Vol. 41, No. 4, October 2012
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Finding Informal Opportunities for Our Work:
Repaying the Legacies of Generous Mentors
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by Kim Kleinman, Webster University
In her January 2012 History of Science Society President's Column, "History of Science Unbound," Lynn Nyhart calls for a "polycentric view" of the history of science instead of seeing the profession "as a series of concentric circles with a few successful graduate programs and their professors as the focus, and tailing off toward peripheral "alternative" careers that are treated as less successful." She suggests that we view so-called alternative careers simply as "careers." So, we should look to public history, journalism, and other outlets for our skills, training, and interests where we can successfully contribute to the field, scholarship in general, and discourse in society.
Seeing my own career as a "polycentric" one has helped me make sense of it. I returned to graduate school at age 38, 15 years after earning a Masters at the University of Chicago in 1978-1979. I had embarked on that wonderful year at Chicago already active in working class politics—and had chosen Chicago over Wisconsin as much for the political opportunities as for the academic ones. Whichever school I had selected, I had no real academic plan beyond wanting to know more about the history of science. The lure of politics prompted my hiatus after that year, so I practiced a particular kind of science and strove to make big, sophisticated ideas intelligible. A layoff and union benefits gave me a basis to return to our field and allowed me to construct a program at the Union Institute, which had begun in the 1960s (of course) as a consortium of many Ohio liberal arts colleges for graduate studies. Finally with a dissertation topic, a history of the Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG) as a museum, I met, in succession, Joe Ewan, John Greene, Gar Allen, and Betty Smocovitis. These remarkably generous and engaged mentors shaped my unorthodox Ph.D. program and my equally idiosyncratic career. They each had/have a knack for being interested in the work of others, seeking the possibilities of what a colleague's work might offer.
They grasped, as Randy Nelson of Pixar Univeristy (the education and training unit of the company) put it, that it is more important to be interested than interesting. He further suggests that the aim and result, ideally, of education is demonstrable depth, a breadth of interests, an ability to communicate from that breadth and depth by understanding sympathetically what might connect with listeners, and an ability to amplify others' ideas through collaboration. Thus, teaching and learning are not just two-way processes but reciprocal, dialectical ones. Being interested first—rather than being interesting—offers the rewards of being turned outward, listening both critically and sympathetically, in ways that are richer than the rewards of merely being interesting by honing one's own work. I am lucky to have had the interested generosity of these four mentors and to see at close range how they have cultivated and shared it with so many other colleagues.
In attempting to follow their inspiring examples, I have found informal ways to enjoy many of the rewards of our profession, including working with graduate students and hosting seminar-like reading groups.
Informal Opportunities
Working as an academic advisor at a teaching university is far from our profession's concentric circles. So, I have tried to be vigilant for such opportunities to work with students on history of science as come my way with full knowledge that it will be at institutional margins. When interesting people cross my path, I am curious to know what they want to know and offer my knowledge and experience to the collaboration.
Graduate Students: Peter and Nuala
Through serendipitous contacts I have so far had two wonderful opportunities to work with graduate students outside my institutional home.
Peter Mickulas posted an inquiry on a history listserv as he began his Ph.D. research on the history of the New York Botanical Garden. Someone kindly mentioned my own work and a Webster friend told me about the exchange. As I recall, I wrote Peter directly and offered to help. This led to me becoming an outside reader on his Rutgers committee, and we have enjoyed a friendship since that time, a friendship that has included collaborations on writing projects (including this essay) and on conference panels.
Peter's own career has been decidedly "polycentric." After the New York Botanical Garden Press—with Betty Smocovitis' enthusiastic editorial support—published his dissertation (Mickulas 2007) he worked as a public historian for the State of New Jersey and did historical research for an archaeological consulting firm before becoming an editor for Rutgers University Press.
Nuala Caomhanach is transitioning to history from a biology Ph.D. program at the University of Missouri-St. Louis that is associated with MBG. She is working on the role of St. Louis as a botanical center in the 19th century with, among others, Peter Raven, the Garden's President Emeritus. Raven had mentioned her to my friend Peter Hoch who told me about her. As with Peter Mickulas, I wrote Nuala immediately, volunteering to help. I know the outlines of her research story through my own work on the MBG, but I can contribute some translation between biology and history as a welcoming member of our tribe as she learns our customs and practices.
Informal Reading Groups
While I have taught formal history of science courses occasionally (most often one usually titled "Darwin's Evolution"), my most rewarding work as a teacher has been through informal reading groups. They began with a couple of students who did not want my first formal class to end. We kept a fairly regular reading group going for a couple of years, and I had a trusty seminar with which to explore ideas. Subsequently, I have found an interesting array of students—in succession, a pre-med student, a creative writer, an Irish graphic artist/management student—to work with, often through my role as academic advisor as students discussed general education requirements. These students' varied perspectives have helped deepen my appreciation of defining texts.
Sam Zibit and Lifelong Learning
Perhaps the most intriguing fellow learner though was Sam Zibit who was 93 when we met. He had attended some sessions of Gar's University College class at Washington University and had asked him to help on a class for the Lifelong Learning Institute, also associated with University College. Of course, Gar was too busy and probably so was I, but I called Sam and joined him and other retirees at the Lifelong Learning Institute for 8 weeks worth of 2-hour classes on Darwin and the Beagle (Moorehead 1969). Moorehead's book was a dated but acceptable enough introductory text for the large class of retirees (I was trying to prod them into reading Darwin's books), and Sam insisted on an enjoyable, rigorous preparation delving into more recent and serious scholarship.
Sam had studied biology at City College of New York in the mid-1930s, but did not go into medicine as so many of his classmates did. He was involved in the formation of the Social Security Administration and managed the Jewish Home for Aged in St. Louis. He was fascinated by my interest in the Evolutionary Synthesis and wished somebody had told him that such exciting things were happening when he was a student (Theodosius Dobzhansky gave his Jesup Lectures on "Genetics and the Origin of Species" just after Sam had graduated). Sam told me that he wanted to be a biologist again and our discussions offered him that chance.
The Beagle class went well enough, but I gained more from our friendship and ongoing discussions. They were another rich opportunity for me to engage with another serious reader. Later, I visited him each week before going to teach a version of the Darwin class at Washington University's University College. In a meaningful sense, he was my teaching assistant. I continued to visit him as his health declined even though the discussions were more and more his reminiscences about studying biology than about biology itself. I stuck around for those last six months figuring I would learn much about living as I watched his world contract. And I did, up until his quick but not surprising death at age 95.
The Missouri Botanical Garden
Besides the wonderful faculty I assembled for my Union Institute graduate program, I also found an institutional niche at the Garden. The Ewan Collection and the MBG Archives were my primary resources, but so were the people. The Ewans' Tuesday Lunches were an institution when I joined them at the Garden's Museum Building, but they quickly became seminars of a sort and the other regulars (Doug Holland, Mike Long, and Alan Whittemore especially) were wonderful classmate substitutes (Kleinman 2000). Those lunches continue occasionally now, 13 years after their founders—Joe and his wife and collaborator Nesta—left St. Louis, and remain stimulating opportunities to test ideas and share scientific and historical work.
As a historian, I was not close to the typical Garden graduate student, but I have found broadly interested scientists—first Joe Ewan, then Alan Whittemore, now Peter Hoch—to ground my work in solid science. So, first as a National Science Foundation post-doctoral fellow in 2000-2001 and now as a long-standing Research Associate, the Garden is an institutional home. But, as with my graduate school, day job, and teaching opportunities, it is an opportunity I have adapted and crafted to my own needs and interests.
Conclusions
It was not my intention on returning to academia to find my niche as an academic advisor, and it is not a job one even knows enough about to aspire to it. But it is rewarding work that suits me. Advising affords me the opportunity to have meaningful discussions with students about their educations—without the specter of grades interfering. My history of science background helps me understand and share the fascination of the sciences and humanities and has given me experience with finding unique ways to combine other wide interests and perspectives. Though I am not in a traditional place in academia, I can do our work in gratifying ways as I proceed with my own version of a career in the history of science. It certainly does not fit the old model of our profession as concentric circles emanating from our PhD programs. But I am part of "a social and intellectual network with many centers and many levels, all connected by our shared commitment to advancing our subject." (Nyhart 2012)
I have joined networks through doors opened for me by Gar and Betty. And from these two scholars and Joe Ewan and John Greene, I have learned the even deeper lesson of being generously interested in others. That openness has allowed me to take advantage of opportunities—some traditional, most informal—to engage broadly the valuable ideas that enrich our community. I have aspired to bring some of these scholars' breadth, depth, empathetic communication skills, and ability to amplify the work of others through collaboration to my own teaching, formal and otherwise. I strive to be interested.
To take up Lynn Nyhart's challenge for a "History of Science Unbound," we should draw on the rich and varied careers in which we find ourselves. For myself, emulating my mentors' generous spirits has unbound me as a historian of science and given me a way to forge an interesting, rewarding, and, yes, quirky career.
References
Kleinman, Kim. 2000. "Lunch at the Museum Building: Continuing a Legacy of the Ewans," Archives of Natural History, Vol. 27 (3): 301-306.
Mickulas, Peter. 2007. Britton's Botanical Empire: The New York Botanical Garden and American Botany, 1888-1929. New York: New York Botanical Garden Press.
Moorehead, Alan. 1969. Darwin and the Beagle. New York: Harper and Row.
Nelson, Randy. 2008. "Learning and Working in a Collaborative Age," Presentation at Apple Educational Summit, April, 11, 2008. Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhXJe8ANws8
Nyhart, Lynn K. 2012. "From the HSS President: History of Science Unbound," History of Science Society Newsletter, Vol. 41 (1): 1-2, 4. Also available at: http://www.hssonline.org/publications/Newsletter2012/January-unbound.html