How my stutter is teaching me humility—in science and beyond

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From ScienceMag:

“My name is …” The words stick in my throat, obstinately refusing to yield. The silence stretches on as I shake a stranger’s hand. Consciously relaxing my jaw, I breathe in and manage to release my name in a breathy tone, “Pppeeeettterr.” Typical responses range from awkward pauses to the joking “Are you sure?” or, in the worst case, “I’m sorry, what did you say?” As a child, I would imagine I just made myself look stupid. Now, I see it differently. My stutter is an invitation to humility.

I have been a stutterer since I was about 7 years old. It had no obvious cause; even the most current literature on the topic will admit the pathology of stuttering is “enigmatic.” When I was young, I avoided speaking. I learned speech therapy techniques, methods of breathing and forming my words, but I was comfortable in my own mind and didn’t really need to share my thoughts. When I couldn’t avoid speaking, my go-to strategy was to replace words with synonyms when I felt a block coming. Then I fell in love with science, where precision mattered not only in benchwork, but also in terminology. So, while in graduate school, I restarted speech therapy, worked on new strategies, and began to gain confidence in my own voice. I thought I had my stutter under control.

One postdoc and many job interviews later, I became an assistant professor, facing the standard challenges of starting a research group—and my speech was regressing. Using speech strategies is taxing: To avoid stammering on tricky words I must be aware of how I breathe, form words on my lips, and move my mouth. But between grants, papers, project management, paperwork, other principal investigator stresses, and being a father of four (soon to be five) young children, I had too little intellectual space left to devote to preparing to speak. In addition, the transition from the few planned and prepared speaking opportunities I had as a postdoc to endless obligatory communication overwhelmed my coping strategies. I have been so preoccupied with what I am saying that I cannot focus on how I say it.

The regression was gradual, and I didn’t notice it until one day, a few months ago, I was teaching my thermodynamics class and found myself unable to say “equilibrium.” Later that day I struggled to tell a colleague the name of my newborn daughter. The students seemed to shrug off my difficulty, and my colleague changed the subject after a brief awkward moment. Still, a feeling of humiliation remained, clashing with my self-image as a capable scientist. I began to wonder how anyone could respect me or my work if I was unable to communicate clearly.

A few weeks later, I found myself nervously ruminating on a commitment I had made to introduce a speaker at an upcoming conference. I began dwelling on worst-case scenarios in which I humiliated myself in front of my peers. This anxiety over 30 seconds of public speaking months in the future was not healthy. I began to wonder whether I had subconsciously begun to avoid speaking roles again, as in my childhood. I thought back to a conference opportunity I had passed up, telling myself I was too busy to apply. Maybe I just didn’t want to give a talk.

Eventually I came to a realization: I will probably never be free of my stutter. I will always face the burden of coaxing my body to do what comes naturally and effortlessly for most. The thought was both depressing and exhausting. At the same time, I began to wonder whether I can gain some good from this burden. If radiation can be used to cure cancer, why can’t my stutter make me better, too?

I have decided to reject feelings of humiliation and instead embrace humility; to accept my vulnerabilities and my limitations and welcome the new perspectives they provide. When my voice sticks and refuses to cooperate, I can’t force it. And I can’t control how others perceive me. Instead, I can choose to relax, breathe, and coax each syllable, gently yet diligently. This mindset can help my work as well. I can employ similar strategies when I receive grant rejections or belittling paper reviews. I am not in control, but I can, with proper effort, participate in the conversation.

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When women researchers publish, media attention doesn’t always follow

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From ScienceMag:

Media coverage can give scientists a powerful career boost, raising their visibility and signaling that their work matters beyond the lab. But a new study finds that benefit goes disproportionately to men, potentially widening existing gender gaps and shaping public perceptions of who counts as a researcher. In an analysis of 1.2 million news stories about scholarly research, men-led papers were found to receive more attention overall and were heavily overrepresented in the top 5% of most covered studies. Women-led papers, on the other hand, clustered at the bottom.

“News media sit at a crucial gateway,” says senior author Chaoqun Ni of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “If coverage systematically tilts toward some groups over others, that doesn’t just affect individual careers—it can reinforce stereotypes about who ‘looks like’ a scientist.”

Ni and colleagues searched for English-language news coverage of more than 1 million papers with U.S.-based corresponding authors published between 2018 and 2022 in highly media-cited journals; broadcast coverage, such as TV and radio, and blogs were excluded. Overall, only about one in eight of the papers—which spanned STEM, social sciences, and the humanities—received any media attention at all, the authors reported in a paper published in Science Communication in August. Of the 129,000 studies that did garner coverage, men-led papers were on average highlighted in more outlets than women-led ones. To classify gender, the authors used a computational tool based on names—a widely accepted but imperfect method, particularly for non-Western names.

A paradox also emerged across fields in terms of whether a study was covered at all. In male-dominated areas such as economics and business, women-led work was slightly more likely to be covered than expected. But in fields nearer gender parity—public health and social sciences—women-led papers were less likely to make the news. The authors compared media coverage with the real gender balance in each field—for example, if only one-quarter of the papers in a field were led by women, that was the baseline for judging under- or overrepresentation.

“Women often ‘outperform’ in fields where they are least represented, whether in citations or grants,” says Cassidy Sugimoto, an information scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the new study. What stood out to her was the scale and nature of the skew. Women-led papers were more likely to be featured in local outlets than in national, international, or science-specialty media. They appeared more often in liberal-leaning outlets than conservative ones. And coverage of their work carried a more negative tone. “When women’s research is politicized or framed negatively, it risks eroding the perceived credibility of women scientists,” Sugimoto says.

The study doesn’t investigate possible mechanisms underlying the results. But multiple steps along the publicity pipeline could be at play, as well as broader structural imbalances. News coverage often reflects what universities and journals promote through press releases to the media, notes Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch. “If men are more likely to request press releases, that could tilt the pool.” High-profile journals—which often publish papers that warrant news coverage, and are more likely to have the resources to promote those papers to the media—also tend to have disproportionately male corresponding authors, says Priyanka Runwal, an associate editor at Chemical & Engineering News.

A first media mention can also open the gate for a researcher, says Yong-Yeol Ahn, a data science researcher at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. Who reporters can reach for interviews—and whether authors agree to talk—can determine whether an initial mention snowballs into high-visibility coverage. “Small biases can compound as attention spreads,” he says.

Even when reporters work hard to talk to women researchers, some hesitate to agree, Runwal says. One study found women were more likely than men to cite harassment, appearance-based comments, or lack of confidence as barriers to interviews. This echoes Oransky’s concerns. “Are men more able to answer journalist calls? Are they getting snappier quotes that journalists love?”

Scientists can help shape coverage, Runwal says. “If it’s a field I regularly cover, I often ask researchers to keep me in the loop about upcoming publications,” she says. For women especially, who may hesitate to speak on sensitive topics, she suggests opening a dialogue with reporters about concerns such as backlash or harassment. “You can always ask questions, set boundaries, and if you’re not convinced, decline to go on the record.”

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Welcome to your Ph.D.! Now choose a lab

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From ScienceMag:

Experimental Error logo
Experimental Error is a column about the quirky, comical, and sometimes bizarre world of scientific training and careers, written by scientist and comedian Adam Ruben. Barmaleeva/Shutterstock, adapted by C. Aycock/Science

It’s been a long time, but if I remember correctly, my grad school acceptance letters mostly looked the same: “Congratulations! You’ve been accepted into [school]! Let us know by [date]!” And I’m pretty sure the rejection letters followed a similar pattern: “Sorry! We had many qualified applicants, but you weren’t among them. We’re wrong about this, and you don’t want to study at our stupid school anyway. Honestly, we found you too handsome.”

But one letter was different. It didn’t congratulate me on being accepted into a department—it congratulated me on being accepted into a particular lab. At any other institution, the order was school and department first, followed by a period of figuring out which lab to join. At this school, the interest I had expressed in one particular lab in my application had already been translated into a choice.

This, at first, was thrilling. I could imagine myself joining the school in the fall and beginning my doctoral research immediately. I had visited the lab during prospective grad student weekend, so I knew exactly where I’d be working, what I’d be working on, and who I’d be working with. Heck, I even remember encountering a peristaltic pump in the lab and recognizing it as the same model I used in my undergraduate lab.

Yet, as intriguing as it felt, that sense of predetermination was also unsettling. I’d chosen that lab based on a colorful website and a few publications. I met the professor and his grad students for an hour. What the heck did I know? What if I was wrong?

Because I knew enough to know I didn’t know enough, the acceptance into that lab pushed the school to the bottom of my list. I was off to my first postcollege adventure, and I wanted the great unknown, not the same beige peristaltic pump.

So, what did I exchange certainty for? A system of rotations: Every 2 months for my first year of grad school, I’d switch to a different lab, four labs total. I’d work on a relatively dinky research project in each—the kind that can reach some kind of conclusion in 2 months—and then choose the next one. And for that whole first year, I’d seek an answer to the question that would have been preanswered for me at a different school: which lab to join.

Other graduate programs, I’ve heard, offer a chance to experience labs in a kind of “open house” format for a few weeks before choosing. The principle is similar. You already chose this particular program for various reasons: geography, prestige, stipend, logistics, proximity to your parents, lack of proximity to your parents, the prospective grad student you hooked up with at Recruitment Weekend—and enough research into the professors to have some confidence, or at least naïve optimism, that one will be a good fit. But figuring out who that person is takes more than a brief chat in which you’re both probably trying to impress each other. And even if your school asks you to commit to a specific principal investigator (PI) before joining a program, there are steps you can take to increase your chances of picking a lab that’s a good fit.

Here are some of the strategies I found helpful when selecting my thesis lab.

I asked older grad students which professors were nice.

That may sound irrelevant, or at least like a quality that real scientists should find irrelevant—but, trust me, it matters. You do your best work when you feel like you’re respected.

I asked professors for recommendations.

Everyone seemed to say that one particular professor emeritus had strong opinions about all the other labs in the department and wasn’t afraid to share them. (Apparently this is a superpower that some professors emeriti have.) So I scheduled some time with him, sat down, and asked him every question I could think of, taboo or not—which labs seemed like fun, which were desperate for funding, which hadn’t published in a high-impact journal in years, which had a recent scandal that wasn’t widely known. His advice made me consider labs I hadn’t thought about—and dissuaded me from pursuing some labs that looked good on paper but now sounded less appealing.

I listened to department seminars.

We had regular events where professors would present a bit about the research in their lab to the department (with beer). Despite the liquid bribery, it could have been tempting to skip these to study, work, or nap. But I’m glad I made a point of going—those seminars not only showed us how interesting everyone’s research could be, they also showed us a lot about the personality of the presenting professor. In fact, the series was so popular that, after I left, the department turned it into a semesterlong, first-year course: one professor per week, boasting about their research to recruit grad students. It sounds like it was a helpful, though beerless, way to get to know the labs—and the PIs.

I asked new grad students about their current rotations.

Other first-year students had recommendations for, or against, rotating in their labs, for any number of reasons. Although my first rotation lab had been lined up without my input, I relied heavily on all of this advice for rotations two, three, and four. At first, this information was hard to come by, because students generally erred on the side of politeness, but once the floodgates were opened, my classmates became a great source of candid information.

The matchmaking period also gave me a chance to learn something I hadn’t known when I applied to grad schools: what the heck I even wanted. Other than a summer internship, I didn’t really understand what it was like to work in a lab on my own research project as a full-time job. I didn’t know what to prioritize, what I needed to succeed, and what I could let go. It was only by working briefly in labs I didn’t love that I learned more about what I did.

It’s been years since I thought about the school that offered me a position in a particular lab along with my acceptance letter into the program. With some memory searching and creative Googling, I figured out the name of the PI I would have worked for if I had joined that lab. It turns out Wikipedia has some choice words to say about him, including a citation from a student newspaper that extensively described the “toxic” and “hostile” environment in his lab. Had I joined his lab, the peristaltic pump would have been the least of my worries.

That makes me feel a bit vindicated; my fear of commitment helped me dodge a bullet. Or, maybe I should give my younger self a little more credit. I knew that I wanted—and needed—to dig deeper than an intriguing publication record and a 1-hour interview before committing many years of my life to a lab.

There’s no single system for selecting your graduate lab that guarantees a positive experience. The best you can do is to seek as much information as possible, be honest with yourself, and then cross your fingers. And if it turns out you made the wrong decision, it’s not impossible to switch labs. Honestly, you were too handsome for your current lab anyway.

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I didn’t think I needed mentorship training—but it reshaped my approach

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From ScienceMag:

My undergraduate mentee needed advice after yet another failed experiment. Sitting across from me, she looked exhausted—frustrated even. I heard myself say something like, “This is part of research. You just have to push through.” But even as the words left my mouth, I felt uneasy. She nodded silently and shifted her posture. Afterward, she began showing up less frequently. Eventually, she stopped coming altogether. For a long time, I tried to explain it away: Undergrads sometimes get busy with coursework, lose interest, or change direction. But deep down, I wondered what I could have done differently.

I became a mentor during the second year of my Ph.D. after my adviser encouraged me. I was excited about the opportunity to pass on what I was learning and help someone else discover the joy of research. But I didn’t get much guidance on how to do it. I learned only by doing.

There were moments I felt proud of. One mentee started out quiet and unsure, barely speaking above a whisper during lab meetings. Over time, she grew into one of the most independent and confident young researchers I have worked with. Before graduating she told me, “You are the reason I stuck with this.” That moment stayed with me.

But so did the other one—the silence, the absences, the slow fade-out. And the question I could not shake: Had I failed her?

It wasn’t until the final year of my Ph.D. that I came across a flyer for a summer mentorship training workshop. I was surprised such a thing even existed. A class for mentoring? I was skeptical. What exactly does one learn in a mentorship class?

By that point I had mentored several undergrads, and for the most part I thought I had done a decent job: I showed up, listened, and offered guidance. But I kept thinking about the student who had quietly walked away. I decided to give it a try.

The program, called Entering Mentoring and modeled after a book of the same name, brought together graduate students and postdocs in a weekly discussion circle. For the first time, I had the space to explore the invisible labor and emotional complexity of mentoring.

One session asked us to reflect on our own mentors—what helped, what hurt, and how those experiences shaped our own approaches. I thought back to a micromanaging mentor who demanded incessant updates, often raised their voice when experiments went wrong, and rarely acknowledged that students had lives outside the lab.

That experience, I realized, had influenced my mentoring style. In striving not to perpetuate the same pattern, I tried to be overly patient. At other times, however, my approach echoed the tough mentoring I had received: I defaulted to “This is how science works” without acknowledging how hard it could be, or how disheartening repeated setbacks could feel.

I also began to understand what might have been missing in my relationship with the student who had drifted away. I realized I had never explicitly invited her to share her goals or worries, and so I may have failed to notice when she needed more than technical direction. I could have been more attentive to her unspoken struggles and more willing to acknowledge the weight of frustration, rather than brushing past it. I don’t think I failed her entirely—she still gained time at the bench and exposure to research—but I do think I missed a chance to make her feel seen in the moments when it mattered most.

After the workshop, I drafted a mentoring philosophy and began changing how I interact with students. For example, instead of diving straight into experimental details during our weekly check-ins, I now start by asking how they are doing and what their biggest challenges—scientific or otherwise—were that week. That small shift has opened the door to more honest conversations, and I have noticed students are now quicker to ask for help.

As I approach the end of my Ph.D. and prepare to move on to a postdoc, I carry the lesson with me that good mentors are not born—they are built through reflection, training, and community. That lesson has led me to wonder why so many mentors are never trained in mentorship. I wish I had taken that workshop 3 years earlier. But I am grateful I took it at all.

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‘Completely shattered.’ Changes to NSF’s graduate student fellowship spur outcry

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From ScienceMag:

After months of anticipation, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) today released its instructions for the next round of applicants to its Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). To the dismay of many, the prestigious program, which funds more than a thousand promising STEM graduate students each year, will now exclude a key group of students, as second-year Ph.D. students are no longer eligible. The students who are still able to apply—undergraduates, Bachelor’s degree holders, those in joint Bachelor’s-Master’s programs, and first year Ph.D. students—aren’t in the clear either, as some must decide whether to throw their hats in the ring with an unusually narrow timeframe to apply.

“I’m very upset and angry,” says Eric Foreman, a second year Ph.D. student in the biomedical sciences at Augusta University. He and others note that for the past decade, NSF has only allowed students to apply once during graduate school, and many are given advice to wait until their second year when their applications will be stronger.

Second-year students who had put in significant work on their applications prior to the solicitation release now feel abandoned. “I had already completed several drafts of my personal statement and research proposal,” says University of Chicago molecular engineering Ph.D. student Ben Broekhuis. After receiving an honorable mention when he applied as an undergraduate, he opted to sit out the application process the first year of his Ph.D. after being advised to wait. “Now, seeing from the solicitation that I’ve been cut out of my opportunity to apply, I’m completely shattered.”

There are no publicly available data on what proportion of GRFP applicants, who typically number more than 13,000 per year, are second-year Ph.D. students. But Susan Brennan, a former GRFP director who now works at Stony Brook University, says in her experience the bulk of applications come from people at that stage. “It’s completely unconscionable that NSF is pulling the rug out from under these students.” She adds that for students coming into graduate school from less well-resourced universities, having an extra year to get publications and other research experiences under the belt can be particularly important.

An NSF spokesperson told Science the changes are meant to “restore the program’s original emphasis on supporting students at the start of their research careers.”

Some researchers told Science they aren’t opposed to that shift in emphasis, but NSF should have given students a 1-year warning before changing the eligibility requirements. “We have a large cohort of incredibly competitive students … who now can’t apply” to one of the nation’s premier graduate fellowship programs, says Cynthia Reinhart-King, the chair of the department of bioengineering at Rice University who has served as a reviewer for the GRFP program and has mentored several fellowship winners. As one second-year Ph.D. student told Science on the condition of anonymity, “It feels like we are being punished for following the conventional advice.”

The change in policy now also puts unexpected pressure on first-year Ph.D. students, many of whom were planning to wait until next year to submit their applications but now may feel compelled to apply, assuming the requirements won’t change next year and this will be their last shot. “It forces many students to propose projects based on limited experience in a particular research domain, having only been in graduate school for a few months,” says Ryan Sochol, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland. Some may not have even joined a lab yet, as some Ph.D. programs require students to complete lab rotations during their first year.

This year’s prospective applicants don’t have much time to make up their minds. Normally the program solicitation comes out in July, giving applicants at least 90 days to prepare their materials—a policy that’s clearly stated on NSF’s website. But this year’s applicants will have just over 6 weeks—and that’s only after earlier this week the agency extended the posted deadlines by about 2 weeks, from late October to early November, with no announcement or explanation. “This is a pretty tight timeline now for the students to prepare an application,” Reinhart-King says. (When asked by Science whether NSF’s 90-day policy has changed, a spokesperson wrote “I’ll look into that and get back to you.”)

The program faced criticism in the spring when this year’s cohort of winners skewed in favor of the computer sciences—a field that’s a stated priority of President Donald Trump’s administration. The instructions released today say “fellowships will be supported in all NSF-eligible research areas.” But it adds that the agency “will continue to emphasize high priority research areas in alignment with Administration priorities.”

Jason Williams, assistant director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory DNA Learning Center, says he worries that the program has “become liable to outside influences that are not necessarily really aligned with the mission of NSF and the mission of the country to create the best STEM talent.” He and others submitted an open letter to NSF in 2020 expressing concern when, during the first Trump administration, the agency first began stating that artificial intelligence, quantum information science, and computationally intensive research would be considered high-priority research areas. Williams had a meeting scheduled today with colleagues, including Brennan, to decide how to proceed after they posted an open letter yesterday about the delay in guidelines, which quickly garnered hundreds of comments.

They may find a partner in Daniel Bolnick, an evolutionary biology professor at the University of Connecticut who spoke out on the social media platform Bluesky after seeing that NSF was revoking eligibility for second-year Ph.D. students without any prior warning. “This is so deeply unfair that it warrants a formal protest from the scientific community.”

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How I confronted my growing cynicism about academia—and rekindled my sense of purpose

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From ScienceMag:

Earlier this year, a graduate student from another lab knocked on my door in tears. She had previously taken a course I taught, but her visit surprised me. She said she no longer thought graduate school was right for her. She felt she couldn’t do anything right and didn’t fit in. She worked constantly, yet didn’t feel productive. A cynical voice inside my head whispered, “That’s just how academia is.” Yet, as she spoke, I realized how much her story echoed my own. The hope and optimism I’d come into academia with had started to fade for me, too. But over the coming weeks, as I helped this bright young scholar rediscover hope in her journey, I rediscovered my own.

Like her, I was the first in my family to go to college, and my first encounter with academia was inspiring. When I was a senior in high school, I enrolled in a human anatomy course at a local community college. One Saturday I wandered the campus, hoping to catch a glimpse of a lecture hall—something I’d only seen in movies, where they seemed full of promise and possibility. Those 2 years at community college opened my eyes to the possibility of a career in research and teaching—something I hadn’t known existed—where I could create new knowledge and help others achieve their dreams.

When I finally became a professor, I still believed deeply in higher education’s transformative power. On my first day as a professor, I even had my partner snap a photo of me with a whiteboard noting: “First day of college.” I was beaming. When a senior colleague warned my optimism wouldn’t last, I thought they were just bitter.

Now, 4 years into my dream job, I understand how cynicism can creep in. I feel it with every wave of job cuts, every attack on science, and every student laden with debt and uncertainty. It was easy to feel discouraged while serving on the university’s finance committee during several rounds of layoffs. My view of college as a beacon of hope had started to feel more like a mirage. At some point I stopped taking photos of my first day of the academic year.

When that student came into my office, she reminded me of myself at that age, bearing the weight of being first generation and the resulting insecurities and impossible expectations. The negative gossip, disillusionment, and other toxic elements of academia I know well as a faculty member were starting to drag her down. Her situation shook me out of my complacency, and I resolved to do what I could to help.

Over several weeks she and I dug into the issues and considered her options. I told her that during the third year of my Ph.D., I had considered dropping out. Instead, I managed to renew my sense of purpose by aligning my work better with my original goals, changing my research topic, and getting more involved in mentoring undergraduates. In the end, she decided to try a similar approach, changing up her dissertation committee and her project focus and conducting research in collaboration with communities she cares about. We don’t meet on a regular basis anymore, but she seems to be thriving.

This experience helped me see that maintaining hope doesn’t mean ignoring hardships or naïvely expecting things to work out. It still takes effort.

Now that I am facing my own doubts again, I am creating more opportunities to connect with graduate students, including new office hours. When I meet with them one on one, I try to help them focus on the things they can control, such as building healthy work habits and supporting one another, and tune out the things they can’t, such as shifting institutional priorities or the politics of funding decisions.

Taking notice of the hopeful signs around me also helps sustain me. I felt hope again this semester when I stepped into the lecture room for our first class activity and saw that students were already asking questions and helping one another. I might have overlooked that before. But this time it helped remind me why I’ve stayed in academia.

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How to engage your students and teach effectively

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From ScienceMag:

For the many graduate students and postdocs who find themselves in front of a classroom, the transition from student to teacher can be abrupt—and the new responsibilities overwhelming. That was the case for Endy Lopes Kailer the first time she taught college undergrads when she was beginning her master’s degree program. Despite previous experience teaching English and tutoring high school students, she felt “very nervous and intimidated,” she recalls. “I wanted to connect with my students and show [them from] day one that they could rely on me and that I truly cared about their learning experience.”

She committed to preparing, down to writing some jokes to break the ice. “Only two people laughed,” she says. “That crushed my confidence, but also taught me that it takes time for students to open up and connect.”

During the following 6 years, Kailer—now a graduate research assistant in agronomy and soil science at Kansas State University—honed her skills to effectively engage and teach her students. “I have been able to replace the anxiety and insecurity for excitement when I step into a new classroom,” she says. Soon enough, students started to show their appreciation in positive feedback about her teaching style.

To help readers on their own teaching journeys, Science Careers asked Kailer and other researchers with recognized teaching experience to share their insights and approaches. The responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: How did you get into teaching, and what was your first experience like? Was it difficult to transition from student to teacher?

Jack-William Barotta, Ph.D. candidate in fluid mechanics at Brown University: Teaching has always been a passion of mine. I started out as a tutor during my freshman year of college and later volunteered for office hours and exam reviews. I quickly realized the importance of supporting students’ unique approaches, and that it’s OK to be human and make mistakes. The first time I taught a dedicated course, I didn’t get through as much of the content as I had planned because we ended up diving into a beneficial discussion about a related concept. This experience taught me the value of overpreparing for lectures while remaining flexible about the exact content covered.

Evangelia Gazaki, associate professor in mathematics at the University of Virginia: I started as a teaching assistant in my second year of grad school, and in my third year I started teaching my own calculus class for nonscience majors. I was definitely excited going in, and also definitely nervous. The challenges were plenty, partly because I was an international student with no experience with the U.S. college system and an accent. But what I was most unprepared for was the level of the students in my class. A very large portion of them thought they were terrible at math, and I had to work hard to build their confidence.

Cel Welch, postdoc in chemical engineering at Stanford University: My first teaching assignment was in the first year of my Ph.D. as a [teaching assistant ] of an executive master’s in a science and technology leadership program. I mainly took this position because starting grad school had depleted my financial resources. I also wanted to help my [principal investigator], who was managing the course. I was skeptical about TAing 40- to 70-year-old business professionals as a young grad student with a biomedical engineering background, but the professor and I collaborated to make interesting resources for the class that leveraged my perspective. It definitely opened my eyes to how teaching can be creative and enjoyable. Shortly after, I TAed my first engineering course, an entirely different experience that made me realize it is one thing to understand, and another to teach content.

William Kelton, senior lecturer in biomedical sciences at the University of Waikato: While working in industry, I actively sought out opportunities to give guest lectures at a local university, as I was considering a move back to academia. Upon taking my academic position, I was tasked with developing a series of master’s level workshops. It quickly became apparent there was a great deal of preparation required for each class that I clearly hadn’t fully appreciated as a student. Our university’s rapid switch to online learning during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic presented additional challenges for a new lecturer grappling with unfamiliar learning platforms. I distinctly remember being relieved after delivering the first workshop and realizing I had an excellent cohort of understanding students to thank for making the experience positive.

Angelika Lahnsteiner, postdoc in molecular biology at the University of Salzburg: I started teaching during my first year as a Ph.D. student, and I quickly developed a passion for education. But it took me several years, and several moments of “I will quit this job,” to learn how I can deal with challenging situations. Sometimes, students will ask why someone receives extra time for exams without realizing this student has a disability, or they may feel they have been treated unfairly after failing a class. I try to stay as calm as possible and explain the situation clearly to them, seeking guidance from more experienced colleagues or the legal department if needed. I’ve also learned to accept that I will never reach every student—not all students will like me as a person or my teaching style—and that’s OK.

Florian Golemo, postdoc in robotics and 3D perception at McGill University: My teaching responsibilities and independence gradually increased over time. Being part of a team teaching a large undergraduate class during my Ph.D. felt like an apprenticeship, allowing me to observe experienced instructors and learn the ropes, from classroom management to assignment design. My first solo flight came during my postdoc, teaching cognitive science to 200 students with backgrounds ranging from psychology and philosophy to computer science. I vividly recall the sinking feeling of seeing some students disengaged while others struggled. That first experience really shaped me into the teacher I am today: one who values continuous improvement and believes learning is a collaborative journey.

Q: What is your teaching approach or philosophy, and how do you measure success toward your goals?

Golemo: Effective teaching is about more than content delivery; it’s about creating an inclusive environment where every student feels seen. I immediately asked my diverse class for feedback, inquiring about prior knowledge, adequate pacing, and how I could better meet their needs. The course improved significantly as a result, and I discovered the power of student collaboration in shaping learning. Since then, my teaching philosophy has centered on adaptability and responsiveness—listening to students, understanding their perspectives, and adjusting my approach.

Kailer: I have made it my life’s mission to make learning fun and accessible to others who, like 7-year-old me, had to work against the odds to access education. Teaching is also caring, helping students get back on the horse when things get difficult and creating a safe space for every student. By the end of the semester, I always know each of them, their struggles, their strengths, and how I can take those aspects on board to benefit their learning process.

Welch: I personally thrive when making conventionally difficult or disliked content digestible. The best way for me to get a pulse on the class not just once it is over (as in course evaluations) but while it is happening is having anonymous forms after each lecture where students tell me if they found a concept or problem confusing. In terms of student interaction, I just aim to be myself and to be open. I will never be the person who tells a student they should give up, but I will hold them to a high standard and connect them to the resources they need to succeed.

Barotta: I don’t want to be seen as an all-knowing figure at the front of the class; rather, I aim to create a learning community where we all learn from each other—including me. I want my students to feel excited about the content, engage deeply with it, and understand that it’s OK not to grasp everything immediately. For me, success is measured by my students’ growth as problem solvers, their willingness to explore unconventional approaches, and their ability to recognize their own worth.

Gazaki: My favorite motto is “Don’t be afraid of the math, get your hands dirty!” During my postdoc years, I taught inquiry-based learning classes, where students work in groups on worksheets and the instructor serves more as a moderator (also known as the flipped classroom experience). To this day, I make my lectures very interactive, encouraging students’ participation by constantly having Q&A times. I also have large groups of students working on problems on the blackboard during office hours. Besides getting energetically involved with the material, this approach helps them build community.

Kelton: I think it’s important that students learn to apply key theoretical concepts to solve problems, thus avoiding the rote learning that can pervade some fields. Rather than prioritizing detailed memorization, I’ve adopted a real focus on flipped learning with practical lab sessions and workshops. I think this approach is all the more important these days, considering the rise of artificial intelligence tools. Beyond tracking pass rates and gathering feedback at the end of the course, I’ve begun to implement online polls during the course to understand how the students see themselves as learners and whether they have any subjects of particular interest that I could cover.

Q: How do you go about preparing and delivering the course material? What professional training or resources did you have access to?

Kailer: It takes a lot of research and reading to create a great set of slides for a lecture and be prepared to answer questions. I always try to show that complex topics can be easily understood if presented in a more digestible manner, often bringing soil samples, live plants, and organisms preserved in resin blocks for the students to observe and interact with. I find this hands-on approach especially valuable to support students who may find it challenging to focus during traditional lectures, especially students with ADHD, as it makes learning much more memorable and exciting than simply viewing pictures. I also try to connect course material to current events to help students understand the relevance and practical application of what they are learning in class. To help me develop my teaching skills, I watched YouTube videos and read open-access books developed by my and other universities. I recommend asking former teaching assistants about their experiences with the course and inviting the main professor to attend some of your lectures to provide feedback. Critically observing great professors and other role models will also help you in your learning process.

Welch: I use a similar approach to teaching as I do when writing a grant or research paper and preparing talk slides. First, I set aside some time to abstractedly think about the topic and the main things that must be touched on. Then, I scaffold an outline of how I will address these concepts. I flesh it out with specific pieces of information, review, and modify (time permitting). For grading, at first I was giving overly detailed comments, taking twice the time or more than I do now. I started striving for efficiency once I realized the students didn’t necessarily care. In terms of training, I was able to pursue three teaching certifications as a Ph.D. student, which taught me a lot of skills. Then as a postdoc I completed a mentorship certificate, which made me aware of the pitfalls in my style and how to correct them.

Barotta: Typically, I first go through material from several textbooks and online resources from other instructors or organizations to gain different perspectives on the topic. I then focus on creating in-depth, applicable problems that complement the material, with the lecture content structured around these examples. I like to start by presenting a key concept and showing how tackling a related phenomenon or application will be achievable by the end of the lecture. The final example or content point usually ties back to this initial concept, creating a full-circle moment. I also make an effort to keep the lectures interactive by incorporating numerous questions and activities. My formal pedagogical training has been incredibly helpful in this regard, as I’ve been exposed to various forms of active learning that I am now implementing, such as debates and discussions, Think-Pair-Share moments, and case studies. Then, setting up asynchronous communication channels, such as Slack, has been useful for students to continue conversations outside of class or form problem solving groups.

Kelton: I’ve joined a group of academics from both the education and science fields that has been a great forum to share ideas, resources, and most importantly, come to grips with simple practical steps you can take to improve your teaching. For example, I now quite often use short, prerecorded videos to deliver content ahead of class, allowing more time for interactive workshop style learning. Developing classroom strategies has been a learning process with some trial and error. In my classes, I’ve found that simply posing a question and waiting for the class to answer is an effective tool to drive engagement. I also try to pace content and avoid the temptation to include too much material.

Golemo: It’s a little bit more preparation, but I generally gear the lecture for the slower students and have optional further resources for the more advanced students to keep them engaged. As for course materials, traditionally in the department there are a lot of classic experiment papers to read as homework. But I’d argue that it’s faster and more effective to discuss them in a lecture so I can make sure directly that the students pick up on the (modern) criticism surrounding some of these classic experiments. Meanwhile, I like to give the students more contemporary and diverse materials to explore between lectures, like podcasts, book excerpts, and TV shows. There are Star Trek episodes that do a better job exploring the nature of intelligence than some papers do.

Lahnsteiner: Several days before the lecture, I send students videos and learning materials to allow class time to be dedicated to discussions and collaborative problem solving. To help students track their own learning progress, I prepare ungraded quizzes for each lecture on our learning platform, where they receive automated feedback. Then, in a final workshop, I ask students to prepare in small groups some posters about key epigenetic mechanisms and present them to classmates. I also created a board game about these mechanisms for student teams. While these activities may seem playful, I have found that active engagement significantly improves learning outcomes. I learned some of these teaching approaches in a three-semester course I recently completed. As part of the program, I also took a voice training class to control my breathing and manage nervousness, which significantly increased my self-confidence.

Q: What do you find are the most enjoyable or valuable aspects of teaching? What has proved more challenging for you?

Golemo: I’ve always loved teaching, and witnessing a handful of students getting motivated to do a summer boot camp on AI following last year’s cognitive science class has made me really excited for becoming a professor. Still, I have a little bit of stage fright. I’ve been building confidence over the years, but when I step into the big auditorium in front of 200 people, it’s daunting for the first couple minutes. Today, the feeling will naturally fade once I settle in, but what helped me in the early days was a saying from one of my role models: “The worst day of teaching is still better than the worst day without teaching.” As for balancing teaching, research, and free time, that’s tough. The silver lining is that it gets a lot easier over time. With practice, you become better at prioritizing different tasks and gauging how much time some topic will take to prepare for a given class. And then, creating a whole course for the first time is a massive time sink; updating and adjusting one that you’ve already taught is a walk in the park!

Kailer: It is so fulfilling to see a student that used to struggle with a subject to not only learn it effectively but also enjoy it. And certainly, teaching has indirectly benefited my research by helping me gain strong communication skills. However, whereas students have the option to not show up when life happens, the instructors have to be there, consistently, so organization and planning skills are key.

Kelton: Marking has been a real challenge time-wise, and I’ve been working on strategies to reduce this burden while still achieving quality assessment. Then, having to adapt to the widespread use of AI tools has further changed the nature of assessment. I’ve found individual or group presentations with question-and-answer sessions to be a good way to gauge the depth of student understanding. For me, the most rewarding part of teaching is seeing students really grasp a concept. Teaching has also been an amazing tool to connect with and recruit enthusiastic students, which makes growing a research team significantly easier and more enjoyable.

Barotta: It is thrilling to have a say not only in how the content of a course is taught, but also in shaping the content itself. But the teaching moments that truly stand out for me are the discussions with students that take place after class or during office hours. The most challenging aspect has been figuring out how to ensure that my teaching style is accessible to students with different learning preferences. Balancing teaching and research has been deeply rewarding for me, as I’ve found my research has informed my teaching and vice versa.

Lahnsteiner: The communication skills I have developed through teaching have been invaluable in my research collaborations and grant writing. And I really enjoy being reminded that I’ve made a positive impact by following the progress of my students over the years. However, it’s easy to spend countless hours, even on weekends, preparing lectures and research materials. Finding a healthy balance between work and life is essential—not only to stay motivated but also to generate fresh ideas for both teaching and research.

Welch: Teaching helps my research by engaging another part of my brain and increasing my overall life satisfaction (it is very rewarding to help students!). However, it is not always perceived as high value in academia, so I have had to be wary of my time spent.

Gazaki: Having students tell you this was the most fun math class they’d taken or share with you their successes have been truly rewarding moments for me. Still, even years after moving to the United States, I sometimes feel significant cultural differences with my students. It took several years until a friend told me that I can come across as very blunt when telling students how I see things. Now that I know about this, during one-on-one office hours I explain what my feedback means and that it’s only meant for them to grow and succeed in the class. This feeds into another challenge: having a positive impact on all students. No matter how much I try, there are always students who might need a different approach. But it’s not always easy to figure out how to help them, nor do I always have the patience. I’ve made numerous mistakes over the years, but I hope that every mistake I make also helps me grow as a teacher.

Q: Any misconceptions you would warn against, or final words of advice?

Kailer: When I started teaching, I believed that I only needed to reserve the timeslots for my lectures; I had no idea of how much time I would need to prepare the course material and grade or to help students outside of class. Be aware of these “invisible” responsibilities, and make sure to ask the professor responsible for the course what are the expectations and time commitment.

Kelton: For me, the realization that lecturers don’t always need to provide immediate answers has been particularly helpful. Initially, I found this concept uncomfortable given the expectation of lecturers as subject matter experts. But I learned you can use these questions to create deeper discussion with the class, or tell the students you will get back to them after doing some more reading. Then, enthusiasm is contagious, so try to bring energy to your classes. But remember it’s perfectly normal to have days where your teaching doesn’t go to plan or feels a bit flat.

Welch: Do not go into teaching thinking that since you aced the class years ago or are a great researcher you will automatically be great at it. If half of your class is confused, that’s a good sign that it’s not the students’ fault. Many researchers see teaching as a burden or a distraction, but it can genuinely help you grow, so keep an open mind.

Lahnsteiner: Start teaching early. When I applied for my second postdoc position, I was explicitly asked about my teaching experience, and my 5 years gave me an advantage that many others were only beginning to develop. Also, be patient; many skills develop with experience. Confidence and authenticity are key; be yourself and don’t try to fit a mold. Then, it’s easy to blame students for an apparent lack of interest, but it’s our responsibility to make learning exciting and meaningful.

Gazaki: During grad school, I thought I had everything figured out for a course I had already taught once. I was obsessively working on my thesis, and I postponed preparing a midterm exam until late the night before. I ended up making a typo in a problem that made it impossible to solve. Most embarrassingly, I did not catch the error until after I started grading. The moral of the story is that we are not perfect. But if we build a relationship of trust with our students and we show them that we care, they can be very grateful and forgiving even when we mess up.

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To increase diversity in STEM, a foot in the door isn’t enough. We need better support

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From ScienceMag:

The question caught me off-guard. The video call was supposed to be a simple wrap-up with a program evaluator—one last meeting to close my year in the postbaccalaureate program. I thought it would just be a chance to say thank you, talk about next steps, and get a bit of advice. Instead, I was asked a critical question: “How has this program shaped your sense of belonging in STEM, and in neuroscience specifically?” I stared at the screen for a moment, blinking. I wanted to be honest, but I didn’t want to sound ungrateful. I knew how much the program had invested in my classmates and me. I also couldn’t ignore the weight of what I had experienced.

The program’s mission was to provide training to students from underrepresented backgrounds who had graduated from universities without many research opportunities. Coming from a small liberal arts college, I went into the program to gain the hands-on research experience I would need to be a competitive Ph.D. applicant.

It sounded like the gateway I was after. I wasn’t exactly sure what I needed to learn to become a competent researcher. But, I reasoned, surely the program would know.

It didn’t take long for those hopes to unravel. I soon learned that my cohort was the first. We were told we would be the “guinea pigs,” and that there would be growing pains.

We had weekly group meetings with the program directors, mostly focused on research updates and goals. But no one seemed to grasp how new we were to all of this. We didn’t just need feedback on our experiments. We needed someone to tell us what academia even was. How to navigate it. What questions to ask. We were hungry to learn, but the gaps were wide, and the silence around them made everything harder.

It’s hard to say why those involved didn’t understand what we needed. But it was clear that very few people on the medical campus where we were working looked like us. One day, as I was working on my laptop at a small coffee shop on campus, a woman in scrubs asked, “Do you have to be an employee, or can anyone just sit here?” My heart sank. I wasn’t bothering anyone. I belonged. And yet, somehow, others didn’t see it that way.

Meanwhile, I was struggling to get my experiments off the ground. Three months into the program, my mentor was put on administrative leave. I was unofficially placed under my mentor’s supervisor, someone senior in the department. He was genuinely invested in the program. But he wasn’t closely involved in my day to day. Without a direct mentor, I was left trying to piece things together on my own.

For months, I made almost no progress. When I asked questions of others in my lab, many of whom were stressed about their own future, they told me to “just look in the literature” and offered no further guidance. Once, a colleague said, almost casually, “Some people just aren’t cut out for this.”

Through my struggles, the program never checked in on me. It was a professor teaching one of my classes who ultimately filled that gap. After noticing I was obviously very unhappy, she invited me to switch to her lab.

I went on to work with her for the rest of the year. She gave me what I was missing: technical skills, insight into the unspoken norms of academia, and the red flags to watch out for. She helped me rebuild my confidence and gave me tools, language, and a way forward. “You’re a star,” she said once, so casually it felt like a fact.

In the end, I came out of the experience achieving what I set out to do. I applied to and was accepted into the graduate school of my choice. But it wasn’t because I was guided or nurtured by the program. I decided to be honest and tell the program evaluator the truth. The program showed me I was capable of doing neuroscience research, but it didn’t give me a feeling that I belonged.

Now as a first year Ph.D. student, I find myself fielding questions from students considering similar programs. I tell them to ask about the kind of support they’ll receive in and outside of the lab and what programs mean when they say “mentorship.” Who will be responsible for guiding you? What are their roles, and what are your options if things go off track? Talent and grit matter, but so do structure, transparency, and care.

The author is a Ph.D. student in the United States.
Do you have an interesting career story? Send it to SciCareerEditor@aaas.org. Read the general guidelines here.

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USDA funding delays under Trump compromise agricultural research

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From ScienceMag:

Georg Jander was delighted in May when a grant he’d submitted last year to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to study how maize responds to attacking insects received favorable reviews. But now, 4 months later, he still doesn’t know whether it will be funded. The same cloud of uncertainty hangs over the heads of many agricultural scientists, as USDA continues to postpone grant decisions and fails to announce many new funding opportunities. Jander, a Boyce Thompson Institute plant biologist, says he and “a lot of other people are just frustrated because we don’t know what to do next.”

USDA typically awards more than $1.7 billion in funding each year for a wide range of research on food, nutrition, and agriculture. But by the end of this fiscal year it will have awarded just over $1 billion, according to its public database. Some approved grants have yet to receive a single dollar for work that was expected to begin earlier this year. “We’ve missed an entire field season,” one agricultural researcher says.

It’s not unusual for new administrations to review funding programs. But after President Donald Trump took office in January, his administration went further. It ordered USDA to freeze funding of all awarded grants, a stoppage that lasted for much of the first half of the year. The aim was to identify grants that included work related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, which were canceled wholesale. The agency also canceled grants to universities for research related to climate-smart agriculture. And it stopped awarding new grants.

Other funding agencies took similar steps. But USDA remains behind even as other agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, have ramped up grant funding in recent months. “It’s been very, very delayed,” says Julie McClure of the Torrey Advisory Group, which lobbies on behalf of the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America. (USDA did not respond to a request for comment.)

Competitive grants, which fund research at universities and other organizations, have fared the worst. As of 16 September, with 2 weeks left before the end of this fiscal year, USDA’s center for extramural research funding, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), had awarded just 558 competitive grants, according to its public database. That’s 68% fewer than during the prior fiscal year—and $741 million less in competitively awarded research funds. In contrast, the $800 million of so-called capacity funds, which are largely distributed by formulas to certain universities, has all been committed.

One reason for the shortfall in competitive funding is that NIFA simply did not invite new grant applications for much of the year. The first funding opportunities were only posted in July—and with tight deadlines of just a few weeks. The long-standing Foundational and Applied Science Program, which awards $300 million per year, was posted on 1 August with deadlines as soon as 2 October. “A ridiculously short turnaround time,” says Crispin Taylor, executive director of the American Society of Plant Biology. The agency also appears to have a backlog of applications submitted last year that remain in limbo. The number could be in the thousands, a former USDA staff member says.

Morgan Carter, who studies plant pathogens at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, had hoped a graduate student in her lab could win a USDA fellowship to study new biocontrol approaches for fungi. But the agency has not posted a request for applications. “We don’t know the status of this program.”

Even for scientists who were awarded grants, the path hasn’t been smooth. According to USASpending. gov, a federal database, USDA turned the spigot back on for many suspended grants in August. But the delays complicated research plans. Many labs have delayed hiring postdocs or project managers or have had to scramble to find other support.

What’s causing the delays is unclear. Some observers suspect the White House Office of Management and Budget or the Department of Government Efficiency, formerly run by Elon Musk, have taken charge of funding and are responsible for the holdup. “The real question is who’s making the decisions?” says Elizabeth Stulberg, a lobbyist with Lewis-Burke Associates.

Stulberg adds that because the Senate has only confirmed some of the Trump administration’s nominees for USDA posts (four of 12), the agency also may not have the bandwidth to make swift funding decisions. Staffing has also dropped at NIFA. By March, 11% of its 488 employees had taken the Trump administration’s offer of deferred retirement and another 8% had left for other reasons.

Senate confirmation of entomologist Scott Hutchins as USDA’s undersecretary for research, education, and economics, which could happen as early as this month, could help break the logjam, McClure says. Observers say Hutchins knows agricultural research and USDA. New money Congress has put into agricultural research could also help. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act includes $1.25 billion over 9 years for agricultural research facilities, beginning with the next fiscal year.

But until the delays subside, many researchers remain on tenterhooks. For now, says one pretenure faculty member who has waited more than a year to learn whether a grant submitted to USDA will be funded, “We are all juggling.”

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Delays, uncertainty plague NSF fellowship for graduate students

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From ScienceMag:

One of the premier U.S. graduate fellowships is mired in uncertainty as would-be applicants await overdue details about how to apply for the upcoming year’s awards. The National Science Foundation (NSF) usually releases the application guidelines for its flagship Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) in mid-July, giving applicants at least 90 days to prepare materials before an October deadline. But for weeks NSF’s website has read “solicitation coming soon,” leaving many frustrated and confused.

It’s not clear what’s caused the delay. An NSF spokesperson told Science on 26 August that the solicitation was in development. When asked for an update this week, they wrote, “I don’t have anything for you at the moment but will let you know as soon as that changes.”

The current limbo adds to other recent deviations from the status quo for the program. In April, NSF gave out fewer than 1000 GRFP awards—a far cry from the 2000 it doled out the year before. The agency later added 500 more fellowships to this year’s award tally. But the final list drew accusations it favored applicants in certain fields, such as computer science.

Some took it as good news last week when the agency updated its website to indicate that this year’s applications would be due in late October. Previously, some had feared this year’s program wouldn’t happen at all.

But with just over a month before the deadlines, many hopeful applicants are growing increasingly impatient to see this year’s instructions and learn whether NSF has any surprises in store—such as a shift to embracing industry partnerships. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they release the solicitation with completely different instructions,” wrote a Reddit user in a group devoted to discussing GRFP applications.

For many students submitting to the GRFP, it’s their first experience putting together a grant proposal, says Brian O’Meara, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville who has been tracking updates to NSF’s website and sharing his thoughts about them online. So, “The more lead time the better,” he says, adding that “it will be important for potential applicants to know if they are even eligible before putting in the work to prepare to apply.”

NSF’s website states that any applicant submitting a fellowship or grant application to the agency will “have a minimum of 90 days from NSF’s announcement of a funding opportunity to prepare and submit a proposal.” Susan Brennan, a former GRFP director who now works at Stony Brook University, says that when she worked at NSF the 90-day cutoff was taken seriously. “If we were 1 day late with the solicitation, then we would have had to justify it, move the deadlines,” she says. “For some reason, we are now halfway along, and we are so very late that many students will not be able to apply this year, and it’s very concerning.”

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