If you're interested in being a sponsor, then please contact us at sponsor at thisacademiclife.org. Hi, my name is Kim Michelle Lewis. I'm a professor of physics and associate dean of research. Hi, my name is Pania Newell. I'm a professor of mechanical engineering. Hi, my name is Lucy Zhang. I am also a professor of mechanical engineering. Well, ladies, we have reached... Exactly two years since our initial release of our podcast show.
That was 2020. And back then, that was at the heights of the pandemic. We were all staying at home. And this was our... pet project that we were trying to launch at the time and two years have passed so We thought to our listeners, we do some reflections today. And over the last two years, we've received a lot of compliments and curiosity questions that people have asked us.
So we thought we can today, we go through some of those and just resolve those mysteries that behind the scenes and then talk about what we've learned so far and how we are proceeding forward. So the most common one that is being asked of me, at least, was how do we actually find the time? That's the hardest part. Oh, my God. We decided to...
meet after seven o'clock Eastern time. That works for all three of us. And we've been on a regular basis and that requires a lot of coordinations with Kim's schedule. Yes, Tanya, that is true, as the two of you are quite busy. But for me, I feel that the academic, administrative... position of being the associate dean of research definitely leaks over past five o'clock past six o'clock past seven o'clock past eight o'clock and just keeps going on and on so i definitely think
the fact that we commit to a particular time and we meet no matter what, I think we should congratulate ourselves that I think it's been very few meetings that we've actually canceled. I remember even when we had Audio video issues. I think one time I didn't have any internet or didn't have power and we still just rode through it. I remember just recording from my cell phone. So I think. That speaks volumes to how dedicated we are to making sure that we get...
new topics out to our listeners and just the excitement that we have to just continue this as something that we wanted to do. And it's not anything that we were made to do. So I think that speaks volumes. So I think we should congratulate ourselves for making it this far. I totally agree. I'm patting myself on the back right now.
relatively young children and they have after-school activities and I need to drive them here and there and my son has travel baseball games and when the season comes that's five days a week so definitely a lot of commitment from everybody. And we're really hoping that can continue to do this and then provide good material and good contents for everybody. Now, speaking of materials and contents.
Another common question is people say, how do you choose the topic for every episode? Do you get your ideas from somewhere? Do you just kind of figure it out as you go? How do you do this? We are just creative people. We just come up with ideas one after another. I think that some of them, they were timely. Like I remember once when Kim had... that big event going on at Howard. So yeah, so I think some of them are timely and some of them are, we think that we experienced.
throughout our career that these are important topics that we wish that somebody had told us when we needed. So I think that's how we've been selecting them. And we got people reached out to us. They suggested that they wanted to hear about some of the topics. cakes. Yeah. I remember the topics that I came up with was just based on pure passion. Like I was like, I have a strong opinion about this and what better way to get all of these ideas off my.
chest or out of my head is to express them in a very comfortable format that's very laid back and get feedback from the two of you. So most often my topics come from pure passion.
or topics that that have always gave me a reason to pause to think like is that really the right way to do it when it comes to academics in the academy so i think for me That's probably the hardest thing is coming up with a topic that I'm very passionate about and that you can hear it in my voice because they can't see me moving my hands or shaking my head or rolling my eyes.
But they can hear the passion in my voice, the inflections in my voice. And I think that's the, probably for me, the hardest thing about choosing a topic. At the very beginning, when we're talking about the show, how to organize the show. We were like, we're in academia. There's unlimited number of topics. There are things happening every single day, even though we're doing the same thing every day. We teach, we do research, and we do service, but there's always a lot of nuances.
all these tenure promotions and things on the side that typical person or typical student don't really see the other side of us. So there are a lot of topics that we can always choose from. So certainly we feel... like we can never run out of topics and then sometimes we pick up fun ones right like the nobel prize one that was a fun one and that was a timely topic at the time as well
All right. So another one people ask was that, do we just record on Zoom or do we actually meet and record together? recording studio and we talk all so smoothly as they hear like how do we train ourselves to be good speakers I'm not trained to be a good speaker That's why we have awesome editors. So they help us to become a good speaker.
But I do think that actually we've improved from the very first editing. So it's becoming, I guess, more natural and hopefully less editing on our editor's part. But recording, no, we don't meet. I wish we could, but we live in three different states and far away from each other. We have awesome Zoom and we have awesome microphones. Some of the recording devices that we have, we kind of played that quite a lot at the beginning just to make sure that our...
Volumes are coming out right and levels and balanced and everything. Certainly our editors are helping us a lot with that as well. So over time, we found our sort of little niche each at our own. as we're recording this. So the next one. So we have a lot of faculty listeners, and sometimes I also see some input from some students, postdocs who listen to our shows.
So some people would ask, what are our general audience and like who care about the show who want to come in and listen to us? I think it depends. I think it depends on.
what the topic is i remember when we had the high schoolers that came i remember that we encouraged them to tell their friends to go to school and let them know that they did a podcast and so for that particular time period, the audience were high schoolers that wanted to listen to their friends talk about their experiences and i think that was fun and i and if i recall correctly i think that was one that had a lot of views possibly because they have more friends than us
so so i think it depends and oftentimes i am in meetings and i will say We just had a podcast about this. And then people say, you have a podcast? And I'm like, yes. And they're like, when do you have time to do that? I was like, exactly. But I have time to talk about this. So sometimes I just casually in conversation, remember that we talked about this in our podcast and tell my colleagues and then they'll go back.
to actually listen to the podcast. So I think it varies and maybe that's the reason why sometimes our listeners fluctuate because it just depends on what the topic is. i know we do have like listeners that are really loyal to us so that's always good as well when i get that question i tell people that we are covering
Any range, anybody who's interested in STEM can be a kindergartner, anybody. And it's not only for junior faculty or mid-careers or senior faculty. We try to cover topics that they are of interest. anybody in the STEM field, regardless of their age or their seniority or career stage. Yeah, I agree. I think we ultimately just care about STEM education. from young age all the way to being an educator. So it's definitely...
the passion for the three of us. And we always want to encourage young people to get interested and then just look at us, right? We're women, we made it. We didn't come from families with very... rich background and or anything like that but we all made it and we're doing well so a lot of young children can hopefully see us and then see a future of them I know
that I have personally received a lot of positive feedbacks from people. And I know that's a while when we meet, that we talk about, oh, guess what I've heard this week, right? So maybe we can share some. I had one long, long, long, long email during the Christmas holiday, admiring one of our episodes from one of our listeners and talking specifically about the episode.
that we had on prestige and saying that how much that person loved it and capitalized love love love love love love and and it was really heartwarming seeing that somebody During the holidays, listening to our episode and then being pleased with the outcome and then the topic and taking the time writing to us.
many colleagues and many people at conferences coming to me and saying, oh, I know you through that podcast or saying that, oh, why are you releasing every other week? It's like, well, we have. other things to do in life too. So, but I haven't heard anything but positive feedback from whoever that they listen to our episodes.
Also, I even interviewed PhD students that they told me that they've been listening to some of our podcasts. Some of them, even after I interviewed them, they sent me an email. And they said that they are continuously following and listening to the relevant podcast for them. And some, even during the interview, they told me that they know about our podcast. Also, some faculty candidates.
They know about our podcast. And they said good things. Well, they had to, I guess, because we were interviewing them. I remember, Kim, one time, I think it was a guest that... You brought in to the show to interview him. to talk about his tenure track where he moved a couple of times and challenges. And then afterwards, he received an email. saying how much that episode had inspired the person who wrote the email. And then he forwarded it to you. It was very inspiring for a lot of people.
I know that at the very beginning when we were making this, the very first episode, we had a vision on how we wanted to run this show. So over time... Do you think that are there a lot of changes that we have made and we have adapted due to our schedule? One thing I've noticed was that at the beginning, we were doing a lot of interviews. And right now we haven't done so many interviews as much as before.
I think a lot of that is due to time. It does take a lot of coordination just between just among ourselves. It's going a little crazy. And when we're dealing with when we have to arrange. an episode recording with someone else, that's even more challenging. Well, Lucy, I think you need to give us more credit. I think the reason we have less people that we interview is because we realize that we are pretty good at entertaining ourselves. And we are funny.
we make jokes and we laugh at each other and our opinions are interesting and enlightening so I think we do a good job we realize that we can hold our own on this show and i think that was actually one of the Very first comments we received when we started the podcast that we were so different. We were all so different. And I remember telling each of you like, this is what makes our podcast different from.
everybody else because we come from different places we grew up different ways we were educated differently our philosophies are different and they come across in our silliness and when we make jokes and when we're very serious about things so i think we realize that we are experts whether we realize it or not and sometimes we bring in guests to help define that particular topic. But then we realized that we actually have very strong opinions about it as well. So I think
Moving forward and looking back, I think we've had a good balance. I think we've realized what our weaknesses were and we said we need to bring in the expert. speaker on this case and then there were times we were like between the three of us we got this we don't need anyone to come in so i think we've had a good balance and i think we'll be able to keep it up last question here Do you think the show or making the show has changed us in any way? It hasn't changed me, but I...
Realize how much I love making artworks for each episode. It's like, this is so cool. Can we have more episodes? So I learned something about myself, but it hasn't changed me. I think that I'm the same person that I was two years ago. I didn't know that Kim just mentioned that I didn't know that I'm the expert in so many topics. I guess I learned that now too.
So now I need to have more reflection on the things that I'm good at. But I mean, seriously, I don't think that any of you guys have changed, but I'm curious to see what you guys think about yourself. What I realized is that I remember there was this one episode where I literally started the podcast.
and i said look i have a very strong opinion about this and the purpose of this episode is to see if you can get me to change my mind and panya just dug her heels in and i was like wow i'm still not gonna change my mind but she gave it a good shot and i also realized that you know we're pretty set in our ways although we think we're very flexible and
Dr. Academic professors and everything I realized that we are pretty stubborn when it comes to what we believe in and what we think works, but at the same time, we are collegial to each other and we recognize that. One of us on the show might have a different opinion and we do see the other side of that person. And at the end of the podcast, we're like, but still don't do that. Don't worry about what Piant said. Don't do it. So, and I think that's what makes the podcast interesting is that.
it's okay to have a different opinion. And most often I realize when we're in these big meetings with our colleagues, A lot of people have our same opinion, but sometimes the voices are not heard or the time runs out. We only have a one hour for faculty meeting, can't get to everybody. And so I think the podcast feels like an extension of something I should have.
have said in the faculty meeting that I didn't because I didn't have time or I didn't think of it at that time so I don't think the podcast I agree with Panya it hasn't really changed me but it gave me an option to express an opinion that I may not have expressed in a group setting just because of time or et cetera. So I'm happy that we started the podcast. I think that we are true to ourselves and then we are not faking it. We are not experts, unlike Kemba saying.
But I mean, we are not afraid of sharing our opinion freely and openly. And that's what I think I value the most. And it makes our friendship really strong and we rely on each other. I'm really grateful for that. Oh, definitely the same here. I'm very grateful for this opportunity. I know I know both of you from different settings and we all came from different backgrounds. For me...
This podcast gave me an opportunity to have a voice. I've always thought that I'm not someone who's very open with my opinions, especially in public or. where I feel like I will be judged. So that's something certainly is to be worked on, but we're so set in our ways at this point in life. So I just felt like this gives me that freedom, give me an outlet so that I can speak my mind without being judged. And I know you won't judge me and the audience probably will. I don't feel.
that I will hear their immediate response where I have to sort of react in a certain way. So I am less concerned about, I am really hoping that in the long term, it would also. benefit a lot of people even just if one person can benefit I'm really really happy you know I can't imagine having better people to work with on this podcast
That's all. And those are the some key questions that people have asked us over the last two years since we released the show. So with that, we are hopeful that this. Although our listeners are going to keep on listening to us and with our even better episodes up and coming. So I hope you will stay with us. And we're always open to suggestions and opinions. If you go.
to our website, thisacademicklife.org. There's a comment box. You're always welcome to write to us and we'll grow together. Thank you so much for listening. we hope you enjoyed this conversation you can follow us on facebook and listen to our latest episodes on itunes spotify amazon music or google podcasts if you're interested in being a sponsor then please contact us at sponsor at thisacademicklife.org. Join us next time for the good, the bad, and the ugly of this academic life.