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Episode 0023 Shownotes
Mentoring your way,
with Prof. Dr. Carlotta A. Berry
Mentoring your way, with Prof. Dr. Carlotta A Berry who decided she wanted to be a professor because she wanted to show a different way that people could do professoring. Although she didn't have any mentors that look like her, that didn't mean she shouldn't have had one.
Let Prof. Dr. Carlotta A. Berry mentor you via the PostdocTransformation card game. Listen to Prof. Dr. Eleonore Soei-Winkels as she shares actionable tips for your PostdocTransformation.
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We played the PostdocTransformation card game live on TikTok!
Welcome to this episode, which is the very first interview of the PostdocTransformation show. And I really have a special guest here. I've been following her for a very long time already on TikTok. And I'm so, so proud that professor Dr. Carlotta A. Berry has taken the time to share her experience with my PostdocTransformation audience.
Carlotta A. Berry is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. She is the 2021-2024 Dr. Lawrence J. Giacoletto Endowed Chair for Electrical and Computer Engineering. She has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Spelman College, bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, master’s in electrical engineering from Wayne State University, and PhD from Vanderbilt University.
So, you know that she is an expert and I'm so glad that she'll be talking to us. Not about her work. But instead she'll be talking about her. Impact as a professor. Being a black woman. Being a mother in academics.
So, she has a special passion for diversifying the engineering profession by encouraging more women, marginalized and minoritized populations to pursue STEM degrees. She achieves this purpose with robotics, education, engineering, education, and human robot interaction research to bring more people to STEM.
So, without further ado [00:03:00] let's dive right in!
Why Carlotta A. Berry became a professor
Okay, so we've got the PostdocTransformation card game.
And I'm so happy that Carlotta has been playing with me and also the others. And I'm, I have a lot of questions regarding our professorship, because I think that the two of us, we definitely do look different. We are different. We are women. We are people of color.
We are moms in academia, and we've got different backgrounds we bring to the table to academia. Beyond excited to find Carlotta participating in my game because I was like, yes, this is the reason why I'm on Tik Tok. I want to have role models that are authentic for my diverse people in PostdocTransformation. So, all these questions are for the underprivileged, underserved, and underrepresented professor. And I hope that you will enjoy the questions.
Are you ready for the first one, Carlotta? I'm ready. I'm ready. [00:04:00] Are you scoring me? Am I getting points? The audience can score you. All right, so number one is:
What motivated you to pursue a career in academia? Despite the challenges and barriers you faced as someone from an underprivileged and underrepresented background.
Um, I think I didn't really know why, but I had such a negative experience in engineering school. Um, you know, obviously at 18 and 19 years old. You don't know about, you know, about microaggressions or that in engineering there's like not a lot of black people and not a lot of women. All I know is that I was having a very, very rough time and I didn't know why.
And so I was just like, well, since I originally wanted to be a teacher anyway, and I like engineering, but I hate the way the professors teach. I hate the way they interact with me. I hate the way they [00:05:00] talk to me. I decided I wanted to be a professor because I wanted to show a different way that people could do professoring.
That's why I decided to do it. Didn't really know why, you know, I mean, later on, I figured it out because I did research on it. But at the time, I was just kind of like, why are these people treating me so crazy? And why are there hardly any women and black people in these classes?
I had no, I had no interest in being a college professor until I was in college in engineering class and was like, this is not cool. This is not the move. I could do this differently. I was going to be perfectly happy to be an engineer. That's all I want to be was an engineer. I want to be a high school math teacher.
Then I want to be an engineer. But then I was kind of like, academia needs some work, especially engineering education.
Okay, let's stop here for a second. This is so important. So, Carlotta was a successful engineer. And she returned to academia, [00:06:00] because she thought that engineering education needs people like her. So, if you ever want to return to academia, please also listen to our episode, the best reasons to come back to academia after you have thrived in business. And now back to the show.
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First gen all over the place
How did you find strength and resilience in the face of adversity? And what lessons do you hope to impart to future generations facing similar obstacles?
Stubborn. A big one for me was being stubborn. Um, I was, I was like, I have a goal. I've invested so much time already. I've burned so much money already because, you know, I had student loans when I graduated. And I was just like, I'm not quitting now. I mean, you know, it took me five years to get my two bachelor's degrees.
You know, after [00:07:00] much strife and failure, it was just stubborn. I mean, being stubborn, holding on to eventually, I want these degrees. You know, it's like nobody in my family was an engineer. Nowhere in my family was a professor. So all they could really go is good job, baby. Keep going. But I knew what I was doing was important.
Wow. So your first gen all over the place.
Were there any mentors or allies who played a pivotal role in your journey?
And how did they help you navigate the academic world? But I understand that you don't, you didn't have any role. Not too later. Not too later because I didn't know anybody. Like, I found out later, I went to Georgia Tech and I found out later. I found out later that, um. There was like one or two black men professors at Georgia Tech when I was there.
I never had them, I never met them, I never talked to them. So, the mentors came later, but not at the time. And what's interesting now, part of my frustration now is that my school, there's not a lot of black, there's no black women professors. Is that black students come to my office from all over campus, because if people hear, Oh, this black student is having problems, or they need advice.
Let's send them to a black person. So one thing I'm trying to get my colleagues to understand is that [00:09:00] anyone can mentor a black student. Anyone can mentor a female student. You just have to be invested in that. So all I, you know, although I didn't have any mentors that look like me, didn't mean I shouldn't have had one.
It's just, I was at a research school where those professors were more focused on their research lab, their grad students, their papers, their grants. So why nobody really check in to be trying to mentor no undergrads? They didn't really have time for you. I couldn't get them to talk to me during office hours if I wouldn't ask for help on my homework.
So, there was no way in the world they were going to try to help me, you know, and mentor me and figure out what was going on with me personally in my career.
Please also check out Prof. Dr. A. Berry's shop to discover her AI art, books, merch and robots
Code switching
Can you recall specific instances where your unique experiences and perspectives from your background enriched your teaching and research.
Oh yeah, um, I tell my students that one all the time. You know, I actually had lunch with some of my alumni students on Saturday and they're always like, oh my god, why are you on Instagram? Why are you on TikTok? Professors should not be on TikTok and Instagram.
So [00:10:00], they're always telling me, how different I am and that they don't follow many people. So, my posts always come up and I'm like, I think that's a good thing. I'm glad I'm not like your other professors. So, as much as I think they try to take it as a dig, I think they kind of like it.
Right. Because I tell them, I know I'm not like your other professors and that's right. That's what I'm doing. What I'm supposed to be doing. Exactly. I can still resonate with that because I think that we need to be different. Our kids need to have different role models and if we don't do it differently, if we do it the same way like the others, then it's no different.
Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Good. Number five is, how did you create an inclusive and welcoming environment in your classroom to uplift students who, like you, might come from an underprivileged, underrepresented background? I think the way I do it is by being more opening and welcoming to everyone.
Um, that, that's the way to be [00:11:00] different, right? Because, um, you know, not just knowing their names, but they sometimes seem shocked that I pay attention to them. Like, you know, if one of them walks in, like I had a young lady one time she walked in. I was like, Oh, did you dye your hair? You got your hair cut or something.
And she goes, I cannot believe you noticed that I changed my hair. And I'm like, should I not? She's like, I've just never had a professor do that before. So, just those little things are like, you know, if they tell me they were going to be absent for a day, cause they weren't feeling well. And if they come back the next day, how are you feeling?
Right. So, because that was the main thing I thought I was missing is that human aspect of being in engineering school, like engineers are supposed to be. Designing systems and processes for the world and for people. So if I cannot show any human aspect of who I am to my students, how am I modeling the people that we want them to be?
That's how you end up with these engineers who are completely cold, unethical and could give a hoot really about their clients. Right? The moment when you bring in the personality that [00:12:00] makes the difference for the students who maybe need, you know, they don't know who else they can look up to and emulate and aspire to be.
And you show them that you can be yourself, your true self. And it can be a heavy burden too, because like I said, it does sometimes. It's like, why do they all come to me? Like, I'll tell my colleagues like, Oh Lord, I got another crier in my office. And you know, I work with all men and they're like, I've never had anybody cry in my office.
I get crying males. I get crying females. I have colleagues who will be like, what do you mean they crying? And y'all, I had a freshman crying on the very first day of school during academic advising. And it's because something about my personality.
Makes them feel so comfortable on the one hand, you know, I had one student, one of my nursery students like you're like our mama. No, I'm not like your mama. I'm not your mom. I got one child. So I don't want to be your mother, but I do want to make it so that, um, you feel, [00:13:00] you know, like you can share yourself as well because engineering is supposed to be that time when you are developing and growing, you know, into adulthood, you know, finally, that frontal cortex is going to be finished developing and all that.
Right. So going through that journey with nobody who you could talk to is miserable, you know. I love it. Yeah. I also have some students who know me from before I became a mom and then they graduated and came back to uni and then they had me again for their master's and they said that obviously I matured as a professor, but they also say that me becoming a mom has changed the way I teach.
And for the better. It changes your personality. You become way more patient. I mean, I think my husband also helped me to become way more patient, but you become way more patient because like, I can deal with a lot more before I just flip out on you. I can deal with a little bit of your mad, your bad behavior and going, okay, [00:14:00] their frontal cortex ain't developed.
They got a scotoma. They got a blockage. Something that's going on here. Whereas when I was younger, I was like, I'm not dealing with it. I had a student email me, um, this week or last week. And the subject line was lab for .... And he was upset because he couldn't figure out lab for now. The old me would have been like, you need to delete this and write me back again, because I don't respond to mess like this.
I just ignored him and I answered his email and then the next day he wrote me back and was like, Professor, I am so sorry. I'm so sorry with this because of the subject line in that email, because, but the old me would have been like, they don't know how to act. But you, you know, understanding that they're not completely matured yet.
And that, you know, you just have to meet them where they are. I think it's important.
Same thing with their code. When they get frustrated with their code, they make it variables with cuss words and stuff. I tell them get that ignorant mess out of here. I don't go off on them, but you fix this. You find a variable that is not a curse word. I don't care that this took you forever to figure out.
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Prof. Dr. A. Berry's values and guiding principles
What values and principles guided you in your academic pursuits while remaining connected to the struggles of your community?
I think it's really important. You know, I'm sure you do as well. I have to code switch at work, right?
I don't think my predominantly white male colleagues could really deal with me. Um, If I brought everything to the floor, I think I bring a lot. I've been told I can be pretty forthright, but some of the qualities that I have to bring forward is always being myself, right? I'm never going to compromise on who I am for a grant.
For research students, for research dollars, to get promoted, for success, for anything like that. And so I think it's very important to always bring your authentic self to the table. And I think that [00:17:00] will resonate with students. Like, they can kind of tell when you don't really care about them. I had one of my advisors in my office the other day.
And I hate when they come to me to talk about other professors. Because I'm just like, that's my co-worker, I don't want to hear it. I don't even care if I agree with them, I don't want to hear it. And one of them the other day, her father had died, and there was another professor who was just like, you know, you can't turn nothing in late, don't, if you get more than X absences, you're gonna fail and all that, and she just was telling me how he treated her like he was a robot, like, complete lack of empathy.
And I was just like, I'm a human being first, always. And my job does not define that. You know, I told her, I said, I don't talk about him to me, I don't want to hear it. But in my mind I'm kind of thinking her father died and he was just like, you need to get your work turned in. Who? I mean, what kind of, you know, person is that?
So, I just think you always have to be your authentic self, and I know how I want it to be treated as a student and I would want that for them as well. You know, everyone [00:18:00] is human.
Her impact on her students
Can you share stories of [00:19:00] small victories and big milestones that showed you the impact of your work was having on others who face similar challenges? Well, um, there are many. I've made TikToks about this when I got the letter in the mail from the young man that saw my article in the New York Times a decade ago, and I had one zoom with him 15 minutes.
And then this summer, he sent me an invitation to his PhD graduation from Carnegie Mellon in engineering. So, those little things, that one little tiny conversation changed his life. I have another student. Um, he was a black male as well. He graduated with his engineering degree. He's now a working engineer and he came back to me and told me that when he failed my circuits class and I refused to round his score up to pass him, even though he didn't know the material, how angry he was with me and how he didn't dislike me.
He came back to tell me, I understood now and you've always been my favorite professor, even though I failed your class. So he had finally grown up and matured and [00:20:00] understood. That part of me caring about his success was I'm not going to pass you when you didn't earn the grade. And that meant a lot to me.
And then another TikTok I recently shared. is I caught a student cheating my first or second year here. The student was adamant he did not cheat. And because you can appeal, he appealed it to the faculty, I had to go before the board, I had to do a full presentation. They ended up upholding it, and so 15 years later, over the summer, he sent me a letter that says he wanted to apologize for cheating all those many years ago, and he did do it.
So, sometimes it's a long time coming. But it comes. So, those are those small victories that you may not realize you've had such an impact on somebody till later. In fact, they may never tell you. You just don't know. They go on about their life, you know? That's true. I always say my success as a professor is when my students are successful in their work.
That means it goes a long way and I will probably never [00:21:00] know. But I will have an impact and I know that because my students will also not just because of my work, but also because of my work.
Balancing responsibilities
How did you balance your responsibilities as an educator, researcher and advocate with your commitments to your family and community?
I don't do it well. Um, this is one whenever I go to a lot of engineering education [00:22:00] conferences because you know, I'm an engineering educator. That's more than just I'm an engineer. I'm an engineer educator. This always comes up, and it's always in panels for women, because women have the more difficult time with this question than anyone else.
And I like to give advice to people about some, some stuff that I need to take the advice from. I don't do it well. My husband always talks about, he thinks I'm a workaholic. But I think also part of it is, my husband is, was a K 12 teacher and is now a high school principal. He doesn't understand the stresses of academia, like the tenure process, the promotion process, and just what a drain it is on you.
Even when you're not at a research school and at a teaching school, like I am. And I love what I do. So, sometimes when he sees me working on the weekends or in the evenings, like, Oh, you work all the time, this, I enjoy what I do. So it's not really worked to me. But figuring out ways to do that. Once I had a daughter, I had to make it happen.
So, being very intentional about put down the computer, put down the phone, take her to Girl Scouts, [00:23:00] go play video games with her for a little while. When she was younger, doing hide and seek, doing those kind of things. And now that she's a teenager, she don't really want me around anyway. But being more intentional with her and not just her with my husband like we have intentional family outing days. Or just recently we've been discussing having a technology free window or technology free day. But it's very difficult for people in academia and especially for someone who's an introvert like me, because by the time I get home, I've been talking to people all day.
I don't want to engage and talk to nobody at all. I'm ready to go somewhere and decompress. And my husband being an extrovert, he doesn't really understand that. My daughter's an introvert like me, so she doesn't care. But balancing that sometimes I have to come out of my shell and make sure that I can connect with my family and give them equally as much as I'm giving to my students. And my colleagues, because they're the ones who are going to be here cradle to grave, not that job. And it's very hard, but be intentional.
Some of my [00:24:00] colleagues do things like "I don't answer emails on the weekend. I don't bring my computer home on the weekend." I have done that before, but not often because on Monday. Oh my God. And then I've had people be like, don't put your email on your cell phone. My email's on my cell phone too, because once again, that's something else that drives me crazy. I cannot have a thousand emails on Monday. So, like I said, I don't always do the best.
So, these are some of those techniques other people suggest you use that I don't use very well. But you do what you have to, to make that work for you.
Yeah, I also think that it depends on the season. Like you said, when your daughter was smaller, it was different now. She doesn't need you that much in different problems, different time.
And yeah, exactly. It may change over the time over the life. You know, and I think that at least if you are intentional and adjust as needed, that's the important balance. Yeah. I've also heard other things like getting a hobby. Like I have one, it's cross stitching. I can't think of the last time I [00:25:00] did it, a coloring book, you know, there's an adult coloring books now, but finding things to do to de-stress.
Mine recently has been social media. That's my de-stress, when I really get tired of working. I get on social media and watch videos or make videos or, or do, or play or, you know, do Wordle or whatever. , but finding something, you know, cause you know, I had anxiety attacks in, when I was in my PhD program and I don't ever want to go back to that. So, just finding ways to balance and not have that level of stress is important.
PostdocTransformers, how was that ride? I found this so inspiring to learn so many things about and also from professor Dr. Carlotta A. Berry. I hope that you will find her on all her socials. I will link to her social handles as well, of course, but also please check out her books and her social engagement, robbotics, diversity. I will [00:26:00] link into her pages in the show notes.
Our interview on Tik TOK live was actually almost an hour. So, I split this interview into two sessions. This episode is the first one and we will have a sequel episode next week. Stay tuned. And please also contact her. And let her know what was inspiring, what was valuable for you?
Remember, you are a PostdocTransformer. You are highly intelligent, well educated, a bachelor, master, and maybe you have already your doctor under your belt, or you are a postdoc. You are internationally experienced, fluent in English, a leader and expert in your prior research field. You're resilient, brilliant in adaptation.
You are eager to bring in the transferable and monetizable skills needed in many companies to embrace the future and to become or remain an [00:27:00] innovator in their markets.
Do you want a transcript of our episode? And our episode sponsors answers to all six bold questions so that you can choose to apply. Do you want to nominate your potential employer of choice so that we can ask them our bold questions? For all of that, click on our links in our show notes and on our website, www.postdoctransformation.com. Remember to check your readiness to leap out of science and to enroll in our free email course career transition made simple.
All right, thanks for listening and I hope that you will watch our show and also listen to our show for the next episodes. And like I said, go back to the previous episodes. I think they have valuable insights for you.
Please ask away your career transition questions (connect with Eleonore on your preferred social), as we aim to create future episodes for our audience. We appreciate every one of you!
Until the next episode,
Cheers,
Eleonore & Team PostdocTransformation
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