Dr. Richard Nash, PhD in History of Science & Technology | Associate Program Director at National Science Foundation (NSF)

In this episode, we discuss what led Richard to pursue a PhD in History of Science & Technology six years after earning his undergraduate degree in Philosophy, the unexpected evolution of his career goals over the course of his doctoral training, and his take on the value of a Humanities PhD in non-academic career paths.

Hosted by special guest host Rachel Waxman

To connect with Richard and to learn more about his story, visit his page on the PHutures #100AlumniVoices Project website.

Transcript

Rachel Waxman

Hi. I'm co-host Doctor Rachel Waxman and this is the 100 alumni voices podcast, stories that inspire, where we explore the personal and professional journeys of a diverse group of 100 doctoral alumni from Johns Hopkins University. Today we're joined by Doctor Richard Nash, PhD in the history of science and current associate program director and data scientist. OK, so I want to back up in time a little bit to Graduate School. When you started Graduate School, what were your professional plans at the time?

Richard Nash

Yeah, that's a that's a good question. So, I had taken time off after undergrad and I was working. I worked at a nonprofit, and I was a philosophy major in in undergrad, so I didn't have many job prospects out of college. So, I worked for a nonprofit. I was in DC. And I had I had thought about doing a PhD in philosophy and so for a few years I was kind of playing with that idea and not exploring it seriously. But I always thought kind of in the back of my mind, I would at some point go to grad school to do a PhD in philosophy. And a couple things happened. So, one I got really interested in the creationism versus evolutionary debates that were kind of a hot button culture issue. There was a big court case in 2005 in Pennsylvania. And I I was really interested in that debate and I'm a a kind of a I don't know how a hardcore evolutionist I guess you would say. And so, I was I wanted to somehow start turning my career toward having an effect on that and and kind of protecting the integrity of scientific education and keeping you know, religion out of schools and stuff like that. And so, I was reading a lot of books and articles and, you know, watching debates in that in that arena. It was just really fascinating to me. And then I my the closest thing you could say to my mentor from undergrad is a historian Catherine Olesko at Georgetown, and she had taught history of science. She is a historian of science, and so I took several of her courses when I was there and and I kept in touch with her after undergrad. And I I met with her a few times and, you know, talked with her about maybe doing a PhD. Her husband was the chair of the philosophy department at Georgetown also. So, he was a PhD. And she, you know, advised me she really probed me about what, you know what, why do you want to do a PhD? What do you want to do? What you know do you want to research? Do you really do you want to teach? Like you know she and she told me. She said the reason I did a PhD, she said, was that she wanted to basically have a job where she could read any book she wanted and that would be her job. And I did not have anywhere near as clear a a a goal for doing a PhD. So, I was so she kind of, she said, why don't you just, you know, don't don't rush into grad school, she said. You know, she said she'd seen too many too many young students come right out of undergrad and they think they want to keep they want to get into it and then they just they flounder. So, I took her advice and I I held off. And then while this creationism intelligent design stuff was going on, you know I while I was paying attention to those debates, I started thinking, well, less about philosophy and more about, you know, doing something in the sciences and and then it just all of a sudden everything just kind of clicked in my head. I was like, why don't I just do history of science? Because that's like, this is a long this is a long running debate this you know. I have this mentor who is a historian of science, you know that. So, then it became kind of obvious. So after after six years out of undergrad, you know, I started applying to and and and the the other kind of externality behind all this was the Great Recession hit in 2009, 2008, 2009 and so then the job market was was bad and and I was like this this kind of seems like the right the right time to to make a big change, like personally, professionally. And so, then I yeah. So, then I applied to to schools and ultimately came to Johns Hopkins. I like the faculty and that I met with, you know, it was a prestigious program. So, I I thought it would. I had some other options for grad school, but I was living in DC at the time and had a serious girlfriend who's now my wife and who works with the Library of Congress. So, it it made sense to kind of stay in the area. And so, yeah, so then I came to Hopkins in 2010 to do my PhD. When I entered the program, though I was thinking, I'm realizing now I didn't actually answer your questions, so that's how I got to to. But but what I wanted to do was vaguely in my mind, I wanted to write books and and become kind of a public intellectual or something, you know, so that I could have some impact on this on this intelligent design Creationism, evolutionary stuff. But then while in the process of applying to Graduate School and then especially once I my first year I kind of started to get socialized into the idea of what an academic historian actually does, and you know, and and it's not, you know, in the old fashioned way, that's not somebody who speaks about current events or you know it's you do historical research and you publish papers and books and and so as you know, in the first couple of years of the of the program, I completely lost sight of the kind of practical activist goal. And and then I my intent for most of my for most of the five years I was in grad school was to become an academic historian, and then we can get to we can get to why that how that changed pretty quickly.

Rachel Waxman

That's really interesting. First, I think it's interesting that you started Graduate School with a with a particular goal in mind, and maybe not necessarily a particular job, but a a particular type of impact that you wanted to have where I think you know a lot of us kind of, you know, can float into grad school and say, oh, you know, I'm kind of interested in this thing. Let me just keep doing it and I think that's, you know, says a lot about your undergrad mentor, you know, to encourage you to think about that because I do think it's really important and increasingly important to think about, you know, why are you doing this degree, but of course, as you said, no, you know, no matter what your goals are upon entering Graduate School, you can definitely get kind of sucked into, you know, the the tenure track, you know, rat race and you're like, wait, this is what I need to do. So, how did you kind of find your way out of that, you know, as you're getting socialized and then you know, how did you kind of get back to your your core goals?

Richard Nash

Well, I'm not sure I did but but but I can tell you I can talk about how how things kind of evolved. Just stepping back more kind of philosophically I think his conversation I've had with with friends and family. When I when I kind of look back on the trajectory I took, there's a there's a sort of retrospective logic that if I look at it at now, I can say oh it, you know, I can see the maze and and it made sense why I turned left there and right there and all that. But of course, at the time you're doing it, you're just making decisions in the moment and you don't know, you know you don't know where the end of the maze is or you know what the path is. So, which is a long-winded way of saying I didn't chart a rational path for myself through this. I was just making decisions like like most things in life, you just you, you try to do long term planning, but then you're confronted with, you know, a Great Recession and I got married at the time you know. We had our first kid when I was three months before I defended my thesis. So, there's, you know, all of these things are happening so I can I can apply a retrospective logic on on my on my path, but that's that's not really the reality of of, of how I got to where I got, but but yeah. So, when I didn't really I realized pretty quickly when I started the PhD program that I I didn't know what I was getting into. I didn't really know what an academic historian does. I didn't realize, you know, I I had an undergrad’s view of higher education and Georgetown, where I went, you know, is a liberal arts school. You're encouraged to take, you know, all kinds of different courses and explore and you know it's it was I wasn't taught, you know, research methods, and it wasn't that wasn't a big thing, right? So, as I took courses and listened to my graduate advisor and got socialized and with the other grad students and and and all that then my my goal, as I said, kind of became OK. I'm going to be an academic historian now. I didn't particularly love research or, I mean, I like writing, but everyone who likes writing, writing is hard and. So that so that was hard and and I got better at it because I'm in a graduate program and that's what they do. They they teach you to research and write and that they were effective at that, but as as I came, as I got closer to finishing, you know, as I was working on my thesis in my 4th and 5th years, I realize that, you know, I don't really want, I don't see myself doing doing this or or being good at it. Like maybe I could maybe I could do it but, you know, I'm not sure I'm going to ultimately enjoy this, this career, this life, and then you couple that with the just train wreck of a job market that the humanities is. And you know, I'm looking around and the the cohorts in front of me who are finishing, you know, they're getting they're doing postdoc after postdoc and VAPs and oh, you have to be willing to move anywhere, you know. Oh, I found a visiting professorship in Singapore, so I'm going to go. There were a few other older graduate students who had gone on to work at government agencies, and so I knew that government was somewhere you could go with a PhD and and maybe find some interesting work or, you know, worst case find just find some stable work and then you know bide your time until you can find something more interesting to do. So that's kind of how that's that's sort of where I landed at the end of Graduate School. I did get a a postdoc at the Smithsonian in their archives. And I I viewed that as kind of a transition like sort of like, you know, a halfway house out of the prison of academia, so I could, you know, I'll reenter normal society, you know, via this this postdoc, you know, at the museum and and that'll get me back to DC and then I'll see what happens. And so that that I think that's roughly the path I I kind of found my way on, yeah.

Rachel Waxman

Did you apply for any academic jobs just to see what would happen? Or did you just kind of, you know?

Richard Nash

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I did. There were a few that. There are a few jobs that were in my field that I applied for. I had no hope of of getting them because so you you know you apply to these places and they want to see what's your publication record. They want to see obviously a a chapter from your dissertation, you know writing sample. And so, I had one published article in a a decent journal. I had what I feel is like a very strong I still feel is a very strong dissertation chapter, so I had a good writing sample, but you're competing against folks who have who got their PhD four or five years ago. They've been out there. They've been VAPing. They've been postdocing. They've got half a dozen journal articles. Some of them have published their dissertation, you know. They've got books. You know, they've got teaching experience. So, it's, you know, what hope do you have at get? You know, there's a job at UPenn. You know very prestigious program that I applied for and it was an open an open field position, you know, historian of science, any period, any topic. And it's just like, OK. Well, there's there's 500 people you know applying for this. So, I I've applied for those things, but I never had any hope. And I never. I never got an interview or anything like that. I was proud to get the postdoc at Smithsonian. That was, that was competitive and you know I was lucky because of the nature of my research folded really nicely into to what material they had there. And so, it's it was a natural fit for me, you know, intellectually to be there and so, so that was cool. But even getting that at that point. So, I finished my thesis in December of 2015. I had a 2-month-old and then my my postdoc started in January. So, I defended my my dissertation on like January 7th or something like that on like a Thursday and started at the Smithsonian like on Monday, you know.

Rachel Waxman

No break, no rest.

Richard Nash

No, and which was fine, you know because you know, I I needed I needed something to do. I needed the money. Not that it was great money, but you know it was something to do so. But as soon as I was there, my I remember on my official Smithsonian computer looking at, you know, job nonacademic jobs. I remember just thinking like alright, I've got I've got to start trying to find something because it was only it was only a five or six-month postdoc. They do short term. You're there to just exploit the archives and then, you know, get out of there. It's not like doing it at a university or something like that where you have a a year or two.

Rachel Waxman

So, when you were looking at jobs in government, were you thinking of this as you know, I'm going to make a career change? Here's something else to do. Or were you thinking about it as more of a continuity, given kind of your initial goals about, you know, making impact and and writing for a broader audience? How did you see that as fitting in?

Richard Nash

Well, yeah, I did think of it as kind of consonant with my earlier self. I went to grad school and transformed into this, oh, I'm going to be an academic historian and and all that. And then I kind of came out the other end and and sort of circled back to where I had been before, but now I had this very powerful thing in my hand, which was a PhD. So, I mean, the job that I that I got at the National Science Foundation, where where I work now was the job title, it wasn't the same division, but the job title was the same job I had applied for like way back, you know, only a few years out of undergrad. And so, I applied for that kind of job and I didn't get anywhere. And it was because I didn't have a PhD. So, it was like this was something I kind of had thought about doing earlier, wanted to do earlier. I couldn't get it. Then I went and got this PhD and now all of a sudden, I could get it. So, like when I was talking about the retrospective logic in a way you could say my biography was like, oh, I hit this wall. I realized I needed a PhD. I got one, and then I was able to accomplish this goal. Of course, that's not that's not how it actually played out. But you know, looking back on it, it it kind of appears that way. So yeah, I was thinking, ok, well, now that I'm not going to do, I'm not going to do the historian thing. Maybe I can go to someplace like, you know, some kind of science agency or, you know, and and and maybe I can get back to that to do something that has to do with enhancing public education, scientific awareness, or, you know, those those kinds of things. And it was it was a bit of a kind of flailing I guess because I was I was a little bit lost. There wasn't. I didn't have people who could tell me, oh, you have a PhD. Here are some non-academic career paths to take. No, there was nobody. I I didn't have anyone to talk to, you know, nobody. And as a result of that, by the way, I I have gone back and I to Hopkins a few times, I've been on panels. And to talk to grad students about non-academic pathways. That that's probably how my name ended up on, on your desk or something like that. Because I just remember feeling, you know, lost at sea. And I didn't realize how powerful a lot of the skills were that I developed. I didn't know how to how to leverage them for other careers. And so, I you know, that's why I've been interested in going back and talking to grad students and saying like look, you're a historian, but OK. Most people can't write. You know you're in the top .1% of the best writers in the world because you've done a PhD in history. OK, most people can't research. Most people can't synthesize a huge amount of data. Most people don't know how to ask the right questions. So, you know, I wanted to kind of break my degree into like all of these atomized skills that and show and talk to other people you know about how they're going to, how they're useful and doing all kinds of different work. Which is just something that I discovered by doing nonacademic work after doing a PhD. I was like oh wow, this thing actually is really useful.

Rachel Waxman

So, I'm really interested in what you said about, you know, the job you applied for at the NSF is something that you would you tried to get before and couldn't get, and now you have this PhD. Was was a PhD required for that particular position, or was it just something that you found, you know what the job was asking for, you know, you will only have those skills if you've done a PhD?

Richard Nash

That's a good question. So, the PhD is a requirement for the job, but it's one of those like PhD or some six years’ worth of experience that includes XY and Z. And so, and you know, when I applied for it initially, before grad school, I didn't I didn't really have either. You know, it was just I, I I had no business applying for it. I wouldn't have been able to do it, you know.

Rachel Waxman

OK. So, you came in and it it's, you know, it's interesting because I think a lot of times when you know PhD holders are looking for other jobs, there's just feeling like, you know, I'm applying for things that it doesn't require a PhD. It doesn't require a masters. You know, I feel like, you know, I could have just gone straight from undergrad. So, I think it's really interesting that there's a a position that you know, really like the PhD was absolutely valuable from the get go and just in terms of even securing that job. So as and actually because before I ask you about sort of these specific, you know, PhD skills and competencies and how you use them in, in your job, can you just talk a little bit about you know what your role is and kind of what you do on a daily basis?

Richard Nash

So, I started as a what was called an engineering science analyst, and it was so the job was to do kind of data analysis of the portfolio. So, NSF is a is the largest funder of basic research. And it's structured sort of like a large research university. So, there's a directorate for engineering, which would be like the College of Engineering at a major university. There's the Directorate for Biology, which would be the, you know, the College of Life Sciences. And then within each of the directorates, there's all these divisions and those are sort of like the departments. So, within engineering, there's kind of like a mechanical engineering division and an electrical engineering division, which is where I am, electrical communications and cyber systems. So, the job was to it's sort of a Jack of all trades type job where you communicate, you you communicate about the division’s findings, you know the the things that we fund, create highlights, presentations, you know highlighting the, the, the types of things that we fund. You do a lot of data analysis. Every division is so different. Like the other science analysts who I’ve met, we all kind of did different stuff. But yeah, so it's a lot of it's analysis, it's strategic thinking, it's a lot of quantitative stuff actually which I didn't have any formal training in. So, I you know, I did history and and undergrad I did philosophy. So, I I you know I really never used, I never learned to code. I never really even used Microsoft Excel, but it was one of those classic kind of fake it till you make it situations where I was like I want this job and there's aspects of it that I that I want to do. I don't know how to do a large chunk of it, but I just did a PhD. So, like my biggest skill, anyone who does a PhD I believe you know some people can disagree, but I think the biggest skill you learn is you can now teach yourself anything you want to know. If you can survive a PhD program, you now know how to teach yourself how to do something. So, if you want to know something, you can figure out how to learn it by yourself. And so, and that's exactly what I did with this quant side of it. Like I came in, I learned how to code. It wasn't daunting to me as if I had done this two years out of undergrad, like I said, I I don't know what I would have done. You know, I wouldn't have learned and I didn't know how to I didn't know how to learn. So, all these, all these things that were required in the job that I didn't actually have honed skills for, I was, you know, I was able to pick them up and, you know, figure out what I needed to to do to learn them and to and teach myself. So now my job is kind of for various reasons we don't need to get into it's kind of similar to what I was doing before. I have a different title but I have more of a leadership role in my division. I think just because I did a PhD in the humanities and and I there's something about the you’re your problem-solving skills your your strategic thinking skills, your you know your research. Like I said earlier, like asking the right question, that kind of stuff like where it's sort of weirdly I I'm perfect for this job, but on paper if they were to hire my position right now they would they would go look at people with PhDs in engineering. And people you know, with years who years of coding have deep statistical education, you know, stuff that I just don't have, but it just turns out that what I do have is really good and just nobody knew it.

Rachel Waxman

Kind of digging into that a little bit more, you know are there are there things that you find in your job that you feel like you can do really well that you attribute to the PhD that maybe you look around and you see, you know like you know, hey, other people here maybe can't quite do this thing as well? Or like, you know, things that you're known for within the organization that you would, you know, connect to that doctoral training?

Richard Nash

OK, so aside from mechanical stuff like I'm a good writer, you know, so that's important in an organization like you can to to be able to communicate effectively and to it helps establish your expertise, your authority, people you know. OK, he this guy seems like he knows what he's talking about. But one thing that people say a lot to me is that I I see the big picture. I don't get bogged down in like, narrow kind of like I can step back and understand why certain processes or why certain things are are important, you know, from a broad perspective. And I think that's totally because my experience doing the PhD and specifically the the thesis like doing your research and writing your thesis where you're just you're digging through massive amounts of information, you know, going just going into the archive, just pulling everything and and throwing it all out there and then like trying to, you know, it's like a giant puzzle. You know, you just take the box and you just dump all the pieces and you start flipping them over and then you're like, oh, that that looks like an edge piece right there. Oh, and then every now and then you find the corner piece, and you're like, oh, wow. I just found a corner of my dissertation. And, you know, you put it all together. So, like that I can I I'm I think that you know one of my skills is just to to see that big picture to start seeing, you know, to, to be able to step back and look at things.

Rachel Waxman

Well, we have a sort of signature closing question from the PHutures Office, which is, you know, what inspires you right now? Easy question, right.

Richard Nash

In what way?

Rachel Waxman

Anything. What's, what's, what's inspiring you right now, whether it's work, life.

Richard Nash

So, I have two kids. I have a 7-year-old and a three-year old. Right now, my daughter, she because of the pandemic, she, you know, she was supposed to be she was in pre K4 in 2020. And so, she was supposed to be in kindergarten, fall of 2020. And so, she had her kindergarten was virtual. She lost kindergarten. She lost part of pre K4. She lost part of first grade because of the pandemic and she's behind where she needs to be on reading, writing, arithmetic, and what inspires me is she really, really she's learning how to read. She's getting better every week. I can see progress. Rather than it being something where I'm or my wife and I are saying, you know, you need to sit down and practice. You need to, you need to work on this more. It's all self-driven. My daughter, she wants, she wants to read. She wants to learn to read, and so we, you know, she asked, she wanted a tutor. She said, I want more practice reading. You know, I don't get enough practice. I want to get better at it. She sees other students in her class who are better at it and so that's that's been really. Because I was, I've been worried about it, you know, like I I want her to be able to read. And now I'm just now I'm not worried because because it's her goal, you know, so it's it's that's been really cool.

Rachel Waxman

Sounds like a future PhD student got that self-learning drive there.

Richard Nash

Yeah, not if I have anything to do with it. Now I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I would encourage her to do it, yeah.

Rachel Waxman

Well, thank you so much for talking with me today. I really appreciate it.

Richard Nash

Sure, this was fun.