Interview with a PhD: Dr. Mai Soliman

By Tomas Kasza Dr. Mai Soliman graduated from Montclair State University with a master’s degree in Molecular Biology in 2009 and from Rutgers School of Graduate Studies with a PhD in Cell and Developmental Biology in 2017. While completing her master’s and PhD degrees she sought out opportunities to teach high school and college students. After completion of her PhD degree she accepted a position at Northern Valley regional high school in Demarest, NJ, one of the top school districts in New Jersey. After teaching there for a year she moved back to Rutgers becoming the first Research Manager at the newly established New Jersey Autism Center for Excellence. Alongside her new position as a Research Manager, she teaches a course in genetics to Rutgers students. Recently I had the opportunity to discuss her experiences through her transition out of graduate school as well as teaching at both the college and high school levels. Could you describe your prior teaching experiences before you began your PhD and how those contributed or detracted from your desire to become a teacher? I actually taught at Rahway High School for 2 years before starting my PhD in 2010. After the first year of teaching, I learned that I love to teach, but I wasn’t sure I had the class management skills to be a productive classroom leader in a district like Rahway. I found that I was spending at least 50% of my time dealing with behavioral issues and administrative work. Another factor that most people don’t think about is that high school classes typically start at 7:30 am, which means I was waking up at 5:30 am to get to work every day. I was exhausted and this made me a lot less productive as an educator. I believe it was this position that forced me to consider what I was going to do for the rest of my life. I loved teaching, and more importantly, as a mother, I loved my summers off, but I just couldn’t picture spending 25-30 years in this type of education environment. I had to reconsider and re-think my options. What I was really looking for was teaching with a lot less hand holding. Perhaps teaching at the college level was more what I was looking for. That’s why I went back to school.   What do you think are some essential skills that teachers and lecturers need to have? The obvious to me is communication skills. You definitely need to be able to take a difficult concept and break it down into its pieces and ensure that your audience can understand it. Part of that communication skill is identifying when and where the material needs to be broken down and the order in which you’re going to cover it so it’s most comprehendible. Another skill that I found to be very beneficial is the ability to determine how well the students understand the material. You can’t give exams or quizzes every day, but you can look out into your audience and determine quickly if they’re in good shape or falling apart in panic. I often tell my students that I see a metaphorical light bulb floating on top of their heads. This light bulb helps orient me during the lecture. Many different graduate students struggle with making the transition out of graduate school and into their post-graduate careers. How was it making the jump from graduate school to post-grad career first after your master’s and then twice after your PhD? Do you think your PhD training helped you transition well between them? I’ve spoken to people who have enjoyed the process of transitioning from one career to another. It adds an element of excitement and breaks the day to day boredom. I personally found it draining and accompanied by self-doubt. When I left Rahway High School, I was concerned about the loss of income and years contributing to my retirement. When I left Northern Valley High School, I was concerned about loss of income (Northern Valley Regional School is the highest paying school district in the state) and losing my summers off with my kids. During every transition, I found myself with a list of pros and cons. Ultimately, I always went with what excites me. I think my PhD has helped me greatly during my transitions. I still find myself saying, “I learned to do that during my PhD.” And more often than not, it wasn’t related to anything scientific. One of the major things I learned from my PI is to be transparent and honest with the people I work with. I’ve channeled this advice often when dealing with my supervisors, co-workers, and even during job interviews. Do you have any advice for other graduate students making the same transition? I would say prepare yourself for the job market by making lots of connections. No connection is too small. And if you’re thinking about going into education, do yourself a favor and try it out first. Consider becoming a TA. It’s game changer. You’ll know after one semester if it’s your cup of tea and if you want to continue in that route. If you’re good, then your name will stand out to the directors and you’re more likely to get a great recommendation/reference. If you don’t like it, then you can shift your energy and focus into developing yourself as a candidate for a different career. What was your experience teaching at the high school level? What were some of the pros and cons to teaching high school versus college students? Generally speaking, high school students cannot be lectured to. If I had to put a number on it, I would say that during any lesson at the high school level, I wasn’t able do more than 20 minutes of lecturing in a 56-minute period. The student’s lose interest and begin looking at the time. Who can blame them, they’re in class from about 7:30 am until 2:30 pm. I don’t know how I got through that myself in high school. I can’t even sit through a training for that long. As a high school teacher, you need to excite the students, build in lots of hands-on activities to promote inquiry and interest in the subject. And while you’re doing that primarily for the students, you’re also considering that an administrator can walk in any minute to do an unannounced observation (I was observed 10 + times during my first year at Northern Valley), and they want to see the students involved and engaged. Preparing the lessons was really the difficult part. It was time consuming and when you’re teaching during the day, the lesson planning has to be completed either on the weekend or at night. The best part of teaching at a high school is the students. I know it sounds like a cliché, but it’s the connection you make with the students that makes it all worth it. As they transition into adulthood, they’re looking for advice and a mentor and I was happy to provide that. I still currently keep in touch with some of my high school students. I am at the edge of my seat waiting to find out if they got into their first-choice colleges. Establishing these relationships with college students is not always as easy. To start, class sizes, at least at Rutgers, ranges from 100-350. These large class sizes make it difficult to interact with each student and establish that relationship. To be honest, by the end of the semester, I typically know the names of only about 20 students, and they’re usually the ones who come frequently to office hours and stay after class to ask questions. Additionally, you’re only seeing the college student at most twice a week, whereas in high school, you’re seeing the students nearly every day for the entire school year.  There is certainly a lot more time to interact and become invested. When I think about the amount of time I spent preparing a high school lesson compared to a college lesson, I would say the time invested is about the same, but the preparation is different. At the college level, the focus is less on hands-on inquiry-based activities and more on preparing PowerPoints slides, problem sets, and meeting with students. I just so happen to really enjoy that part of it, so it doesn’t feel as exhausting. I find myself spending hours thinking about the best way to communicate the content (videos, analogies, formative assessment in a form of PowerPoint or drawing it out by hand) so by the end of preparing a lesson I feel like I’ve created a masterpiece. One that I can step back, look at and really appreciate. Do you think you will continue to teach college students in the future? Now that I’ve tried both, my preference is education at the college level. I personally enjoy the masterpiece building that goes into preparing an awesome experience for the students. I know it takes hours, but time really flies when you’re doing something fun. I am still in touch with the administration at the high school and I am still involved in their career awareness programs (Women in STEM, Biotechnology initiatives, consulting with biomedical technology staff), but I prefer the peripheral involvement. I would like to thank Dr. Soliman for providing her experiences and advice, they are very valuable for current graduate students. One thing she said that resonated with me was “by the end of preparing a lesson I feel like I’ve created a masterpiece.” I think that the goal for any PhD job seeker, and any job seeker for that matter, is to find meaningful work. That meaningful work can then be used to harvest purpose and happiness which is something very human. Dr. Soliman finds this fulfillment through teaching and this enables her to create her masterpiece. Discover the profession that will allow you to create your masterpiece on the iJOBS blog! This post was edited by Brianna Alexander and Aminat Saliu Musah