University of Kentucky's Dr. Carrie Shaffer

Mallory sits down with Dr. Carrie Shaffer, Assistant Professor in the Veterinary Science, Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics Departments at the University of Kentucky.  They discuss her passionate pursuit of science from a very early age, some of the unique characteristics and duties of land grant institutions like WVU and UK, understanding the culture of Appalachia and the power of women increasingly saying “no”.

What is Women in Science and Medicine Podcast?

The Women in Science and Medicine podcast features discussions with female scientists within West Virginia University and other institutions. In this series, we’ll share the achievements and insights from some of the country’s top female scientists and learn from their experiences to understand how they came to be passionate about science and overcame any obstacles in their paths. This podcast is offered by West Virginia University’s Office of Research and Graduate Education.

 Welcome to West Virginia University's Women in Science and Medicine podcast, brought to you by the Health Sciences Center's Office of Research and Graduate Education. We talk to women with careers in these fields, gaining their insight into what it's like operating in roles that are still mostly dominated by men.

I'm your host, Mallory Weaver, and today my guest is Dr. Carrie Shaffer, Assistant Professor in the Veterinary Science, Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics departments at the University of Kentucky. She is also an associate member of their Markey Cancer Center in Molecular and Cellular Oncology.

Welcome, Dr. Shaffer. I appreciate you joining the show today. Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me. And before we get into our questions, I just want to briefly directly address our listeners and give a huge thank you for sharing so broadly because the podcast is now being enjoyed in over 10 countries worldwide.

To some degree. So that's amazing. Please continue to share, rate, and review. So Dr. Shaffer, can you first just briefly familiarize our listeners with your educational journey and what led you to your role today? Yeah. So I grew up in Eastern Kentucky. And my family has been in Appalachia for probably seven or eight generations at least.

Oh wow. Yeah. So I wanted to stay close to home when I went to college. I went to the University of Kentucky. Which is only about a hundred miles away from my hometown. And while I was at UK, I... Got a degree, a bachelor's of science degree in agricultural biotechnology, and then I started working in a lab here on campus my freshman year, and I was actually in a plant science department, and so I was learning how to do some plant cell culture and some basic lab techniques, but I ended up staying in that lab for a couple of years.

And then I also had an interest in bioterrorism research due to the fact that September 11th happened, my junior year of high school. And so I actually got two competitive research internships with the federal Bureau of Investigations. I worked in the crime lab in Quantico, Virginia for a couple of summers and then continued research on campus.

at UK during the school year. And so I moved to the College of Pharmacy for my junior and senior year. Research on campus. And then I immediately went to graduate school after graduating from UK and I went to Vanderbilt University, where I did a PhD in microbiology and immunology. And by that point, I was kind of tired of academia.

So I took a small break for a year and moved back to the Washington, D. C. area and I worked for a startup company that dealt with a lot of government contracts. And so I worked there for about a year, but my love for bench science drew me back. And so we talked about that before we started. So I decided to come back to academia and I completed two postdoctoral fellowships, one at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

And then I went to the California Institute of Technology, which is more commonly called Caltech. And then from Caltech I Was recruited to the University of Kentucky to start my independent research program in 2017. And so I've been here about five, four years. I just entered my sixth year as a professor.

Wow. I'm just curious, and this wasn't in our scripted questions, but I'm just curious, did you, have you taken your Clifton strengths, your Gallup Clifton strengths assessment? Have you ever done that? Because I would guarantee that either Lerner or achiever and your top five, no. You work hard. You do a lot

Yeah, I have a lot of broad interests and that is apparent in my research program here at UK as well. So we have a very cross disciplinary research program, and I want to study anything that I think is interesting. And so it may not be related at all, but we have a small project. Yes. So, yeah, if you get a chance to do those contact me and let me know if learners in your top five, I'd be so interested.

It's in my fun facts. Yeah. So how early on and by what inspired you to pursue science? And how, like, how old were you? I wanted to be a scientist my entire life. Oh, yeah. Since I was four or five years old. I wanted to be an astronaut or an astrophysicist for a long time. Or an archaeologist, because I loved studying ancient cultures and things like that.

But I always wanted to be a scientist. I've never deviated from that. So... Even when I was really young, that's what I wanted to do. I, I thought about going to medical school for a while. But basic science is what really interested me. And so I decided to pursue just hardcore basic science rather than translational.

Or a joint MD PhD program. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. That, that sort of focus in my experience, at least with speaking with women on this show and my own experiences, that's kind of rare. It seems there it's come up on this show in the past that sort of this. There's this culture in K through 12 of not really identifying girls as being particularly good at science or math and it never seems to be spoken out loud.

At least it wasn't in my experience, but I never really saw teachers really pushing girls into math and science. And so for you to just have that and not and just single focus Lee go for it is I think that's a great experience. There were a couple of things that I think helped along with the first is my is that my dad is a scientist as well.

So he is a cow. Yeah. So he is a very hardcore basic scientist. And my mom also is was an infection control nurse. Oh, great. Yeah, both of them have a science background. And then I also had. Maybe a different educational experience. I went, so I went to public school my entire career until I went to graduate school, but K through 12 was, I went to public schools and I had, I was very fortunate because I had really, really strong science teachers that pushed especially girls to be.

Good at science. That's lovely. So I was never scared of math. I was never scared of physics or chemistry or anything like that. I love it. But I had science teachers as early as 4th, 4th or 5th grade. And then in high school as well and middle school that were very, very good and very supportive. And I think that that helped, but.

I, there was no, no one could ever deter me. I wanted to be a scientist my entire life. So that's been very self driven. That's fantastic. I love it. So we noted you were born and raised in Appalachia. The health disparities of the region compared to the rest of the country are certainly well documented.

Two questions. How important was you to return to the area after your postdoc experience and what do you believe are the most effective strategies, do you think, for improving health care outcomes in the rural areas of our region? Yeah, so I think that I'm very typical from Appalachia. Everyone wants to always come home.

It's a very cultural motivation. I wanted to come home. So I was gone from the Commonwealth of Kentucky for about 10 years between grad school postdocs. And I wanted to come home and it was just. Maybe the stars align. There's a perfect opportunity for me to come back to my alma mater at UK to become a professor.

And actually, I graduated from the College of Agriculture as an undergrad and now I'm a professor in the College of Agriculture here at Kentucky, but. I really wanted to come home. I wanted to be close to my family. So that's really what motivated me to come to Kentucky specifically. And as far as improving health care outcomes in rural areas, I think that the best thing we could do is educate the community.

Sure. But to do that, you need people who speak the language. and understand the culture. So it takes someone coming back home after they've trained, for example, maybe they went to med school somewhere, but then come back to the Appalachian region to practice medicine. Because you, You have an understanding of the culture that other people who are not from here can never understand because they never lived it.

And so it helps, I think, to have local role models. So people that that do come back home to provide these. To provide care and to try to help the community where they're from, I think is what's really needed. That is a really interesting point that you bring up. And it reminds me our office we always try to take part in WVU's diversity week.

And this September, we are hosting, I'm leading an event titled art and music or art, yeah, art and music around the world. And when we were. Thinking through the art piece one of our DEI experts commented on, don't forget Appalachian music. And it was it was a reminder that that sort of it is its own culture.

And I think you're absolutely right to speak to people from a place that they understand is really important when you're trying to get especially really important information out to that group for sure. When I invited you to the show, we, of course, observed that both WVU and, university of Kentucky are land grant universities.

For those that are unfamiliar, land grant institutions were created by the Morrill Act of 1862 so that citizens could have equal access to higher education with a focus on farming and mechanical skills. Ian Maugh, the VP of the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities, makes an argument that all institutions, if they want to thrive and serve neither the world, must solidly embrace interdisciplinary research.

He writes of single disciplinary silos, quote, Such entities are not well suited to address the problems of this century, which more often than not will require systemic approaches with expertise drawn from many quarters, while recognizing that an administrative structure is important and needed to facilitate the work of faculty, new models that are structured around sets of problems rather than disciplines would likely have nimbler.

So how do you personally practice interdisciplinary science and what conscious strategies do you employ to reach outside your areas of expertise to solve scientific problems? Yeah. So my primary appointment is in the college of agriculture here at UK. And so I'm kind of a very sideload example of someone who studies both human and animal path infectious.

Yeah. So I have, my research program basically spans both humans and animals, but also plants. And I think that really my training at very diverse institutions. And graduate school and postdoc has really kind of pushed me to be cross disciplinary because, for example, Vanderbilt my training there was very heavily human medicine focused, but then at Caltech, my training was pure basic science even getting into physics and physical applications.

application of the physics and how that can be used to answer questions and bacteriology, for example. And so here at UK, I've continued to do that. And so we have, we integrate a lot of different. Disciplines into our research program. We have very basic host pathogen interaction studies that are in vitro.

They're very traditional microbiology, very traditional techniques biochemistry, very established methods to you that we use to study particular aspects of, of bacteriology, but then we also integrate concepts from biomedical engineering. And so we are building a new program based on biotech.

biomedical engineering principles to try to develop new ex vivo models to study different infections. And then I had a meeting yesterday in the plant science building with a group who have discovered some really interesting things that are happening in plants, but they need help from a bacteriologist to kind of identify what's really going on.

And so I have collaborations. And then I also have just studied, or sorry, not studied, have just started a new research program with a professor in the Department of Biology at UK. And we're looking at how both human and microbial circadian rhythms interact to drive infection outcomes in patients that have comorbidities that are very common in Appalachia and in Kentucky.

Thank you. such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and advanced age. And so all of these things are being drawn together. And I never would have thought that I would be studying circadian rhythms, circadian biology, but this is now where the research is leading because UK.

Between different colleges. So it's kind of what we're doing. And I love being a land grant. I love being Here with students from all over the state and In the region. It's really fun to have undergrads come through the lab. Yeah, they're all homegrown. Kentucky is just like me. And so yeah, well, in that interdisciplinary component, it makes it makes it fun to when you talk about serving the needs of the state WVU is very much positioned that way here.

As far as then to taking that science and sort of really aiming to solve some of those health disparities that we were talking about earlier in the state and sort of being the resource for your state, there's a position of responsibility, but also pride there that I think is really unique and special to land grant institutions for sure.

I agree. Also, when I approached you up here on the show, I noted that you are a female principal investigator on an institutional co grid grant. Imagining our listeners are unfamiliar, can you tell us a little bit about what those are, their importance to the research institution and what it means to you to be a female PI of such an important program?

And honestly, I'd note too, if you don't mind. Fairly young, right? P. I. of a cobra, because you're telling me you were a junior in high school. Yeah. I was a junior in college when 9 11 happened, so. So I just, I just turned 38 and I've been here, this is my sixth year. Yeah. As a professor, so I might have been able to do it just a little bit faster, but.

I kind of took time in postdoc because I love doing postdoc so much, but yeah, so COBRI is a Center for Biomedical Research Excellence. That's what COBRI stands for. And this was a congressional mandate to establish a program for states that are not necessarily well funded by the NIH. And so this gives states like Kentucky and Montana and Idaho and Kansas an opportunity to compete with the larger research intensive states such as California, New York.

Right. To compete for funding to support research at Land grant universities as well. And the COBRI that I am a part of here at UK is a multidisciplinary center and it was founded here in the College of Pharmacy. And the focus of our COBRI is translational chemical biology. And so that's really the intersection of how chemistry can be used to study.

Disease mechanisms and then integrate that with pharmaceutical science so that we can try to address unmet clinical needs using a combination of chemistry and biology. And so my program. That STEM stems from the COBRA is focused on def developing small molecule chemical probes to study infection pathogenesis.

And that's been really fruitful and has support in my lab for three years. And I'm very grateful that I was a, I was asked to be a part of it by the PI in College of Pharmacy, but my Some of my postdoctoral research really fit in well with this particular cobra. Gotcha. There are four junior principal investigators.

I was one of the four. We also had another female PI. She was in the College of Engineering. And mechanical engineering, and then two junior professors, one in chemistry and arts and College of Arts and Sciences and one in College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. So we had a very diverse group of the junior faculty that were supported by Cogre and it has really helped expand that particular research area in my lab and I think that we're going to We've we have some really strong leads.

We think we're going to identify some very interesting pathways that are being affected by the particular bacterium that we study in my lab. That is great. That's great. And I was, I was going to say, talk about interdisciplinary by very nature, engineering, chemistry, ag and pharmacy all in one. Yeah. So yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. I want to pivot and talk COVID for a minute. I know. We're sick to death of it. Most of us are unmasked now and things have somewhat quote return to normal. But there are long lasting impacts that we see here. And engagement is 1 of them. So, you know, it's difficult to have any conversation around higher education without acknowledging.

You know that the way we learn and how we engage was impacted profoundly by the pandemic. Have you had discussions in the last year with faculty or students about engagement in the lab or maybe events at UK? I would say that post pandemic work life balance is much more important than it was before.

Yeah. And in my lab, I really emphasize with my trainees about taking care of mental health. I don't even before the pandemic, though, I didn't, I've never told my trainees, you need to be here from nine to five. Right. So I have kind of a different philosophy than some of the other professors about work hours.

I want people to take vacation, but I want people to work hard. So while they're here, they work hard, but then they can take vacation. They can take time off just to have more of a, A good work-life balance and to just take care of themselves. I don't want people in the lab all the time because then there's burnout, right?

And I, I want people to be happy. So I'd rather them just take time off if you need it to take care of what they need to take care of. So that's, that's kind of what I would say. The only difference is I would, I think that, I, as well, have, have tried to pivot more to having more of a work, trying to have more of a work life balance post COVID.

But it's, you know, it's difficult with hard deadlines, with funding and grant applications and things. But, you know, as much as we can, I want everyone to, to be happy. I think that, you know, a happy lab is a productive lab. And that's, you know, that's kind of where I, I'm trying to, to make my trainees realize that work is on everything.

Yeah. And what you've done is really identified a positive that came out of the pandemic, and there are a few, and I think that is one of them. I think, too, you mentioned mental health, and I think In general, we take more of a notice of mental health post pandemic and in particular for our graduate students.

We've definitely seen that here. Really just trying to be mindful of where our students headspace is. Yeah. Yeah. Staying with COVID, a February 2022 article titled, Pandemic Related Barriers to the Success of Women in Research, a Framework for Action, in the journal Nature, stated, quote, Women in academia have fallen 19 pandemic and risk dropping out of the research workforce altogether.

unless urgent action is taken by institutes and funders. End quote. Have you yourself witnessed female colleagues that have struggled during the pandemic to balance the pressures the disease put on everyday life and their scientific careers? Yes. And I would say it's not necessarily restricted to women that have children because I think that in academia, women have additional or maybe informal roles that male counterparts do not have.

And those are unrecognized by tenure and promotion committees, for example, or your performance review cycles that are not really recognized roles that Women take on we tend to have way more committee assignments than men, way more support of graduate students, meaning not necessarily trainees in our lab, but students coming to us for help about some other non science related.

Issue that they don't want to talk to their professor about, for example but I think that, yeah, I'm not sure how to how to frame it really, but there are other things that that have. You know, in addition to, to taking care of children during COVID lockdowns and having to essentially homeschool children and so do their own, their own work and all the management that you do of your household and everything else on top of that.

So I, you know, COVID, I think disproportionately impacted women, but women in general and not necessarily people with children, but yes, there are. I feel like we actually got more work during COVID than we would have had if there was not COVID. Oh, absolutely. I don't know how that happens. Yeah. I don't know how we have more meetings or more whatever we have to do when there's, when you're not allowed on campus.

I don't understand. I never understood how that happened, but it did. It did. It did here in our office as well. I will just note, and I'll add to what you said and just say, in my experience, it's not. Simply as host of this show, but also in other forums, talking with other women around work related issues.

You know, I think women in general, of course, generally speaking, we have a hard time saying no, compared to our male counterparts. Or you feel pressured. You have, I feel pressured to say yes. I started saying no. I say no to almost everything now because I just can't, I don't have bandwidth. I can't do it.

Absolutely. But there is pressure. You are pressured to say yes, where I think that sometimes male professors are not pressured to say yes, they just say no and just go on. Yeah. But that's not necessarily true. Yeah, and I think the more we talk about it too, I think it gets a little bit better because when you talk to women like yourself, who are starting to recognize that trend in their behavior and then start putting a stop to it.

That empowers and I think emboldens other women to do the same thing, for sure. I am actually going to go to, I think that really speaks to what I was going to ask you last. And that was around what we had earlier discussed off the call in regards to time for creative thought. I had let you know that our office we had pulled, we had done a survey.

First our faculty, and later on we did our, we did our students, our graduate students, and we found that that is a trending a trending theme for both groups, is lack of time for creative thought. And in my view, and in our office's view, that's sort of necessary for science. And you had confessed that you struggle with that as well.

What do you, what do you think some strategies to get around that may be? I think that we have to have protected time for research and scholarly activities. I have a very small teaching load and a small teaching percent effort. So I'm very lucky, but I can't even imagine how my colleagues who teach 20, 30 percent of their time also have time to think about new pursuits or just, Really critically about their own current research projects, but the admin responsibilities that we have gotten out of control.

In my opinion, we need more staff more support staff that can help take some of this administrative burden. We're even just funding to create new jobs in the lab that could help. For example, if I had a lab manager. More than half of my admin would be taken away, but I don't have the funding to hire a lab manager.

Yeah. So for a department or a college to, to create more jobs, I mean, I don't, it would be very helpful for especially young professors, because again, we have more burden than the senior professors. With teaching and responsibilities. So just having, having administrative help would free up time for scientific thought.

But yeah, just having kind of a change of mentality, I think, is, is what would be required that 85 per, you know, for me, I have 85% research effort, but Me trying to juggle all the different projects in the lab and make sure that my trainees are all taken care of. Equally than one trainee is not getting more attention than the other trainees, but then reducing my admin responsibilities, reducing the amount of committees that we're on.

I mean, there's a lot that can be done, but I think one of the biggest things that would be helpful is hiring, you know, having the ability to hire. Support staff, even if it's research support staff, that could also be a lab manager, for example, to, to take care of that huge chunk of responsibility of, of making sure the budgets are, are good if we're, you know, all the ordering responsibilities for the supplies and the just the day to day management of the lab, that would be very helpful.

Sure. Yeah, you know, 1 of the I want to highlight 1 of the things that we've done out of our office that I think has been helpful. We because of that, you know, you get, you get the. The results from your survey back, you want to do something about them, right? So that way, they had this overwhelming response of lack for creative thought.

And so we implemented a 1st Fridays. Initiative and what that means is on the 1st, Friday of every month. No one in our office or our office will not schedule any events, any meetings. Anything it's really encouraged through our office and even down to the basic science chairs, try to leave that 1st, Friday as protected time.

As you were talking just for our faculty and students to sort of have just a little bit of a, it's very hard. You know, as you said to really overhaul it overnight, but just a small initiative that we took on to hopefully address that to some degree for some folks. It's been well received. Yeah, that's, I mean, that sounds, I would love to have a Friday with nothing scheduled.

So I want to talk mentorship for a minute. How do you think mentorship impacts career development, particularly for women in science and healthcare? I think that it's important to have role models. I've PIs. So it's just, I think styles are very different. Obviously every lab has a different personality or different mentorship style. Every PI has a different, different one. But I think that I've kind of taken parts of my graduate student advisor, my postdoc advisor, and kind of melded them all together. But I kind of always try to lead by example and I try to I'm very protective of my trainees.

And so if there's ever an issue, I have a very loyal lab. So I have you know, if there's ever an issue, it's, you know, they instantly tell me about it and then it's dealt with. So there's nothing that's that goes, that's allowed to go on beyond repair. But I think that it's important. Since I am young, I'm mistaken for a student all the time.

People think I'm a student. And it's, but it's good that I think that my trainees can see that I'm in the lab with them. I am working in the lab with them sometimes, not all the time, but there are stretches of time when I'm in the lab. And I think that that's important. So they understand that I'm not just sitting in my office.

And or teaching a course, but also, you know, this is what I went through when I was going through training and I tried to tell them stories about when I was in grad school and yeah, and things like that. So I think it's, you know, so they, so that you don't always see professors as just being up on a pedestal.

Sure. I always make mistakes in the lab. Like I can, I always tell them like, Oh, I'm not, you know. Whenever I make a mistake, like, they see me making mistakes. It's okay. Making mistakes is okay. It's just you have to keep, you know, keep pushing and, and if you do make a mistake, it's all right. Just start over.

Like, it's not a big deal. We can talk, we can talk through it. We can work together to get, you know, to, to figure out what went wrong. But I also you know, I have, my accent is not as thick as it used to be. I still have my accent and I, I'm very proud of having my accent. And I think that it's, you know, good to see someone that's not maybe what someone would think of as a scientist, necessarily what they would envision and what a scientist looks like.

to be in the lab or how a scientist is supposed to sound. I think that it's good to see someone from, from Appalachia or from a small town become a professor and, and have that kind of You know, just to show that you can do whatever you want to do. Yeah, it's funny. You said making mistakes in the lab.

I mean, to me, and again, no scientists here, but to me, it's a series of mistakes, right? The pathway to a hypothesis and a conclusion is not linear. Exactly. Right. And I think two other things that you said really stood out to me. I think that open pathway of communication between mentor and mentee is really, really important, important.

You know, communication is my profession. And so that's, I do think that's really important. And then, you know, sort of how you were discussing how your leadership has evolved. It does. You know that that leadership also is a journey and I think a lot of times people forget that and you know, you take lessons along the way and grow just like anyone else.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I have one single question left for you today. What is the most important piece of advice you can think to give young girls or women if they're considering the pursuit of a career in science and or medicine? Well, two, two things. Number one is if you hear the word no, that doesn't mean stop.

Ah, I love it. And the second is to always pursue what you, what you are passionate about. Don't let other people tell you, oh, you need to be studying cancer biology or you need to be studying physics or whatever it is. You need to study and become obsessed, basically, about what you love because that's science is kind of an obsession when you get into it, and you think about it all the time, you dream about it at night, and It's what fuel your passion fuels you.

And that's what makes you a good scientist because you just don't ever want to give up. But really, if people tell, you know, if you don't get into graduate school, the first time you need to try again, you talk to people like talk to professors, your undergrad professors or someone. Maybe your research mentor, if you did some undergraduate research, because they will help you and they can tell you why you didn't get in and they can try to help you get in for another cycle.

But if you don't get in the first time, you can, you always can apply again. I love that. Advocate for yourself. Yes. Yeah. Well, that is all I have. Dr. Schaefer, it was a pleasure talking with you today. Very enjoyable conversation. Thank you for joining me on the Women in Science and Medicine podcast. Thanks for having me.