Celebrating Womxn’s History Month: ‘Trust your gut and look for allies.’

Each week during March — Womxn’s History Month — we’re profiling womxn faculty members who have pursued academic careers in male-dominated professions and have made significant contributions to their fields. According to the American Institute of Physics, while the representation of womxn among physics faculty members is growing, in 2018, they numbered less than 20 percent.  

Sara Callori, associate professor of physics, joined the department of physics in 2015. She received her bachelor’s degree in 2007 from New York University and earned her Ph.D. in 2013 from Stony Brook University. She subsequently spent two years as a post-doctoral researcher in Sydney, Australia, at the Bragg Institute (now Australian Centre for Neutron Scattering).

She is part of CSUSB's Center for Advanced Functional Materials, which supports a sustainable, interdisciplinary and inter-institutional advanced materials research effort. She is a co-director and mentor for Cal-Bridge, a program between the CSU and the University of California systems aimed at increasing the number of underrepresented minorities earning STEM Ph.D.s. Callori is passionate about teaching and working with others to improve teaching and learning at CSUSB. She is particularly interested in laboratory courses and was recently elected vice president of the Advanced Labs Physics Association (ALPhA).

Outside of CSUSB, she loves trivia and has appeared on four game shows, including “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune.” Callori has a son in kindergarten who enjoys visiting the physics labs, as well as two “funny-looking,” small dogs who would rather stay home.

What year did you become a university faculty member for the first time, and what was your experience like?

I started here in fall 2015, and this is my first — and hopefully only — faculty position.

It immediately felt a little like home because of how welcoming my department is. It's funny — I know that in physics as a whole, womxn are vastly underrepresented, but when I was hired, I was the fourth tenure-track womxn in our department. We were at gender parity. Professor of physics Carol Hood, who is now the interim associate dean of the College of Natural Sciences, was a few years ahead of me on the tenure track. She was so open with me, and I could go to her with any questions I had. My department was so welcoming and really made sure to make me feel like I had a mentor and that I didn't feel overwhelmed at a time that's usually very overwhelming.

What is the best advice you were given when you became a faculty member (or when you decided to pursue a career in academia)?

It actually came from one of my senior colleagues, Paul Dixon, professor of physics and astronomy and department chair at the time. I think what makes our department special is that we are really student focused. And I'm not saying CSUSB as a whole is not student focused, but I think our department is really open about how we make policies and decisions and conduct our teaching and research agendas in a way that centers on students.

He said, “You're used to coming from a research environment, where the focus is publish, publish, publish. But when you come here and start working with students, you realize that this is their opportunity to build their skills. It is more important that a student gets a break to give a talk or to present their work.” So hearing, “Hey, these are our expectations, these are things that we look for in this department,” was great. And it's not the same in strictly research-focused academia. It was super great for me in terms of getting that freedom to recalibrate my relationship with teaching and research and mentoring.

What advice would you give womxn students who are interested in pursuing a career in your field of expertise? 

I feel like there's a lot I could say, but it boils down to “Trust your gut and look for allies.”

In terms of trusting your gut, try and get a read on a situation, whether it's a graduate program or a school or a faculty member you want to work with. Students should definitely talk to their mentors to get a feel for programs and research groups. Maybe a group publishes a lot, but something doesn’t seem right — maybe their graduate students don’t seem happy in the lab. Trust your gut. 

I think undergraduate students may think faculty are their only allies, but peers can be as much, if not more, powerful. One of the things that has come about in physics and astronomy, and other fields as well, is this idea of whisper networks. It’s a thing that unfortunately has to exist. And it often happens in departments where there is a known harasser or a bad actor.

Whisper networks form behind the scenes and information is passed back and forth. Sometimes the information is positive, for example, someone shares their notes from class. And sometimes it may be information about who to avoid. But often, if you can make some friends that are a year or two ahead of you, whether it's in undergraduate or grad school, or find a faculty mentor, you can get plugged into these existing networks that share this type of information, which really helps.

At CSUSB, we intentionally spell womxn with an X as an objection to the patriarchal idea that womxn are an extension to men and the inclusion of all womxn go beyond just cis-women.