Dr. Maria Servedio is a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of North Carolina and the President-Elect of the American Society of Naturalists. Her research uses mathematical models to explore topics including speciation and mate choice.
What exactly does your job as a biology professor entail? What does a typical workday look like for you?
There are several types of professors, who do varying amounts of research and teaching. As a tenure track professor at a research university, Dr. Servedio does around 60% research, 30% teaching, and 10% service. Dr. Servedio teaches a class of around 20 upper level or honors college students two to three times per week.
On a typical workday she might teach her class, do some class prep, and then work on research projects. This includes supervising graduate students with their research projects, writing or developing mathematical models for one of her own projects, and meeting with collaborators to discuss projects that they are working on together. She also serves on various committees, edits and reviews other scientist’s manuscripts, and writes recommendation and promotion letters, for the service portion of her job.
What is your favorite part of your job?
Dr. Servedio’s favorite part of her job is the independence of being able to choose what she wants to research. She does not have a boss telling her what she should and shouldn’t do on a day-to-day basis, and can study whatever she finds interesting. She likes that “if [she] hears an interesting idea, and it’s something that [she] thinks would benefit from a mathematical model, [she] can go pursue [it].”
How did you become interested in science? How did you decide to become a biologist?
Dr. Servedio had always been interested in animals, like many young children. Her fascination with biology stemmed partially from looking at the dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History, as she often went there with her family. In high school, Dr. Servedio really enjoyed the two biology classes that she took, which furthered her interest in the field. In college she decided to take whatever classes she found the most interesting and see where that led her. This turned out to be doing research projects in the summer and doing her senior thesis in biology. Taking the “logical progression from that path” she decided to keep doing research on what she was interested in, and eventually became a biology professor.
What career path have you taken to get to this point?
In college at Harvard, Dr. Servedio got her undergraduate degree in Biology. Afterwards, she went to graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin for five years and got a PhD in Zoology. Graduate school involves doing “independent research under a supervisor and [writing] a dissertation which is [made up of] about three or four research papers” in order to get a PhD (doctorate of philosophy) in a specific subject area. After getting her PhD, Dr. Servedio did postdoctoral research combined with lecturing at Cornell for one year, followed by a postdoc at the University of California at Davis for two years. Then she got her job at UNC, but deferred it for a year to do more postdoctoral research at the University of California at San Diego.
In all of these positions, Dr. Servedio had the opportunity to work with prominent evolutionary theorists and learned mathematical modeling techniques.
Since her job at UNC is a tenure track position, Dr. Servedio served as an Assistant Professor for six years (meaning a professor who has not yet gotten tenure). After that time she went up for tenure and got promoted to Associate Professor. When a professor goes up for tenure their scientific output of the past six years is evaluated and if the department decides not to give the professor tenure, they have to leave the university. However, if a professor gets tenure it becomes very difficult to fire them, allowing them to have the academic freedom to explore different directions and have a more variable rate of scientific output. After around six years of being an Associate Professor, Dr. Servedio was promoted to Full Professor, the highest rank of a tenure track professor.
What challenges have you faced as a woman in science? How have you dealt with them?
“Some challenges it's hard to see, you don’t really know if you’re being treated equitably because… [you don’t know] how people may be judging you or what decisions people may be making based on who you are,” Dr. Servedio explains. However, she notes that she has been asked somewhat inappropriate questions that she doesn’t think would have been asked of a man, such as when she was asked during a job interview if she planned to have kids. In dealing with these challenges Dr. Servedio just ignored them and continued to try to fit in everything she could. She explains that as a woman it was harder to balance her career with having a family, but she decided to “try to do everything and ignore any nagging doubts about whether [she] could.” She thinks that this strategy has worked out well for her.
What advice would you give to girls who are interested in a career in science?
Dr. Servedio advises that anyone interested in biology should look at which biology professors are at the colleges they want to go to, for undergraduate but especially for graduate school, and pick a college with professors studying the topics that they are interested in. She recommends asking those professors about research opportunities in the labs and getting involved in laboratory work as early as possible. Finally, she advises “don’t feel shy of exploring, jumping between labs, and really trying to figure out what you are most interested in… because if you don’t pick a topic that you’re really passionate about and really interests you, it's going to be a lot harder and you’re not going to be as happy.”
Her closing advice is to “[not] listen to anyone telling you can’t do anything and… push as far [and] hard as you can to do what you want to do and be what you want to be.”
For more about Maria Servedio visit her lab website: https://sites.google.com/view/servedio-lab
About The Author
Marcella is currently a sophomore at Northwood High School. She is interested in biodiversity and animal behavior, and she plans to work in Conservation Biology. She plays the piano and also enjoys reading, baking, and being outside.
Коментари