Academic and Personal Evolution through Thirty-Eight Years: Two

Chapter 25

Academic and Personal Evolution through Thirty-Eight Years: Two Parallel Tracks? Downloaded by UNIV OF SYDNEY on March 21, 2016 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date (Web): September 2, 2015 | doi: 10.1021/bk-2015-1195.ch025

Barbara Loeb* Dean, Faculty of Chemistry, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Vicuna Mackenna 4860, Santiago, Chile *E-mail: [email protected].

The kind invitation of Dr. Marinda Wu to give a talk at the “Women Leaders of the Global Chemistry Enterprise” Symposium” was the starting point for a long reflection about my nearly forty years devoted to academia, while facing the challenge of bringing up a family in a safe and nourishing environment. Ups and downs in both personal and academic life characterized this journey, which in essence was not really a trip in two parallel tracks, but two tangled routes that continuously crossed themselves, mixing and influencing each other. Looking back at the end of the road, I can see how everything fitted together and had a reason to occur. I am grateful to all that helped on this road. They pushed me up when everything seemed to slide down. The words of the Mexican poet Amado Nervo in his golden creation “In Peace” (Nervo, A.: "En Paz" in "Obras Completas, Tomo II Prosas-Poesías", Editorial Aguilar, Madrid, Spain, 1967, p.1733) best reflect my present feelings at this stage of my life: Close to my sunset I bless you, Life, Because you never gave me unfulfilled hope, Unfair work, or undeserved sorrow. ………. Life, you owe me nothing. Life, we’re at peace!

© 2015 American Chemical Society Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.

Downloaded by UNIV OF SYDNEY on March 21, 2016 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date (Web): September 2, 2015 | doi: 10.1021/bk-2015-1195.ch025

Introduction To fulfill the task of giving an account of what these years have meant, and what have occurred during them, I am dividing the story in three parts: “The Beginning”, the starting point that was arbitrarily set in the mid-seventies, when I was hired at the Catholic University of Chile, the place where my whole career has taken place. At the same time these were the years when I got married to Eduardo, my husband for more than forty years now, and undoubtly a key person in this story. The second part, called “The Middle Age”, represents the long years of struggle and effort in order to grow as a teacher and as a scientist, while trying to balance these time-consuming activities with the necessary time needed to be a caring mother and wife. In parallel to my children growing up steadily, a scientific “family” was built, through dozens of students that performed their graduate or undergraduate theses under my guidance. The last part of this story, “The Present”, represents what is occurring in these days, when management and administration have overtaken the space of scientific life, and where an increasing number of grandchildren have joyfully invaded the personal spaces. The common thread through these three stages is the challenge of being a woman in a Latin-American country, trying to develop an academic career in the last decades of the twentieth century and the first decades of Century 21. Regarding the contents of each part, the focus has been positioned on four main points: -

To give a context through some facts. To give an account of my feelings during each stage. To give an overview of women in chemistry at the Catholic University of Chile. To give some tips on how the society perceived a woman scientist during the time being analyzed.

Finally, although the different academic activities developed during the years and my main research goals will not be treated in detail, some insight about them will be given throughout the text.

The Beginning In September 1976 I succeeded in fulfilling the requirements of the degree of Master in Science with concentration in Chemistry. A couple of weeks afterwards, I signed my first contract as an Assistant Professor in the then Chemistry Institute of the Catholic University of Chile. Two years before, I had been married to Eduardo, and at the moment of obtaining the Master’s degree, our eldest son Michael was already eight month old. Figure 1 is a momento of the celebration party for obtaining the degree: in the upper photo appears my supervisor, Fernando Zuloaga, and in the lower photo I am preparing a toast accompanied by a young Eduardo. 294 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


Figure 1. Celebrating my Master’s degree accompanied by my supervisor (upper photo) and my husband (lower photo). (Courtesy of the author.)

Everything seemed to be blooming at that time, and an extremely optimistic feeling guided those days. Family life seemed to be running on wheels, and dreams appeared easy to fulfill. Academic positions were very scarce, and I had gotten one. I felt that things could only develop one way, and that was upwards. The research for the Master’s thesis was related to cobalt complexes and their studies in the ground and the excited state. It contained also some theory, based on traditional Ligand Field Theory, developed mainly to interpret ground and excited state behavior (1). To conduct luminescence studies in Chile was extremely difficult, mainly because of the lack of instruments and the difficulties to get research resources. The experiments took very long and the equipment used contained a lot of hand-made parts. 295 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


In the year of my appointment, 1976, about 25% of the chemistry faculty were women. Among them, only one, professor Ligia Gargallo, was a full professor. University regulations seemed rather “soft” concerning permanent positions, giving therefore some stability, but difficult in regard to promotion. While the opportunities for a woman to be hired seemed to be equivalent to those for men, women in leadership positions were very scarce.

Figure 2. Magazine article appeared after obtaining my Master’s Degree. (Reprinted with permission from ref. (2). Copyright 1976 Las Ultimas Noticias.) Regarding the view of the Chilean society about a woman in chemistry in the mid-70’s, an anecdote can be illustrative. In the 70’s graduate programs were just starting to emerge in our country. As I was the second person who graduated from the Chemistry Master’s program and the first woman, some journalists came to interview me. I was extremely careful in detailing different aspects of the Program’s curricula, about its rigor, and in general about all type of opportunities and demands involved. In one of the magazines a long and exhaustive article appeared (2) (Figure 2). None of the points mentioned above was cited, making my efforts to make some “propaganda” for our Master’s program useless. Instead, sentences such as “for her to study, her husband prepared the milk bottles….”, or statements such as “already at the nursery school she drew chemical symbols…” were written. Although my husband did help me a lot, amongst other things preparing milk bottles if necessary, of course I did not draw chemical symbols at that age, nor did I ever attend a nursery school. Roughly, the article reflected the feeling the society had at that time about a woman in chemistry: a very weird case, ideal to build a sensational story. 296 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


The Middle Age In the following years, my academic and personal lives continued their paths, with ups and downs, good moments and more difficult ones. At the beginning of 1980 I started my graduate studies, obtaining in September 1985 the Doctor in Science degree from the University of Chile, under the guidance of Dr. Carlos Andrade. When I started the program, my daughter Maureen was already born, so my father gave me as present an old 1963 Citroen, to travel back and forth from the Catholic University, were I taught, to the University of Chile, where I was pursuing my graduate studies, and in between to rush home to feed the baby. Busy times! Dr. Andrade was a former student of Nobel Prize winner Henry Taube. In this way, through my graduate studies, I got to be Taube´s “scientific granddaughter.” The main field of my thesis was related to bioinorganic models, specifically binuclear and mixed valence copper complexes as models for hemocyanin (3). Mixed valence chemistry ended being a passion of my scientific life, and therefore, when an opportunity emerged for a 3-month UN research abroad program, I chose to spend one month at Dr. David Hendrickson labs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and two months at Dr. Tom Meyer´s lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Notable growth, as a person and as a scientist, was the consequence of these 3 months. Leaving two children of 8 and 11 years behind was very difficult, specially in times when internet was not available and telephone was prohibitively expensive. My husband did a great job taking care of them and running the house. Although already a grown up woman, I was rather shy, and afraid of being alone and by my own. I arrived at Illinois on Saturday, January 1, 1987. Firstly, my luggage did not arrive. Secondly, I was located in a dorm in a student area, but there were no other students in the building, nor were they in the next building, nor in any buildings around. Everybody was spending their holidays at home. As an easily frightened person absolutely alone, with no luggage, no food, in a dark and snowy day, I had two possible choices: to jump out of the window from the eighth floor or to learn to survive. My option was to survive, to mature, and to grow up. After a month, I moved to Chapel Hill. The blue skies of Carolina received me at the airport, predicting a good stay. I remember the two months spent at UNC-Chapel Hill as one of the most spectacular periods of my scientific career. More than 30 very nice people were part of Dr. Meyer’s group, lots of equipment to do different experiments with, great scientific discussions and challenging ideas. I worked enthusiastically and hard all days of the week, leaving just some free time for Sunday´s mass. The impact this period had on my career was equivalent to having done a second PhD. Even for being a short time, the research carried out permitted a paper to be written (4). I learned a lot, and got introduced to Ruthenium, Osmium and Rhenium polypyridinic compounds, a chemistry that opened new possibilities for research after travelling back home. I returned to Chapel Hill quite a few times in the years afterwards, and collaborative projects were undertaken involving graduate students’ exchange in both directions. A good friendship with Dr. Meyer has remained with time. The 2014 San Francisco ACS meeting was a new opportunity to meet again and to recall memories of old times. 297 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


The decade after this three-month postdoctoral stay was diverse in activities. The struggle to establish scientifically was hard. The resources for research were available but very competitive, and it took time to convince the peer reviewers that our scientific ideas had some value. Polypyridinic d6 metal complexes started to be the focus of my research, mainly from a fundamental point of view. The current Faculty of Chemistry had been funded at that time, and a periodic evaluation of its faculty established. The aforementioned period of drought in getting funding put my permanent position at risk. This rather stormy period in my work was contrasted with my personal life, where children filled our days in a very cheerful way. Both of my children, Michael and Maureen, were good students, enjoyed sports, and had lots of friends. Close to my forties, I was pleased that little Henry came along, bringing fresh air and new challenges to our family. At the same time that my personal family was growing, a scientific “family” was building up. Graduate and undergraduate students came in and out throughout these years, some with more success than others, but always leaving contributions that helped to bring our ideas further. I am very grateful to all of them, for what they meant to me, not only for their scientific contributions, but also for the excitement they brought to the lab. Compared to the 70’s, had something changed in the 80’s and 90’s as regard to the possibilities women had to develop their scientific careers in our country? The percentage of women in academia continued to be about one-fourth of the total, and in our Faculty of Chemistry still only one woman full professor was present. University regulations had gotten stricter, and a maximum period of nine years to advance from an Assistant to an Associate Professor (in certain sense the equivalent of getting tenure) was established. The leadership positions at the University were still mainly reserved for men. A similar situation was observed in industrial companies, where management positions were also mainly occupied by men.

The Present When bringing up memories to write about a whole career, I have the overwhelming feeling that time passed by too quickly. As shown in Figure 3, children are not children any more. Moreover, they have their own children, conferring on us the title of grandparents, the best and most enjoyable title ever achieved. I have also become a “scientific grandma”; furthermore, Eduardo and I are godparents of former students’ children. The most impressive part of this portion of the story occurred some years ago, when among the freshmen students present in the official ceremony that the University prepared for their reception, I recognized the daughter of one of my former students. In this way, as seen in Figure 4, the dining table at our house needs to be enlarged when hosting my personal family, encompassing from my 95-year-old mother to 3-year-old Emilio, or when receiving my “scientific family”, e.g., to celebrate the graduation of one of the members of the group. 298 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


Figure 3. Family growth and evolution. Michael, a sports journalist, joined Marcela, and is the father of Emilio. Maureen, an actress and university teacher, married Andrés, and has three children: Pedro, José and Laura. Henry, on his way to be a lawyer, is still single but has lots of “children” through his social activities. (Courtesy of the author.) (see color insert)

University life has changed a lot. The beginning of the new century saw an active and more successful development of my scientific career, reaching its high point with my promotion to Full Professorship in 2003. Soon after, leadership opportunities emerged, first as Academic Director at the Faculty of Chemistry, then as Academic Development Director of the University, and presently as Dean of the Faculty of Chemistry. These are intense, interesting and challenging duties, putting a good dose of adrenalin to my daily life, and unavoidably changing the focus of my activities. Research is slowing down, and the time left to spent with my family reduced. My research continues to center on polypyridinic complexes but is now more oriented to applied goals: photoelectrochemical solar cells, Oled materials, and substances with non-linear optical response (5–7). At this point it is interesting to have a look at what has occurred with women at academia nowadays. Figure 5 shows the percentage of men and women at the different academic categories for all the faculty members at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (8). It is impressive to notice that from about 50% of women in our undergraduate programs, the percentage drops dramatically to close to 17% of women being full professors. University regulations have become even stricter, with a seven-year maximum period of time to be promoted to the Associate Professor category. Nevertheless, importantly, if an Assistant Professor gets pregnant, a longer period of time can now be allowed. 299 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


Figure 4. Extended dining table to accommodate family (upper picture) or group members (lower picture). (Courtesy of the author.) (see color insert)

The situation at the Faculty of Chemistry has changed lately. Dr. Gargallo, who was for a long time the only woman in the category of full professor, retired some years ago. In the mean time, she received two important prizes: the UNESCO L’Oreal Prize for Women in Science, and the Chilean National Prize in Natural Sciences. At present, 50% of the full professors of the Faculty of Chemistry are women, as well as the Dean and two of the four Faculty Directors. Although probably not the norm for the university, this situation at the Faculty of Chemistry can be considered a good sign for the future. 300 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.


Figure 5. Percentage of men (in squares) and of women (in diamonds) at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile at different stages of the academic career in 2013. (see color insert)

Conclusion Being a woman scientist during the last decades of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21th century is, by itself, a challenge. If additionally the career is performed in an underdeveloped or developing country, the challenge is even more severe. To raise a family while trying to thrive in an increasingly demanding academic environment might at first glance seem to be difficult. Yet, as mentioned before, it was not really a trip in two parallel tracks, but in tangled routes that continuously cross themselves, mixing and influencing each other. The difficult academic journey was tolerable because of satisfactions at home. The moments of setbacks in the family were overcome because of my scientific interest and passion. Near the end of the trip, it is clear to me that both my family life and academic career would not have been possible without the impulse of the other.

Acknowledgments Thanks are due to Dr. Marinda Wu, 2013 President of the American Chemical Society, for her kind invitation to the Symposium on “Women Leaders of the Global Chemistry Enterprise” held during the 248th ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, August 2014. Special thanks are due to my family, particularly my husband Eduardo, for his continuous and unwavering support that has made this story possible. I want also to thank the students that joined my group at different stages of my career for their resilence and creativity to overcome the problems and find answers to our inquiries. Finally, many thanks are due to my senior 301 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.

collaborators, Ana María Leiva (RIP), Irma Crivelli and Mauricio Barrera, for their professionalism and deep thoughts, and for taking the group leadership while I was absent pursuing different duties, and to the colleagues of the Catholic University of Temuco, Angélica Francois and Ramiro Díaz, for long lasting research collaborations.

References


1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Loeb, B.; Zuloaga, F. J. Phys. Chem. 1977, 81, 59–63. Unica Magister en Química también es mamá y esposa. Las Ultimas Noticias, Chile, September 16, 1976; p 4. Loeb, B.; Crivelli, I.; Andrade, C. Comments Inorg. Chem. 1998, 20, 1–26. Loeb, B.; Neyhart, G. A.; Worl, L. A.; Danielson, E.; Sullivan, B. P.; Meyer, T. J. J. Phys. Chem. 1989, 2, 717. Gajardo, F; Barrera, M; Vargas, R; Crivelli, I.; Loeb, B. Inorg.Chem. 2011, 50, 5910–5924. Dreyse, P.; Loeb, B.; Soto-Arriaza, M.; Tordera, D.; Ortí, E.; SerranoPérez, J. J.; Bolink, H. J. Dalton Trans. 2013, 42, 15502–15513. Sanhueza, L.; Barrera, M.; Crivelli, I. Polyhedron 2013, 57, 94–104. Unpublished data from the “Dirección de Análisis Institucional y Planificación” (Office of Institutional Analysis and Planning) Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

302 Cheng et al.; Jobs, Collaborations, and Women Leaders in the Global Chemistry Enterprise ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2015.

Academic and Personal Evolution through Thirty-Eight Years: Two

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