 Dean Mason, thank you for joining us. We're so excited to have you on This Is Purdue. I know we were talking before this. You traveled a lot with your family. You moved a lot, so you didn't grow up in Indiana. So what brought you to Purdue? How did you find out about Purdue University? Well, I knew of Purdue when I was going through graduate school because I was studying all the people that do the kind of work that I do, but when I really became engaged was when they had a job and it was a perfect job description for me. It had the keywords in it that I was looking for. I'm an insect behaviorist, and so it had insect behavior. And although it wasn't an area that I really had not studied, it was that keyword of insect behavior that's like, I want to be there to be at a place like Purdue, to be able to be at a research-intensive university was like this dream job, right? And so I applied and then, lo and behold, I get it, and here I am, 30 years later. Yeah, and now you've kind of, we talked about you built this community within West Lafayette. You have a lot of friends here. What, what has it been like living in the Midwest and you stuck around? Yeah, it's been wonderful. I mean I really have enjoyed, as I said, a move growing up all over the place and had lived around the Midwest, but not had lived in this area. But Purdue became a real home for me, a real sense of community for me. It welcomed me into the community. I adopted two kids as a single mom and there was a huge supportive community for here and the research enterprise was just amazing. So supporting me in my career and my personal life. So Purdue became home very quickly and not a place I wanted to leave. That's amazing. Okay, so walk us through entomology. When you were young, were you fascinated by bugs? How did this passion come about? It does not come back when I was a kid, although my mother swears this because my father called me Linda Buck. I don't think that had anything to do with it. I really became interested in entomology in graduate school. I did not know that you could have a career in this and this is something I tried to tell students all the time. Experiences that you have may shape a different path than you think that you're going to on your original pathway. And so I was going to be Jane Goodall. I studied animal behavior and I wanted to go and I studied animal behavior in graduate school. I was studying squirrel behavior, where squirrels go to the bathroom and trees is said marking behavior. And it was when I was studying them that I found that they had insect bites on them and I didn't know what they were. And I went to the entomology department and I talked to a professor and he said, I could tell you everything about that, but why don't you take an entomology class? I'm like, okay, I need some electives. And I took one and then I took another and I was like, so I found my passion through kind of an accident of going and talking to a professor and he was very engaging and lots of great advice for me. And so I went on and got my PhD in entomology. So it wasn't anything that I ever knew about it. I had this complete right turn of what organism I was going to study. That's kind of so I was in news and I came here to Purdue and then you know podcast didn't exist then. So I got this experience elsewhere and then podcast came about and I did a left turn as we were just describing. And I think that's kind of the longer you go and things like I didn't know I'd be a grad dean, right? I didn't know that that was coming down my pathway and so it's not things that you actually seek out. I mean some people know very much this is what I'm going to be and that's what I'm going to do, right? But for the rest of us there are many opportunities to be able to explore and something comes about especially at an institution like Purdue where you have all these opportunities around you and all these amazing researchers and interdisciplinary work is so critical that you come across something you're like, I really like that. Didn't know that existed. And you can dive into that. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so you were on Jay Leno. You were on MTV's Road Rules. Tell us about these experiences. So I was starting to do some national media radio. I was doing some radio stuff for some commercial insect control methods and got some media training from that. And they came, the producers of Leno came to me and said we want an entomologist, want a woman entomologist to be able to do a segment on insects and it was for their bump weeks they wanted to be able to get sweeps and get, they thought that would bring in more an audience. Not sure why. But anyway, they asked me to come out and at first I told them no because it was during Mother's Day weekend and I had already planned to go down to my family and visit surprise my mother for Mother's Day and they said don't worry, we'll bring your mom out too. And so we went out, we spent the week getting ready for the show and working with the script writers and then taping the show and doing all that. It was a blast. And then once that went off, then other directors and producers came and started contacting and say, would you do this and would you do that? So that led to some really fun opportunities that I normally wouldn't have done as an entomology professor. How many people can say that? That's amazing. Do you have any mentors or you know, professors within when you were in grad school that really made an impact on your life path? Yeah, there was several. One, it goes back to my high school experience. So it was the Mrs. Brightman who got me excited about biology and encouraged me to say as a woman in science, you can do this, you can be successful in this and you need to do this because you have an interest in this and you need to follow your passions. And then the guy who got me into entomology, Professor Wayne Clark at Auburn University, was a big mentor who said you need to do that. But then I have several people and I would not label them and I tell students not even to label them as mentors because that puts a label on the context of the relationship. But people who have influenced me all through my career. Martin Jiskey, I was on the search committee that hired him. I worked on his strategic plan. He gave me the insights and details about being an administrator. My women deans that I have here at Purdue are all mentors to me in many ways of people that I can go to and talk to and ask them about things that I'm curious about. So you kind of frame it more as it's a friendship almost. It starts off as just maybe a question. I think if you go and you to say someone you be my mentor, it puts this label and it's heavy label sometimes. So what does that mean and how do both of us define that relationship? But if I go to you and say I really think you're a great teacher, I'd like to talk to you about teaching or you're a great statistician or you're a great writer or you know about this method I want to use. Can I come talk to you about that or I'm curious about this job opportunity and you have that conversation and it may lead to another conversation and another cup of coffee and eventually it becomes a mentoring relationship but you've never defined it early on as that. And so these are people that come in and out of your life that have added value to your life and shaped who I am today. But I never would have gone and they may not even know that they've had that influence in my life. I like that. So you were an entomology professor at Purdue for years and years. How did this path to a dean come about for you? So as I was came before professor, I had had some university experience. I was chair of the University Senate. And so I started exploring opportunities across the university and understanding how it worked more than just in my faculty role, but how the whole institution worked. And I had an interest in working with students and a passion for connecting more and helping students out with the way that I had helped my own individual students that had come through my lab. And so a job came open in the graduate school for an associate dean position. And it was in two big areas that I'm really passionate about and it was diversity and working with diverse populations in graduate school and then professional development, which is something I always had a passion with with my own student in my own life. And so they kind of gave me the opportunity to say, if you want to start looking at ways to explore that in graduate education and not just work for entomologists, but to work across all these disciplines that we have at the university. And so that was the pathway in and then the current dean left and they asked me to be the interim. And I said, okay, I'll try it out, never been in and tried it out to see if I liked it and then decided to apply for the permanent job and I loved it. You've really expanded the grad school and it's grown so much under your leadership. What were your initial goals coming in as that dean? So there were four. One was to increase the area of interdisciplinary work. I knew in the area that I worked in as an entomologist that I worked on a team. And it was this team of researchers that allowed me to make sure that my work had greater impact. And so I know many of our faculty are working the grants went from sole PI grants to being able to have this team of people that you worked with. And so bringing that to the grad school was one to look at where we're doing and we've completed that we now have a master's of science and interdisciplinary studies. We have new interdisciplinary degrees that are coming through. So that was accomplished. The other one was to increase professional development opportunities. We weren't offering very many workshops at that time. Now we're offering over 360 workshops a year. So I have really expanded the opportunity and I think we can offer that to take that burden off the colleges to things that every grad student needs so that you don't have to replicate it in every department in every college. So that was a major one for me. Another one was to be creative to look at Purdue for life. We traditionally think of graduate education as traditional master's and PhD research emphasis. But to me graduate education is anything you do after you get your undergraduate degree. And the world's changing so fast information is changing so fast that people need to be able to get access to knowledge and maybe in small little bits they don't need a graduate degree but they need you know big data wasn't a thing when I went to school but it is now. And so maybe once you graduated 10 15 years ago you didn't need to know that but you need to know that for your job now. And so that opportunity to offer this wide variety of any period in your life to come back to Purdue and get the knowledge that you need. And so we've been working on that. So those were the kinds of things that I was looking forward to be able to do. And then the last one was to provide increased support for graduate students. Yeah because I know you know at a school like Purdue it's at a larger school any big 10 school really it's hard to have that dedicated like champion for these grad students. I didn't even know Purdue's grad school was as big until I started researching before this interview. But why do you think that it's important to become a champion for people like that and kind of represent this underrepresented population. So a lot of people don't understand graduate education because it's the smaller portion of people that get graduate degrees. And they are such an integral part of a major research institution. They provide that further that next step in that education and services that they provide to the graduates of the graduate school and the university. So we have our students that are a traditional research. They're doing all things that you read about on the news right of research doing not a big part of that is done at the labor of graduate students doing their research for their graduate degrees. And so people need to understand that. So we have our like our innovative magazine that goes out to alumni and folks be able for students to be able to talk about their research and say this is what I'm doing. So that's a big part of graduate education to understand. They also provide the value for teaching many of the students that we have are going to go on into the professoriate. And so they need that experience in teaching. And so they provide that. What if we think of a three legged stool with the mission of a land grant institution the research the teaching and then the outreach. The students are getting that experience and provide much of that outreach that we do. So the university if you're going to be a research intensive university you have to have graduate students. And it's my job to be the advocate for them to make sure that they get what they need so they get their degree and the other things they need to be successful. And if you were talking to any grad students what what would you want them to see in you as their dean and kind of as their champion. So I the two words that I would apply to myself is an accessible advocate. So one of the things that I've tried to do is Dean is to make myself very accessible to the students available to them. So I do things like pop ups. I drive around on a golf cart and I stop and I pop up a tent and I give out popsicles and I'm there to talk about graduate education. So it may be to graduate students that's come by and say oh what are you doing and sit down and pop down in a chair and have a conversation. It may be to an undergrad that's going by and says what are you the dean of? Why are you here? And then I can say that you'll consider graduate education. And so to get them or parents walking by with their kids to arrange to be able to say you know this is the value of graduate education at Purdue. So being accessible to them I do coffee hours with the dean so I can't solve a problem that I don't know. And so to be not intimidating it's come by and talk to Linda. Linda wants to hear what you have to say tell me what's going on in your life and if there's an issue tell me about it and let me see if I can gain access to the resources to help you solve your problem. It's awesome because not all deans are accessible right? That's really special. And I think it's part of my personality too is I just feed off of other people's energy so to be around grad students I feed off their energy every day. Sure. So you brought the three-minute thesis and say it in six competitions to Purdue. Tell us a little bit about that and I know we were talking again before this but you're so into communication and you know being able to articulate what you want to say and not you know droning on and I know you have another story that I want you to share too but tell us a little bit about why communication is so important to you. I think there's two main reasons why communication is critical if we're going to do the research that we're going to do and students are going to study the things that they're going to study. We need to be trustworthy advocates for that research. One of the things that people don't understand is why oh they keep changing science they keep changing the results versus is good then it's bad and that's what science and research is all about is we learn something new we reevaluate we change what our recommendations are and then we do the next set of research that answer the next set of questions but if students can't do that clearly to the general public then the value of the work gets lost because people turn off because they don't understand what you're talking about and so to teach students how to have that ability to be able to talk about their work enthusiastically so I teach a class on being an engaging researcher and to be able to talk about it with enthusiasm you'll suck people in about what you're doing and they'll be curious about what you're doing and then you can educate them. The second one is that I think if students get excited about their work and talk to different people about their work then they themselves get engaged in it and when it gets really hard and you're hitting against the wall and the experiments aren't working or you can't solve this question that you're trying to solve if you go back to the roots of why what you're doing is important and you get that from talking to various people about what you do then that will get you through those really hard parts because you know the value down the road and why it's important for you to do the work that you're doing. Yeah absolutely and tell us about the final that they kind of have a set up just like this one. Yeah so I in this class on teaching students about being an engaging researcher we do a lot of improv we do a lot of impromptu speeches that they have to do and we teach them how to communicate getting rid of all the jargon and it's great because I have students from all over campus so somebody who's a romantic history major is trying to explain something to you know a computer scientist right or a biologist and they're like I don't know what that means and I don't know what that word means so we're able to go through and try to pull apart the language that they use and so then for the final exam what I do is I take them into a tv studio with lots of cameramen and all of that and I act like a crazy interviewer on a morning today show kind of a thing and I start asking the questions like I pretend like maybe they're getting the Nobel Prize or they're here for some award or some big conferences in town in New York City and we're interviewing them because of their great research and they have to be able to not know what I'm going to ask them this is crazy reporter and talk to them about what their research is and they have to be able to on the slide be able to talk about that and it's a great final because they're under the lights and the cameras and they just don't know what I'm going to say and then they get a copy of it at the end so they can see themselves have you ever had any students contact you after the fact and say hey I had an experience that was a little bit similar to this or well they did or they got asked to do it you know they became a professor and then they got asked to do an interview and they didn't have any media training and so they were able to reflect back on that conversation that they had that's awesome yeah it's fun um and in a recent board of trustees meeting there you did a presentation on how much the graduate school has grown I mentioned that before what does this growth mean to you it's record record numbers across the board yeah it's really exciting it's a time to be really excited about graduate education and graduate education and Purdue but for me it tells me that the message that we've been working on for the past four or five years as dean is getting out the students are understanding the value of a Purdue education the value of this research institution that they have the other things that we're offering the creativity of the new degrees that we're offering that are really timely and what students want that message is getting out because they're coming for the first time ever our number of online students that aren't coming to this campus outnumber the number of residential students we have and that even in my thinking about a professional development and how do we prepare those students for those careers it's a different process for the students that are here on campus and so it's great to be able to say the things that we've been doing the past several years the team that I've assembled at the grad school and the work that really is them that that team is doing is paying off because people are recognizing it yeah that's that's super exciting how would a colleague or a team member of yours describe your philosophy and your leadership within the graduate school well I'm pretty much I mean I describe myself as a servant leader that I'm there for them I try to do a lot of fun stuff to build our team because I understand to me that the team is really the important part of your work as a team it's not one individual I don't do one thing I have to have this team of people around me so I hope they would describe me as someone who's fun and willing to be adventurous and to pilot things I call myself the pilot queen if you want to try something let's try it if it's not successful okay we learned something if it is yay so I'm their I'm their champion in their cheerleader too for my team in the grad school yeah I could totally say that what is something you know our listeners a lot of them are Purdue alum a lot of Purdue community people listening what would you want them to know and understand about the grad school I think the most important thing is to understand the value of the work that the students are doing so anytime they hear the name Purdue or anything they hear about the work that we're doing it's because of someone probably in the grad school it's the graduate students that are doing that work that are on the cutting edge of where those disciplines are going and so anything you eat anything you build your tv your battery in your phone the paint that you have on your house the health situation that you may be going through the cancer research the furniture you know the woodworking the furniture that we build or the types of woods or trees or whatever is somebody at Purdue a faculty and a grad student are working on that and that that connection I want to make that tighter that people understand that you may hear about the professor and you may be here about the lab here but behind all of that there's probably a grad student somewhere in that mix that is doing that work and pushing that area of whatever that discipline is forward and and that's important I know we interviewed professor Ruan with his white paint yeah and he had this long list at the end and he was like I just want to thank all these grad students and started saying their names and I I loved that he was giving them a ton of credit as they deserve well then that's what we've been trying to do as and part of my dean job is to say when you interview the faculty member ask about the students that are in there because they probably are that labor behind a lot of that work and it's not just in the STEM disciplines there's you know we have the humanities here are very rich and very well developed and and so those students need to find value in their work and we need to be able to sing the praises of the value of all that work that's done here at Purdue so that people understand it's that whole complex that interdisciplinary part that we all need the social sciences and humanities and the STEM field all work together on many if we don't understand the people part we can understand why the button works on the computer right and so I think that value of that behind what graduate education is because most people don't get that part they just think it's you know they're getting another degree I mean I even had to explain to my parents why I was going to grad school you know why are you school so much longer okay let's see is there a favorite memory that sticks out whether you were a professor in your current role as dean well I think there's two and one the big one it's the commencement it's my favorite part of being a dean and I know a lot of people say that's crazy but it's such a happy time to see families and students who have worked so hard for this they may be the first person and the person who went to college right in their family or even to get a graduate degree to be now be the first one who as they walk across the stage say congratulations doctor so and so and to be able to say as I hood them to give that that's great joy to me I mean I just love that how many times you have a day when everybody's happy it's amazing and then there was a time when I was first going through as dean where I try to advocate for students as I've said that I think that's my biggest role and one of the things I did was to support the cultural centers to provide a grad student to help the cultural center meet the needs of graduate students each of those I'm sitting in a restaurant having lunch and the waitress came up as we were getting ready to depart and giving me the bill and I had a little folded up pieces of paper and gave me that piece of paper and she recognized me I hadn't ever met the individual and when I got out of the restaurant I opened it up and it was like you know thank you Dr. Mason for all that you do for graduate students and the cultural centers as an LGBTQ student this has been really valuable to me and I really appreciate the support and that to me was like whenever I get those kinds of students coming up and say thank you for what you've done it makes all the hard days worthwhile and it's a memory I have that note taped above my desk and I read it often it's one of those things that I try to tell students is keep those good things in a folder and pull it out when you're having a really bad day and it will make it an amazing day because you can go back over those memories of those times that you've helped the student to help them figure out their career goal help them through a problem I was talking to a colleague who's worked with you and she just kept saying Dean Mason is so accepting of everyone and an advocate for everyone why is that important to you when you think about you're encompassing everyone and you're so inclusive of everyone well I think partly comes from growing up and then a big part I think is I've adopted two kids from another culture than mine another race than mine and so making sure that they always we embrace them who they were one of my daughters is gay and to be able to embrace that community to me I want to be able to embrace all the students bring out the best potential of whatever they are and not to put labels on them but to be able to say you'd be the best at who you can be and shine the brightest of who you could be and so I think from my upbringing from that and then in my own family experience I want to make sure that I can help all the students who choose to come to Purdue to be their advocate whatever that might be for them no matter what their discipline is or whatever their background is if there's an issue that I can help them with then that's my job as the dean of the grad school is to represent all of them in their issues so that's awesome thank you for sharing that what advice would you give to today's Purdue grad student take advantage of all the opportunities that you have we you know so many students get so deep into the weeds and that's what we're kind of trained as graduate students is to get down into the weeds of that question that we're asking and what does it mean and all of that but we have to come back up every once in a while for air and this institution this town this community has so much to offer you as an individual and to be that complete individual to grow out all those skills that you have you know you ought to talk about all the little things that you want to put in your toolbox for the next adventure that comes take advantage of that one it gives you perspective on the thing that you're really the most important the things that you need to do it gives you kind of you can step back from that and get that perspective but you also learn all these other skills that are more important and sometimes even more important getting the job it won't be the degree that gets you the job everyone expects when you get a degree from a big institution like Purdue with excellent reputation that you're going to have the expertise in that training area you're going to be good at that then they're not going to question that it's all those other skills that come that are important as an individual that you may go work for a company or an institution or the government or whatever that you're going to bring to the plate and now is the time to continue to build those other skills and that's a role I think the graduate school needs to play and that we try to play and so step back take advantage of all the things that Purdue and I think a lot of students don't know all the things that are there because they never come up to the surface matter of fact we're doing a campaign this fall but did you know about all the things that you can take advantage of at Purdue as a grad student what would you say to someone who's considering and you know their next giant leap is attending grad school so ask a lot of questions it's really critical that you get in with a team a major professor a department that is going to match what you need everybody needs things differently different types of mentoring different types of assistance so first do the self-study of yourself and understand what your strengths and weaknesses are and then ask all those questions of the place that you're going go visit talk to the students that are in the program talk to the faculty tour the campus do you get a sense that this is where I belong for the next few years and maybe take some risks take and go to a place that I don't think I ever you know I'm from the coast I don't think I ever want to live in the Midwest try it out it's not forever you can try it out see if you like it and if you don't you can always go back to the coast right get out of your comfort zone get out of your comfort zone and enjoy it I think the community has a lot to offer and so does the university so check that out when you're going so that you make sure you get the right match what role has Purdue played in your life would you say oh my gosh professionally of course they gave me a job which was great and they've kept me in a job which what was awesome but I think the Purdue itself is the opportunity to explore both my research passions that I wanted that flexibility that I could be at an institution like this there were tons of research opportunities and resources available to me as a faculty member to be able to explore the questions that were fascinating to me and my students that was and then as a community it's given me the support to do the things that I like as an individual to explore the things that I like what I like to do in my spare time and the cultural aspects so they have opportunities that I can where I can volunteer my time it's been a great community for that so that I felt supported with that network in town and you've lived here 30 years 30 plus years yeah what does that Boilermakers spirit mean to you I think it's the can-do kind of attitude that Boilermakers have I find that when I talked to both undergraduates and graduate students it's that that we're at an amazing place and we we're going to we're going to solve these problems they're tackling some of the biggest problems that the world is facing and they're doing it with like we're going to figure this out and I think that's one of the things that Boilermakers do is we face the challenge we figure it out and then we take the next step I love that that's perfect um are there any other you know grad school opportunities that you want to highlight for us yeah I think there's a couple that I would say that a lot of people don't realize so a lot of students are able to do paid internships they go and they do internships with big companies that obviously can pay them and they can get that on the job experience but the grad school has opportunities for students who can want to do unpaid internships so we have a program called the Boiler Works program which they can apply to and then we give them financial support to cover what they would need for living expenses to get through this internship and then they can help local communities so there may be nonprofits in the area that would benefit from a student's expertise and they get real life experience so this is great town-gown relationship that we can help I think that's a great one innovated an opportunity for students to write an article that they can write about their research in non-technical terms that goes out to all our alumni and that opportunity for our alumni to be able to connect with students and bring back that experience of what is it like to be in that career and how did you take what you learned in graduate school and apply it to that career maybe you had some turns and twists and turns of your own right and you're now find yourself what is it that you did how did you find that path and can you give advice back to our students so an opportunity to come back and engage with our student population sure tell us about the graduate parents support network one of the things that's unique about graduate students is of course they're older they're a little older than undergrads right and you're wanting to start your family and so many people come back to graduate school and you're married or you're starting your family and you're young kids and now you're trying to balance kids and work and teaching and research and all of that and so on the GPSM we started when we could take this graduate talk to a graduate student that had a kid and she says I'm struggling to find a support system to be able to connect with other people that are have kids and want that and so we started this organization through the grad school and this network allows graduate students who have families to be able to find a way to find other people with families and support each other so it may be just a social network that they can connect through social outings but it also could be where they can do toy exchange or clothing exchange or advice what they're going to do and so that was hard during COVID because people were all isolated but now that we're back we'll be bringing the opportunities for them to get together and they bring a unique life experience to each other and then they can also support each other like I've got to teach this night and I don't have a sitter and I'll take your kids if you take mine and then you can I'll cover you when you do your final exam and so it's just an opportunity to connect with people to create that sense of community with individuals that are suffering through the same things that's a great idea well is there anything else you want to share with our listeners? You've been a delight thank you I think to understand that there's tremendous value in what the graduate students do in this community and if you ever are riding a bus or you see someone with a Purdue t-shirt and one of the things I know when I travel all over the world if you see someone in Purdue to ask them are they a grad student and what was their connection and to ask them about their research ask them questions about what they're doing and they're answering some amazing questions and take that opportunity to really dive in and have a cup of coffee over what that student is doing you'll find there are amazing people here at Purdue from all over the world 40% of our students are international so we have this wonderful community of individuals that are ready and ready to talk about their work that's incredible well thank you so much for joining us it was it was amazing you're welcome thanks it was fun