Discussing sabbaticals with Dr. Amber Genau, an associate professor of materials science and engineering within the University of Alabama at Birmingham

Overview: This post is one of 23 interviews with scholars about their research process and career.  My discussion with Dr. Amber Genau focused on what she learned by taking a sabbatical and advice for other faculty who are interested in embarking on one.

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Dr. Genau recently completed her first sabbatical in Germany (Spring 2019).  Most academics can apply for sabbatical leave every seven years. This break from teaching obligations is meant to allow the faculty member to learn new techniques, expand a research program, or finish a book manuscript or set of articles they’ve been too busy to complete. Most faculty are funded by their institution for nine months (fall and spring) and they typically have the choice between a one semester (fully funded) or two semester fall/spring (partially funded) sabbatical.  The interview began with soliciting Dr. Genau’s thoughts on being a faculty member and pathway into her faculty position, as I believe that every unique path is of interest. However, I specifically sought to speak to Dr. Genau to get her perceptions on the mechanics of taking sabbatical and the benefits of this experience. I hope this information will be useful to other associate professors taking their first sabbatical or any other faculty hoping to get the most of a secondary sabbatical. 

About Dr. Genau:  After finishing her PhD at Northwestern University, she spent two years as a guest scientist at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Cologne, Germany, working in the Institute for Material Physics in Space. In 2010, she joined the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), where she is now a tenured associate professor. Since then, her group has produced research that has helped elucidate the solidification behavior (and microstructure) of alloys. Their work has been supported through many awards including the NSF CAREER award (2016). You can find her most recent publications on Google Scholar.

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You chose the tenure track rather than pursuing a position within a national laboratory or industrial facility after completing your PhD in materials science. Why?

I decided to get my PhD and then apply for a faculty position because I was really drawn to the idea of teaching and mentoring college students.  These students are going through a very formative experience, growing in terms of both their technical fields and personal growth.  As a faculty member you are often assigned to teach students at several points in their curriculum and can watch this growth in real time.  One of my favorite parts of my job has been watching students mature and gain confidence in themselves as engineers between the time that I meet them as sophomores in our intro to materials class and when they graduate several years later.  As a faculty member, I also enjoy continuously improving my pedagogical skills to help students better master the core concepts presented each term.  

What has been the most unexpected aspect of being a faculty member?

I am not sure that this is unexpected, but its impact on me was larger than expected.  When students cannot see the utility in the course material, I feel like I need to both help them learn the objectives for the course and “sell” them on the importance of the material. I feel it more often when I teach courses to those outside my discipline in introductory courses (such as a first- or second- year course). The flip side of this is that teaching students majoring in materials was always a thrill. I think materials science is fun and getting to engage/challenge students to really think about why things occur leads to great discussions.  Another surprise is that I enjoy helping students develop their non-technical skills such as writing.  In my classes, I really want students to walk away with core knowledge and the ability to convey that to others through clearly written abstracts, etc.  

What has made you “feel” like a researcher at the different stages of your career progression (undergraduate to associate professor)? Why?

During my senior year, I enrolled in a BS/MS program. That gave me the ability to start work on graduate-level research (in my case, characterizing atomized Al-Si powder) while still finishing my undergraduate classes. About a year into my research work, I had my first research “Eureka” moment.  I was characterizing some samples with a scanning electron microscope and while mulling over the results I realized that I had been making a fundamental mistake in phase identification. At that moment, everything I thought I knew about this system rearranged in my head and the pieces came together in a way that made so much more sense. That was the first time I felt like a “researcher.”

Today, I don’t really see myself as a researcher anymore – I supervise other people who do research, which is an entirely different job.

What do you see yourself as since you don’t identify as a researcher?

Now, I am an academic/a professor. On any given day, I transition between roles of instructor, manager, facilitator, trainer, or chief problem solver (for example, figuring out how to repair broken equipment in my lab or why an experiment didn’t work as expected).

I was a “researcher” as a graduate student and as post doc and even during those initial years as a faculty member. That identity for me, however, began to shrink as other academic identities strengthened. It was fun to step into that role again on sabbatical (but those questions are coming later).

Speaking of that, why did you decide to do a sabbatical in Germany? With so many options, why did you choose to return to Germany?

I considered a number of different options and talked to a variety of people before deciding on Germany.  In the end, it was a place that I both knew I could do good work and a place I wanted to spend time. I really enjoyed my colleagues and the German culture when I worked there as a postdoc in 2008-2010 and had always wanted to go back for a longer period.  I had several ongoing collaborations with German researchers that I thought could be strengthened by a longer visit. I also bring UAB students to Germany on faculty-led study abroad trips, where we visit universities, labs and companies across the country, so I hoped to build out the connections I make on this trip as well.

What were your responsibilities when you were on sabbatical?

Because so much communication is digital these days, it was hard to completely break away from my responsibilities at UAB even though I wasn’t physically there.  Except for not having to teach, my job didn’t really change much while I was on sabbatical. I still had students progressing in their research, proposals to write, professional society commitments and a few administrative responsibilities that I didn’t know how to offload.  I now try to tell others preparing for sabbaticals to put as much of that on ice as possible until after they return.  Faculty should try to disconnect from nonurgent responsibilities at their home institution so that they can be fully present in their sabbatical experience. 

How did you know it was time to apply for a sabbatical? What prompted you?

I knew theoretically that sabbaticals existed.  However, my department did not have a tradition of faculty taking their sabbaticals, so it was not on my radar.  In the 12 years I’ve been here, I’m still the only one in MSE who has taken one. 

In 2018, my department held a mock review for an accreditation review by the nonprofit ABET.  This is a practice session for an engineering department who is getting ready to submit for accreditation from the nonprofit ABET who reviews programs offering bachelor’s degrees in applied and natural science, computing, engineering, and engineering technology.  Our external reviewer, Chet Van Tyne from Colorado School of Mines, asked me if I was thinking about sabbatical.  He had taken the time to review my CV and knew I was eligible. At the time, I had been at UAB almost seven years and just earned tenure. After that meeting, I went back to my office and searched the UAB electronic faculty handbook. Sure enough, our handbook laid out the requirements Chet alluded to and sabbatical was something I could apply for. At that point, I started thinking and planning.  To this day, I still say, “God bless Chet.”  Without him, it would not have happened.

How did you determine your priorities or goals for your sabbatical?

Initially, I thought only about the research aspect of the sabbatical. I took some time to decide where wanted to go and outlined a plan before setting up a meeting with my department chair.  I remember enthusiastically explaining how great a sabbatical would be for my research productivity.  I rattled off all the amazing equipment I would have access to when I visited another laboratory. At that point, my chair stopped me.  He reminded me that the word “sabbatical” comes from the Biblical idea of sabbath – of rest. He made the point that if I just wanted to go somewhere and use microscopes not available on the UAB campus, I could do that during the summer without being on sabbatical. He challenged me to reconsider my plans based on those thoughts and to really develop a plan that would make my sabbatical time special. But we both knew that sabbatical activities still must be relevant to a person’s development as a faculty member.  My chair suggested, tongue-in-cheek, that perhaps I could climb a mountain and read research papers at the top.  The balance I struck was that I decided to spend the first month of my sabbatical taking an intensive language course. I had always wished my German were better and given my research and educational connections to the country, setting aside time to improve my language skills seemed like an exciting and appropriate use of sabbatical, since I would be able to collaborate more closely with colleagues in the country.

How early did you need to apply? What was your application process like?

It was September of 2017 when I first got the idea of taking a sabbatical. I started talking to my chair about it the following spring and submitted the official paperwork in summer for 2018. I was then actually on sabbatical the first six months of 2019. UAB requires sabbatical applications to be submitted 6-12 months in advance. There is a short and straightforward form to fill out detailing when the sabbatical will be, how it is being funded, and how your campus responsibilities (teaching, research, admin, etc.) will be handled while you are away. I also had to submit a plan of activities for the sabbatical period, which ended up being about a page long. And I had to sign a document committing to return to my university for at least a year after the end of the sabbatical and promising that I would submit a “concise report of activities” upon my return. All of that had to be approved by my chair, my dean, the provost, and the president before the leave was officially approved.

Sabbatical leave can range between 6 months to a year. Why did you opt for a shorter sabbatical versus a longer one?

The arrangement at many universities seems to be a choice between six months at full pay or twelve months at half pay.  I opted for six months for a variety of reasons, one of which was just that leaving for a full year seemed significantly more complicated to organize.  In addition, I would have felt bad leaving my graduate students (and my husband, whose job kept him in Birmingham) for any longer. While we touched base virtually, it was not the same as being in person.  It was also financially easier to go for only six months because UAB paid my normal salary the whole time. There are opportunities for external sabbatical funding from organizations like Fulbright or the German Academic Exchange (DAAD), but they must be applied significantly in advance and I wasn’t organized enough to manage that.

How did you keep your research group at UAB “moving” while you were abroad?

This was hard.

I exchanged a lot of emails with my graduate students during my sabbatical. I also went back to UAB in the middle of the six-month period for a couple weeks of in-person meetings. If I had to do it over, I would have instituted regular Zoom meetings with my group from the beginning.  While the technology of course existed, I somehow did not consider it in those pre-COVID times.

What advice do you have when selecting a host (researcher and/or institution) for your sabbatical?

Important considerations when choosing where to sabbatical include identifying what you will be doing, who you will be working with, and the physical location of the host institution. I knew I wanted to work with someone in my field who I could learn from and hopefully build or grow an ongoing collaboration with. I made a list of possible places and talked to several people, many of whom I knew through my involvement in professional societies like the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS).

In the end, I decided to go to Access e.V., an independent research lab associated with RWTH Aachen University, and work with Dr. Ulrike Hecht. The group she is part of is one of the best in the world at solidification science and always has several different cutting-edge projects going on that combine experimental, modeling, and simulation aspects. From my past interactions with her, I knew she was not only an exceptional scientist, but also a good mentor and a very kind person.

So how was your sabbatical? Did you meet the goals you set for it?

It was fantastic, both personally and professionally.

First of all, I got to get back into a laboratory and feel like a researcher again. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy sitting at a microscope and analyzing my own data. I processed and imaged samples from home for my students, using equipment that we don’t normally have access to. I started a new project related to what my hosts at Access e.V were working on and got some great preliminary data for new proposals in a highly fundable area. I also was able to attend a couple European technical conferences, and I was then asked to become part of the scientific advisory committee for one of them. One unexpected bonus turned out to be a connection I made with an RWTH PhD candidate, who came and worked with me at UAB the following year.

Taking the language course was a wonderful break from “real life.” It was really challenging to be on the other side of the classroom and gave me new empathy for my students. I’d forgotten how hard it is to sit and pay attention to a long lecture and how exhausting it is to learn something completely new. The class also made me conversational in German, which was a longtime goal.

Finally, just being in Germany was lovely. I got to travel, to enjoy the food and culture, and to spend time with old friends and make some new ones. Being away from home and my daily routine provided a good chance to reflect on my life and career: what was going well and what wasn’t, what I wanted from the future.

Any advice on the homefront (getting a temporary apartment, finances, etc.)?

An acquaintance at RWTH pointed me towards some websites used by RWTH students to find apartments, which is how I found a sublet.

That same person also showed me the German equivalent of Craigslist, which I used to buy a bike that I rode to work every day (and then used to resell it when I left). Like many large universities, RWTH is used to playing host—they have an office dedicated to helping visiting researchers (and their families) that I wish I had known about and gotten connected to sooner. The institute secretary was also a wonderful source of help and advice.

So, your department chair really emphasized the idea of rest to you. Were you able to bring that concept home to UAB?

That’s a great question. I’m not sure. I definitely have taken more time to rest the last couple years, although often with a guilty conscience. As a faculty member, there are always so many things that can/should/must be done!  I am trying to be better at saying no to some things so that I have the time and energy to say yes to others.  I have some new things coming down the pipeline in the next year, so we’ll see how that goes and if I still manage to find time to rest. 

Interview with Dr. Jennifer Carter, the founder of the Mesoscale Science Lab at Case Western Reserve

 

Overview: This post is part of series of interviews with 23 scholars about their research process and path that will be conducted until the end of 2023. 

Dr. Jennifer Carter founded the Mesoscale Science Lab at Case Western Reserve in 2013 and is now a tenured associate professor and director of the Case School of Engineering Swagelok Center for Surface Analysis of Materials.  Her research involves interface-rich materials and those results have helped her earn both an NSF CAREER award and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. You can explore her publications on Google Scholar.  

We have known each other through our involvement with the Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society (TMS) and I am appreciative that she made the time to participate in this blog.  I emailed her a list of questions that I wanted to discuss, she emailed back some initial responses and then we met virtually to discuss further.  I summarized her thoughts, and our editor Kate Epstein did light editing for clarity.

What stood out to me in the interview was Dr. Carter’s strong identity as an academic rather than a researcher.  Academics focus on knowledge development (research) but also spend a significant amount of their time developing human capital.  As we chatted, it became clear how much of her time as a faculty member is focused on the training of early career scientists (undergraduates, graduate students, etc.).  If this surprises you, you should read the article “If you love research, academia may not be for you.”  In it, David Mathews sorted through data from the Rathenau Institute on faculty in the Netherlands and showed that professors spent just 17% of their time on their own research with the rest of their time teaching, research supervision, and “management and organizational tasks” taking up larger percentages.  

Photo by Chinnu Indrakumar on Unsplash

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Q: What is your favorite part of the research process currently? 

Dr. Carter: I adore being the first to make an unexpected connection. For example, coastlines and dendrites look alike if you get rid of the scalebars. If we look at approaches from other fields, we sometimes stumble upon elegant solutions for emergent questions in our discipline.  

Q: What made you “feel” like a researcher at the different stages of education?

Dr. Carter:  At different stages of my career, it has taken different contributions to make me feel like a researcher.   

As a second-year undergraduate, I felt like a researcher as I was polishing samples and setting up experiments.

As a second-year graduate student, I felt like a researcher on the weekends when I was operating the scanning electron microscopy.  In that time spent collecting EBSD [electron backscatter diffraction] scans and simultaneously running the dual-beam FIB-SEM [focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy] to extract TEM [transmitted electron microscopy] foils, I felt excited to discover things no one else had ever seen. 

Now, as a faculty member, I feel most like a researcher at the beginning and end of a project.  As an academic, my time spent doing research is limited and most of the allocated research time is either spent mentoring others who get to do the hands-on work. Where I get to contribute now is in determining what research questions we as a team should focus on. That is, what challenges facing society need our attention and how our team could tackle an aspect of those challenges. 

Q: How do you explain your role as a “researcher” to family or friends?

Dr. Carter: I have always struggled conveying my role on research projects to friends because it depends on each specific project objective and the team assembled. As a faculty member, my technical contribution on research projects are typically aligned with those in mechanical engineering, materials engineering, physical metallurgy, experimental mechanics, microscopy, and data science. Often, I am stretching or pulling across discipline boundaries to bring to light new connections.

Though in reality, I see myself as an academic more than a researcher. When I reflect on the last eight years, my role most commonly is as an enabler for early career researchers, a translator between researchers as we explore science at the interfaces of disciplines, and a facilitator for the research process. While I did not expect this last role to be so prominent, I have found myself really asking the research team members to reimagine the biases that they bring with them and consider solutions that may lie outside of conventional norms. As researchers, it is important to ask ourselves if we as asking the right questions and considering all the solutions.  

I think when people outside of research and academia, they think “professors” work on a single area of focus or question for their entire careers. While this is applicable to some professors, I explain to my friends and family that my role as a “professor” means that I am a guide for early career researchers as they learn the research process and make discoveries across a wide array of topics.  I am passionate about the research process, rather than a specific research question, and enjoy this role.  

Q: Why did you decide to pursue a career that involved research? What was your motivation?

Dr. Carter:  I enjoy identifying meaningful research questions that when answered could have a large impact on society. I decided that I wanted to be an academic because I find joy in helping students find happiness and fulfillment. I can encourage engineering students to take appropriate technical risks and identify engineering solutions for challenges.  

Q: Where there any skills that you thought you would need but don’t as a researcher?

Dr. Carter: Honestly, I have been more surprised at the skills I didn’t think I would need but are important. The most surprising thing is the value of storytelling and the art of communication.

Q: What is your advice for an early-stage researcher (undergraduate or graduate student) who wants to be a lead researcher within their field?

 Dr. Carter:  I have three key pieces of advice. 

(1)   Learn how to clarify your role on a project and be critical about what you need to continue in the research process.  It can feel vulnerable to any researcher to voice that they are unclear of their role or the group’s expectations to the rest of the research team.  However, colleagues on a research project expect their peers to speak up for themselves, to self-regulate to meet the group deadlines, and produce the required results. 

(2)   Learn to sit uncomfortable with criticism. This is hard. It can feel personal. However, you will need to learn to move past your emotions and calmly listen to input.  

(3)   Be your own advocate. No one is going to look out for your well-being as well as you. Ask for any support you need. 

(4)   Clarify your motivation. Ask yourself, “Why am I excited to get out of bed in the morning?” and give it real thought. Don’t just answer this question with an idealized answer, but instead write an authentic response. Knowing your true motivation(s) will help you make better career decisions. 

(5)   Integrate reflection into your calendar. I reflect at the end of each month before planning the goals for the next month. This allows me to be more proactive rather than reactionary. During this reflection, I answer the following questions:

a.     What were my big wins this month?

b.     What worked well this month and what didn’t work? 

c.     What do I want to do more of next month and what do I want to do less of next month?

d.     What is on my mind and needs some attention?

e.     What things do I think I need help with and who can provide that help?

(6)   Cultivate a support group outside of your work colleagues. There are going to be challenging times and you will need to have support. However, this is something that your advisors or work colleagues may not be able to provide. If you need it—get a therapist!   

(7)   Make sure that your planned work week allows you time to think, talk with your colleagues, be healthy (mental health) and spend time on things that matter to you outside of work (for me that is my family). Watercooler conversations with colleagues have really been a benefit for my career by helping me to think about technical puzzles in new ways. We tend to jam so many meetings into our weeks, that we remove the opportunity for spontaneous chats with our colleagues. We should all have the space in our calendar to walk down the hall and chat. This is not (always) procrastination but an active effort of doing collaborative science.  

Q: There are so many *management tools* to help researchers improve their productivity or impact today. Can you highlight one management tool you think researchers should consider utilizing?

Dr. Carter: Hands down, a citation management system. I use Zotero.

Q: I keep hearing the suggestion to “align your research with your passions.”  Is this something that we should encourage researchers to do in all cases?

Dr. Carter:  I have seen this advice also and I am not sure it is the guidance I would give.  My “passions” have ebbed and flowed while my focus on the structure, properties, and processing of materials has been constant.  For example, I am passionate about helping students with mental health.  I can make an impact on student mental health without interweaving it into my materials research.   

I think a better idea is to align your research with your mission, the impact you want to manifest in the world. When I reflect on how I choose what research projects to pursue, I ask myself if the project will allow me to enable early career researchers at our institution (Case Western Reserve) to solve challenges related to energy or human health.  So, while I still apply for single investigator grants, I really want my portfolio to include projects where I can assemble larger groups of principle investigators. For example, I want to look at the collective needs for instrumentation in our region and then apply for a National Science Foundation Major Research Instrument grant.  Or can we engage in Research Experiences for Undergraduates to provide training opportunities that highlight that microscopy and computer vision are ubiquitous challenges in engineering solutions.  

Q: What journal article are you most proud of and why?

Dr. Carter:  I still get super excited whenever a journal article is published. After all the work that goes into doing quality research and writing, I am thrilled when editors accept the manuscript and still do a happy dance. At this stage as a faculty member, I don’t often take the lead on a paper.  It is normally one of my students who is the corresponding author and I think that they all do great work!  

So, I am going to change this question to include opinion pieces instead of articles.  I am really proud of one that I cowrote for JOM in 2019 with Laura Bruckman:  The Elephant in the Room: Where is the Empathy in Science?  There is a real need for our technical communities to both understand the impact of mental health challenges and to be inclusive of researchers who are impacted by those health concerns. A recent international study indicated that graduate students in STEM are six times more likely than the general population to experience clinical symptoms of anxiety and depression. That was so alarming that I grabbed Laura to write something that would present tools and techniques to other faculty on how they could support students while also enabling research advancements. Both can be and should be done synergistically. I really hope that publication helped others with mental health challenges in research to know that they are not alone.   

Q: You relatively recently earned tenure in 2020.  That process takes grit but comes with rewards. When did you first “feel” tenured? 

Dr. Carter:  My stress while on the tenure track eased when I received one of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and that letter still hangs on my office wall.  So, I did not “feel” different the day that I got my official letter.  

However, I did notice a change in my empowerment.  When I earned tenure, I was more likely to both voice my opinion and remain resolved when engaging in discussion. I have also been empowered to take on additional roles that impact my institution and not just my research group. For example, I was asked to lead our electron microscopy facility. I LOVE directing this center. Working with the center staff to sculpt its offerings so that its focus aligned with the mission of our institution strengthened my visionary leadership. I am proud of what the staff have done. This past year, they have helped 150 unique early career researchers to conduct materials characterization for 93 funded grants.  

On a personal level, my tenure coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic. We had lockdowns go into effect in March 2020 and my tenure letter arrived in May 2020. Like many other working professionals with children, I was challenged to balance my work obligations with the additional roles of a kindergarten “teacher,” interpreter of the often-conflicting recommendations by state and national organizations, “daycare” provider, etc., while also trying to work from home. Having tenure helped me approach this really difficult situation calmly. Looking at our responsibilities (work and home), I honestly could only dedicate 20 hours a week to my responsibilities as a faculty member and I strategically put new research projects on ice until society returned to its new normal after lockdowns. I felt relatively prepared for the pandemic compared to other faculty because during my tenure process, I take taken two maternity leaves. Those periods gave me the confidence that could put research projects “down” for a short period and then pick the work up again successfully.  It won’t be easy or pretty, but it was a choice I was allowed to make again because of the privilege of tenure.

Q: What skills are critical for researchers to thrive at an academic institution?

Dr. Carter: It is vital that your mission aligns with that of your academic institution.  It is impossible to thrive when your convictions or personal mission are misaligned or opposing with the institution provided the framework for. If, and when, that ever happens, I would encourage you to find another institution to work at.   

When you are in the right institution, you will still need to have a thick skin and a strong backbone. A thick skin is needed to function in an environment where you have a lot of input on your work from reviewers, administration, peers, students, etc. That can feel overwhelming. The strong backbone is to stick with your own internal research plan and not deviate in response to a reviewer or colleague without strongly thinking about the impact.  

For those joining us in academia, know that you cannot measure your success in the time scale of a single day. The seasons of success and failure can be much longer. Some days I feel like I am not doing well. However, these are balanced with days that I am thriving such as when we have nucleated a new synergistic collaboration or a new idea. 

Q: My spouse and I are both researchers with career goals.  Yet, we have found that there are seasons when each of us needs to invest more at work to obtain our goals. Do you have any recommendations for navigating careers that you could share with us?

 Dr. Carter: During your career, you may need to put a project or goal on “hold” because it isn’t the right season for it. You can only pick apples in the fall and harvest maple syrup in the spring. You can have all the things you value and want; you just can’t have them all at the same time. 

 For navigating the dual-career issue, communication is key. A simple communication trick we have learned is to use shared calendar events. For example, we send the other person a calendar event that says ‘Can I travel’ when we are considering a work trip.  If the other person accepts the invite, we immediately know that they can manage the homefront for those days. And honestly, there are times when this breaks down and you have to apologize, pick up the broken pieces of that day, choose to continue to communicate and try to make it work.

Q: Is there anything else you wish I had asked that you would like a reader to know?  

Dr. Carter:  I think many people have an idealized view of what academic research is. While tenure in some sense gives us the freedom to study what we want, funding (and funding agencies) dictates the focus of our research teams in engineering and science fields. A key part of a faculty’s role is helping to educate funding agencies on how our work is valuable to their needs.  

As we educate early career researchers, we need to have honest conversations with them about their expectations when entering saturated fields (fields where many researchers are already contributing and competing for a limited number of funding opportunities). Early career researchers, no matter how brilliant, will have a hard time winning the attention of program managers away from established groups with large research teams. Program managers are expected to show results and therefore can be risk-adverse. However, that also means that funding is not based on the proposal alone but instead social capital of the research group.  This is a complex issue fraught with emotions surrounding societal inequities, and I don’t have an answer. What I do know is that it is hard to change a system from the outside, and now that I have tenure, I have an obligation to continue to ask if the systems we have are still appropriate. 

Acknowledgements: I must acknowledge Kate Epstein of EpsteinWords who edited this post. She specializes in editing and coaching for academics, and she can be reached at kate at epsteinwords.com.