-12 educational outcomes of immigrant youth, the evidence-based school interventions movement, student mobility, and relations of trust among parents and school personnel (social capital). Dr. Turley currently serves as the director of the Houston Education Research Consortium. Melissa Marschall is the Albert Thomas Associate Professor of Political Science. Her research focuses on local politics, educational policy, participation, and issues of race and ethnicity. Her book, Choosing Schools: Consumer Choice and the Quality of American Schools (Princeton University Press - coauthored with Mark Schneider and Paul Teske) was recipient of the Policy Studies Association Aaron Wildavsky Award for the Best Policy Book in 2000-2001. She is currently working on a project investigating immigrant parent involvement in schools, communities, and politics (with Katharine Donato, Prof. of Sociology at Vanderbilt University),

which is funded by The National Science and Russell Sage Foundations, as well Vanderbiltâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Center for Nashville Studies. She is also continuing work on a largescale study of minority incorporation in local politics. Randi Martin is the Elma Schneider Professor of Psychology. Her research focuses on the cognitive mechanisms involved in language comprehension and production in people with brain damage as well as in people with healthy brains. A long-standing research interest in her lab is the relation between short-term memory and language processing. Dr. Martin also studies speech production and the processes involved in word, phrase and sentence production. She conducts research on the structure of reading and writing systems as well, examining patients with different types of reading disorders to test models of reading. She currently serves as Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. Dr. Martin earned a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Steve Murdock is the Allyn R. and Gladys M. Cline Professor of Sociology. He previously served as Director of the U.S. Bureau of the Census having been nominated for the position by President Bush and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2007 and serving until the change in administration in January of 2009. He is the author or editor of 13 books and more than 150 articles and technical reports on the implications of current and future demographic and socioeconomic change. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards. He was named one of the fifty most influential Texans by Texas Business in 1997 and as one of the twenty-five most influential persons in Texas by Texas Monthly in 2005. He is a

member of the Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, and Phi Eta Epsilon national honor societies. Fred Oswald is a Professor of Psychology. His substantive research focuses on personnel selection issues in psychology, particularly the issues of (a) understanding and predicting multiple dimensions of job performance and (b) improving the conceptualization and application of person-job fit. His work provides important contributions to personnel selection in both academic and employment settings. His most recent research contributes to understanding and predicting multiple dimensions of job and academic performance. Another area of his research contributions is in advancing the conceptualization and application of person-job fit. Dr. Oswald earned a B.A. in psychology from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. and Ph.D. in industrial/organizational psychology from the University of Minnesota. Robin Sickles is the Reginald Henry Hargrove Professor of Economics. In his consulting practice he has focused on complex damage assessment, intellectual property, product markets and market structures, collusive behaviors, and conditions for natural monopoly, in a career that spans over 30 years of consulting and litigation support. Dr. Sickles is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Productivity Analysis, a leading economics field journal specializing in a range of applied topics including regulation and industrial organization. Past engagements by Dr. Sickles have included consulting for AT&T, the Air Transport Association, the Department of Justice, the United States Postal Service, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the United States Agency for International Development, the World Bank, and the

Bureau of Labor Statistics. Expert testimony has been provided in a number of his cases. Dr. Sickles is a Fellow of the Journal of Econometrics and the Handbook of Economics. Ted Temzelides is a Professor of Economics, a Baker Institute Rice Scholar, and the master of Martel College at Rice University. He has consulted for the Federal Reserve as well as the European Central Bank. His research concentrates on macroeconomics and energy economics; he currently studies the effect of R&D in renewable energy sources on economic growth and the design of emissions trading mechanisms. Dr. Temzelides’ research has received funding from the National Science Foundation and has been published in some of the leading academic journals in economics, including Econometrica, the Journal of Political Economy, the American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings, and the Journal of Monetary Economics. Dr. Temzelides regularly serves as a referee for academic journals and is on the editorial board of the journal Economic Theory. Siyang Xiong is an Assistant Professor of Economics. His research interests focus on microeconomic theory. His published work has appeared in the Journal of Economic Theory, Theoretical Economics, and Games and Economic Behavior. He is the recipient of the Econometric Society World Cogress’s Travel Grant for Young Economists, Northwestern University’s Dissertation Year Fellowship, Northwestern University’s Distinguished Teaching Assistant Award, and the Northwestern University Graduate School Travel Grant. Dr. Xiong earned a Ph.D. from Northwestern University.

George Zodrow is the Allyn R. and Gladys M. Cline Professor of Economics and a Rice Scholar in the Tax and Expenditure Policy Program at the Baker Institute. Zodrowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s primary research area is tax reform in the United States. He is currently editor of the National Tax Journal. He was a visiting economist at the U.S. Treasury Office of Tax Analysis during the preparation of the reports that led to the Tax Reform Act of 1986, has served as a consultant in both the public and private sectors, and has been involved in tax reform projects in a wide range of countries. In 2009, Zodrow received the Steven D. Gold Award, presented by the National Tax Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management for his contributions to state and local fiscal policy.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks to all Rice University School of Social Sciences faculty who made this project possible by sharing their career experiences and educational life stories with the Gateway students through one-on-one interviews. Much appreciation goes to Dean Lyn Ragsdale for her continual support, counsel and encouragement. Our heartfelt gratitude to the Gateway Associates and supporters of the Gateway programs for making projects like this possible. Many thanks also to the Turning Points team and Gateway Study of Leadership fellows for the tremendous amount of time and effort in bringing this series to life.