I'm Dr. Glimcher, dean of Weill Cornell Medical College, and today I am speaking with Dr. Barbara Hempstead. Barbara is a physician-scientist who just a few months ago was appointed associate dean for the newly-created Office of Faculty Development. When I arrived here at Weill Cornell, I felt it was very important to enhance the culture of mentorship and to formalize a process that was already occurring in hallways, labs and offices so that we can ensure faculty at all career levels can develop and succeed.
LAURIE H. GLIMCHER: It's great to be speaking with you, Barbara.
BARBARA HEMPSTEAD: Thank you for having me.
GLIMCHER: Most people think of mentoring as applying primarily to junior faculty. But, as you and I have discussed, mentoring mid-level and senior faculty seems to me to be just as important. Why do you think that is?
HEMPSTEAD: Over time, one can feel a little stagnant. Keeping senior faculty members engaged and highly productive is really important for faculty retention. Mentoring can take many forms. It can be helping a faculty member identify aspects of their job in which they excel. It can also be helping faculty members take advantage of existing and new programs for career enhancement, such as grant writing, manuscript writing. And it also will help faculty members understand what the criteria for career advancement and promotion are.
GLIMCHER: This is a big task. And I'm so delighted that you agreed to take it on. What are the kinds of programs you've planned to ensure that all our faculty receive the guidance and support that will allow them to have a productive, successful career?
HEMPSTEAD: One of the areas that we are focusing on is seminars in the promotions process. This is particularly important for new faculty and junior faculty to better understand what it takes to move up the academic ladder. We're going to have a series of seminars for faculty who are midway through their initial appointment,and I'm terming this 'Let's Move Up,' because it's an opportunity for them to meet informally with me and other senior faculty members so that they understand the activities that are important for promotion, such as how to speak at regional and national meetings and becoming engaged in clinical trials. For bench and translational researchers, I think intensive mentoring in grantsmanship and manuscript writing is extremely important.
The other part of this job that I really enjoy is matchmaking. Faculty are looking for ways to meet one another, particularly those who are clinicians looking for basic scientists and translational scientists with disease specific interests. One of the ways I'd like to do this is helping to build multi-disciplinary teams. Kathy Hajjar, the departmental chair in Cell Biology, suggested the name 'Affinity Groups.'
GLIMCHER: Well, they sound really terrific. I understand that you have a website that's due to launch. What do you hope to achieve with this and when will it go live?
HEMPSTEAD: It will go live at the end of this month (Editor's note: The website, www.weill.cornell.edu/faculty development, is expected to go live in late-August), and I think it will play a very important role. It will delineate the expectations of promotion and tenure. This is an area that can be cryptic to our most junior faculty. It will also link the many services that exist at our institution, such as activities in the Office of Faculty Diversity, seminars on life-work balance and skills in time-management and negotiation, for example. The website will also help the faculty understand the wealth of activities that are ongoing at the college but have been somewhat difficult to find on the many different websites.
GLIMCHER: Can you tell us how mentoring has affected your own career?
HEMPSTEAD: I have been extraordinarily fortunate to have strong mentors at virtually every step of my career, and they've all done something a little bit different. As a Ph.D. student, I had an amazing group of scientists who mentored me, several of whom were in the National Academy of Sciences and with whom I still touch base from time to time. I've also had superb mentors here at Weill Cornell. As a post-doctoral fellow, I decided to switch field from immunology to neuroscience.
GLIMCHER: Oh dear. [Hempstead laughs] As an immunologist, I just don't know about that. [Glimcher laughs]
HEMPSTEAD: Well it took a superb mentor who helped me make that transition. Even though he is at another institution in Manhattan, we have met weekly for the last 17 years.
GLIMCHER: You're a mentor and oncologist, and you're a very accomplished scientist. What is the focus of your lab?
HEMPSTEAD: My lab has focused on the role of growth factors that are called neurotrophins and defining how these growth factors affect cells. These cells can be as diverse as neurons in the central nervous system or even vascular cells.
When I was a postdoc with Moses Chao, we helped to identify these signaling receptors or nerve growth factor and they helped us define how these growth factors affected neural survival, development and synaptic plasticity. These are actions that are really important in learning and memory. About 10 years ago, my lab looked with fresh eyes at this class of growth factors because we and others in the field realized they could promote not only survival, but could also kill neurons. And this seemed to be kind of perplexing. It wasn't until we went back and looked at experiments we had done and experiments others had done that we realized there was a longer form of these growth factors called pro-neurotrophins. This was really unexpected because when we applied these (pro-neurotrophins) to cells, they indeed killed. One of the areas that is exciting that these types of observations, while unexpected, allow us to better understand how nature encodes in a very simple molecule thse phenotype. We have been studying neurotrophins and pro-neurotrophins for the last 10 years and finding that they mediate deleterious effects of a large range of responses, such as in brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, etc. So my lab is very much moving in a translational manner to come up with a better understanding of when these growth factors act, how they act and how we can potentially impair their actions to promote recovery after injury.
GLIMCHER: How did you decide to pursue science and medicine as a career?
HEMPSTEAD: My dad was a physicist and he worked at Bell Labs. He was actually a part of the team that invented Picturephone back in the 1960s.
GLIMCHER: Really?
HEMPSTEAD: So I think if he were alive today, he would be amazed at how we instant chat, tweet, Skype, the whole nine yards.
I was the odd child out because I have two brothers who were both interested in math and engineering, and I was the kid who wanted to do biologic experiments. My dad was always the kind of individual that allowed me ask 'what if' questions. When I was in high school, I discovered biology. And I went to Tufts University and did summer projects at their medical school labs. It was what really got me started in science.
I went to Washington University in its combined degree program. It was an amazing experience. We were a small group of individuals and we had unlimited access to any lab in the university. That's where I met my husband, who was also in the M.D.-Ph.D. program, and he's been really an amazing partner and a mentor as well.
GLIMCHER: I've always felt part of being a mentor is helping young faculty to understand how you keep a work-life balance. It's very challenging, especially for women. I have three children and I know from my own experience how difficult it can be to maintain a career and a family What do you think is the secret to being able to pursue your career with passion and still have plenty of room for your kids?
HEMPSTEAD: People frequently ask me, 'How did you do it?' And I think in large part this is a typical question because it was unusual in the '70s to be a woman and be in an M.D.-PhD. program. My usual answer is, 'Well, try not to hold yourself back from doing anything.' One of the things that has given me the most pleasure and made the most difference in my life is having two kids, because they have enriched my life unbelievably and I'm so glad that I didn't say, 'Oh, maybe I should just focus on one thing.' I was able to take risks. I think being an oncologist brought that home to me because you understand the very transient nature of life. You learn from every patient that you've ever treated and much of what you learn is how to gain pleasure from every aspect of your life.
GLIMCHER: I would second that as heartily as I can, and I'm not an oncologist.
HEMPSTEAD: Some of the things that are very interesting [are] that your kids become as excited about your career and your science as you do. We had many a long drive with my kids in the back of the car learning until they were ready to groan about pro-neurotrophins. [Glimcher and Hempstead laugh] I'm as proud of being a mom as of anything else.
GLIMCHER: When my younger son was 13, he traveled with me to Chicago. I was getting an award from the American Society of Clinical Investigation. When I came off the stage, he said to me, 'Mom, I'm really confused. Are you the mom who's this big scientist, or are you the mom who snuggles the dog and me?' [Glimcher and Hempstead laugh] I said to him, 'I'm both.'
HEMPSTEAD: Yeah. I think that's the most important part, is finding the balance.
GLIMCHER: Well, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me, Barbara. I'm confident that with your leadership, we can enrich the culture of mentorship here at Weill Cornell and help all our faculty here succeed.
HEMPSTEAD: Thank you for this opportunity.