Q&A: Dr. Hare

A Scientist Who Traded in Her Lab Coat for a Chalkboard

Who comes to mind when we envision a scientist has changed over time. We now picture both men and women in science fields, and our imagination is no longer bound to any particular race or ethnicity. But what comes to mind remains the same: a lab coat, test tubes, bubbling chemicals, and goggles. I talked to Dr. Alissa Hare, professor of chemistry at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, about dispelling that myth and what it’s like be a scientist who spends most of her time in the classroom.

Muna Ikedionwu: When you were in college and graduate school, did you know you wanted to be a professor?

Alissa Hare: It has always been a goal of mine. It’s kind of the dream, if that makes sense. I grew up in a family that was very focused on academia. There’s this reverence around professors. So yes, I’ve wanted to since I was very little.

MI: What inspired you to choose chemistry, then?

AH: I took advanced placement chemistry in high school and that’s when it really clicked for me. I finally found a thing that I really enjoyed and was challenging and that’s when I decided chemistry or bust.

MI: With that, do you see that a lot in your students, per se? That there’s this love of chemistry before they get to college? Or do you feel most people are taking it just because they need the credit?

AH: Yeah, it’s very uncommon to have someone who’s really in love with chemistry at a really early age. They’ve only seen the very fundamental 101: here’s some memorization, please regurgitate for an exam.

MI: Do you feel as if you’ve ever had a personal hand in helping that love for chemistry come to fruition?

AH: Yeah, I think that’s the best part of the job, right? Most of the time those interactions happen during one-on-one meetings where you have the ability to explain how exciting chemistry really is. I always encourage students to come [to my office hours] because then they can see me jumping up and down and saying, “Can you believe this is real?!”

MI: You are a scientist, by definition – you have a PhD in chemistry, you teach chemistry, you’ve done chemistry lab research – but people don’t think of you as a scientist because when people think of a scientist, they think of a lab coat and a pipette. Do you see yourself as a scientist?

AH: I think of my job as two things. First of all, I’m a chemistry cheerleader. The more important one though, is training the next generation of scientists. The way I look at it is this: I was trained as a scientist and that will never leave me, but I am not doing research right now, so on the teaching side of being a scientist in America, my goal is to give the current batch of students the best tools and the most information to be whatever kind of scientist they want to be in the future. The first is to get the kids excited and not scared of chemistry, and the second is to give them all the info they can get. 《》