Christus.J.2528_8.27.25_Transcript This transcript is AI-generated and human reviewed: we utilize an AI software to generate the transcript, and it is then reviewed by Oral History Program (OHP) staff. As we review AI-generated transcripts, we cannot guarantee 100% accuracy and some inaccurate words and phrases will still exist. For these situations, words or phrases that are unclear are noted in brackets. Researchers should always refer to the original recording before quoting the text; they can also contact the Oral History Program if they cannot access the audio file for the document or for clarification about the text. Due to the scope of experiences encapsulated by the interviews in our collection, there may be offensive and/or distressing language present in both the transcripts and the audio recordings. The OHP stands against harmful and offensive language; at the same time, we do not censor such language when present in order to preserve the integrity of the interview as it was conducted. If not stated specifically here, funding for this transcript creation and editing was provided by either general OHP funds or specific gift of grant funds. 0:00:03 Dadit Hidayat: All right, my name is Dadit Hidayat, currently serving as the director of Wisconsin Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, or WiscAMP. We are here for the WiscAMP Legacy Oral History Project. So welcome. Can you please say your name with your last name spelled out and then briefly share your current role as well as your association with WiscAMP? 0:00:30 Jenny Christus: Sure. I'm Jenny Christus. I've also been known throughout this project as Jenny Shuttlefield-Christus. Now, just Jenny Christus and my last name is C-H-R-I-S-T-U-S. My current role, I'm at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. I am a professor of chemistry there and also the director of the Universities of Wisconsin IDEAS Alliance. My role with WiscAMP was as a campus coordinator. So I worked with the people at UW-Oshkosh to help implement the grant there. 0:01:14 Dadit Hidayat: Thank you so much. And let's start with the broad questions. How did you get to UW-Oshkosh? Where did you grow up? Where did you study? 0:01:26 Jenny Christus: Oh, goodness. I got to UW-Oshkosh through sort of a loop out west. I grew up in the Midwest. I grew up in Iowa. I did my PhD at the University of Iowa. And then I moved out west to the University of Wyoming to do a postdoctoral research position there. I was there for two years and had an amazing postdoc advisor, Dr. Bruce Parkinson, who fully supported me going out and searching for my dream job and offering me the opportunity to come back the next year if I didn't find my dream job for the first year. So just took tons of pressure off me to really go and find the position that looked, that was perfect for me. And so I interviewed and, you know, sent out my applications and interviewed and ended up applying, you know, being asked to come interview at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. And it just was perfect for me. It was, we have a sustainability mission. There's a strong culture of student faculty research, which was really exciting to me. It felt like I could have the best of all worlds where you're directly interacting and working with students while still being able to teach classes, small classes, medium-sized classes, large classes, but then do really high-level research. There was good research support. There was an opportunity to really bring students into that work at the undergraduate level, which I was excited about. 0:03:21 Dadit Hidayat: What led you to study chemistry? Was it like high school, or… 0:03:27 Jenny Christus: Yeah, that's an interesting question because that question, it was easy for me in high school, yet still a little challenging. So that's why I, that's why I did it. And I actually left chemistry for a period of time. Um, I, so I, I made it through my undergrad degree and I was a transfer. Well, I was a first generation student and I was a transfer student. So, um, I transferred in between my sophomore and junior year. And, uh, and, and in that transfer, um, I lost us about a semester, which, so I completed my chemistry degree in four and a half years. Um, but I was so, I was so tired of chemistry at the time that I, and it's hard for me to say this now, that I decided to try to pursue alternate pathways. And one of those pathways was I thought about pharmacy school, I thought about a lot of different ways to sort of move away from chemistry. And in the end, I would almost call it like I took a bridge year and a half. And I actually completed my economics degree. Because I could do that in a year. So I graduated, I ended up graduating in six years with two degrees, one in chemistry, but then one in economics also. And by the time I got done with economics, I actually realized how much I loved chemistry and how much I missed it. I really missed the opportunity to just feel so creative, you know, exploring different things in science. And, and so I decided to go to grad school. And, and that's when I went back. And I really wanted to do chemistry education. That was really the thing that it was, chemistry education was kind of starting to become a real field when I, right kind of in that timeframe, when I graduated, it wasn't really a sort of a a strong disciplinary area. We have organic and physical and inorganic and analytical, but chemical education really hadn't come into the really primary fold of chemistry yet. And so that was really happening. Right when I made the transition from undergrad to grad school, the chemistry education discipline was really starting to come out. And and so I was lucky enough at the University of Iowa to have Norb Pienta as my as as one of my Ph.D. advisors. He was at the time the he was just moving into being the editor of the Journal of Chemical Education and had been in that field for many years and really trying to bring it into into a real player in these disciplinary areas. And so it was really exciting for me to be part of that. And at the same time, I ended up doing also a science portion. So I didn't do just the chemical education part, but I ended up also doing the physical chemistry part of it, which was such a fun opportunity to be able to sort of almost like double major as a PhD student. That was a long answer, but it was a long pathway to get to that, to get through all of those things. 0:07:03 Dadit Hidayat: No, it was, it was a long answer, but, well, not detailed. Well, detailed, but then, of course, that's who you are, right? Your path, your winding path. [JC: Yes, super winding, yes.] Discovered economics as well, and then now you are back. If you didn't do economics, maybe you would not rediscover your... passion in chemistry, right? 0:07:26 Jenny Christus: And my economics major has served me well as I have to handle budgets and programming and planning. So there were lots of benefits that I didn't know I was going to get now as a faculty member. 0:07:40 Dadit Hidayat: Absolutely. Were you a transfer student from two-year college or another four-year college? 0:07:45 Jenny Christus: I went from like a regional comprehensive to an R-I. So I went from the University of Northern Iowa to the University of Iowa. So I went from smaller to larger in the process. 0:08:00 Dadit Hidayat: And that transition, I'm sure, helped you support your students too, right? 0:08:06 Jenny Christus: Yeah, I think there's a lot of that. I mean, being a first generation and also then being you know, like having that transfer experience really allow, I think allows me to, well, it provided me with so many learning experiences that I now always share. I try to share whatever I can with my students because I know all the things I learned in that and the things I was scared to do, that I now look back and say I shouldn't have been scared to do. And so I like to make sure that that's communicated to encourage them to reach out to faculty members to you know to get help if they need it to to ask a question and it's okay like somebody will want to help you answer it right. 0:08:58 Dadit Hidayat: And and really that's in you being an educator. That's why you were also interested in chemistry education partly because you want to make sure that students or learners in general have all the resources to succeed right. 0:09:13 Jenny Christus: Right, um so I was, I was finishing my um my, when I finished undergrad, I had a lot of instructors that were retiring. And I used to think about ways that we could have better integrated information and given that to students. And so it's always been sort of a fascinating interest that I've landed here because I was questioning that even as an undergrad. 0:09:43 Dadit Hidayat: Yeah. It's fun to learn. Your alternate pathway was pharmacy. My daughter is studying biochemistry and then should I double major in chemistry? But no, but I'm definitely interested in pharmacy too. So it's kind of similarities in the field of chemistry, basically, and all the branches. 0:10:04 Jenny Christus: Yeah, I worked at, so just as an undergrad, I was working at the Center for Advanced Drug Development, which does pre-FDA approved testing. And I think that's what really kind of drove my interest. It was just something that as I was doing that as a chemistry major. You know, working there, I could see sort of all of that drug development and, and thinking about, you know, whether to go into sort of pharmaceutical science, or whether to go to pharmacy school, like, that was all kind of hanging in my mind as I was trying to decide sort of my pathway forward. And whether I wanted to, you know, what I what exactly did I want to do with my chemistry degree, because I didn't, I didn't really know when I was finishing. 0:10:48 Dadit Hidayat: Right, right. Anyway, so everything that you shared earlier, being in that major, double major, transfer, as well as trying to help these students, chemistry education, that's kind of like the foundation of your energy when participating or starting to participate in WiscAMP, right? Could you take us back to those early years when you learned and then decided to participate in WiscAMP? What was the vision at the time? So, yeah. 0:11:17 Jenny Christus: Yeah, no, I think for me, WiscAMP provided a structure to everything I've just talked about, right? Everything that I've taught, like all of my winding pathway that I didn't know how to ask the questions. I didn't know. I sort of stumbled along because I didn't have anybody to guide me. And I thought when I first learned about WiscAMP, I was so incredibly excited to know that there was a structure in place to help students that may have not had the background to help them, you know, that were first generation or didn't have the resources. There were resources there, right? And so for me, because that time was so uncertain, and so I think I was, I think one of the things that I was most concerned with is I knew there were opportunities out there that I wasn't exploring, but I didn't know how to get access to them. And I didn't know how, I didn't even know how to open the door to get to who might know how to expose me to these different career paths or different career options. And so in that, what WiscAMP was doing and trying to build this program to help keep students in STEM and then, you know, move them to, you know, more professional programs, I was really excited. And I think a lot of that also stemmed from the fact that, like, I just, I felt lost. I didn't feel supported. And I felt like this was an opportunity for me to give back to the community and provide students with a structure and that opportunity to do undergraduate research, which is so important in terms of connecting to the community and wanting to continue that path building confidence. It was not something, I mean, I essentially left STEM, right? I left, I went to, I went to economics. I, and I cannot, you know, people could debate on whether economics is still STEM, but we, we, I moved away from sort of my, you know, the physical sciences because I, I was not confident in that pathway. And, and so I think had someone pulled me in and said, here, I'm going to, you know, like you should do undergrad research and you should be involved in this and you should be involved in that. Like, I think I would have been more likely to just stay. And I wanted to provide that level of support for students, I think, especially at regional comprehensives, who at our institution tend to be first generation. Also, we have a significant portion of our students are women. And so trying to bring them into STEM and fold them in and provide that sort of concentrated support. And one of the things that I thought was really, really the most amazing about this work and this opportunity for me, what I was able to do is I was able to provide support to students that wasn't necessarily based on on grade point average. Um so many things seem to be based off of academic um advancement, you know like trying to like, how how did you you know did you do well in all of your classes like that? That's great but there are I think that there needs to be opportunities also for students that are away from that, that support them sort of semester after semester after semester. And that's what I had the opportunity to do, which was really fulfilling for me. 0:15:12 Dadit Hidayat: So in other words, this is also saying that basically your experience when you left STEM and then managed to come back was still occurring, happening these days. And hence the support that you provided through WiscAMP tried to address that, right? [JC: Yeah.] Why do you think this? Are continuous like those challenges continuous in our, I don't know if it is specifically a STEM field or higher ed in general? 0:15:40 Jenny Christus: Yeah I think I think there's a number of reasons and I think I think some of it has to do with with some of the way I think higher ed is just built right like we're oftentimes built to to help advance the best students, the best students are are really in some ways easy to advance because they they're, they're highly motivated they know kind of what they want. We can help them get where they want, like we know the pathways we know how to do that. It's the students that aren't as confident in their pathway that I think it it's, it's where we lose them because we, they don't know exactly what the career outcome could be. They know that they're investing a lot of time and energy. These degrees are hard. They have to spend a lot of time, right? I think that it's easy to get exhausted. Then in that, you look for something that might be easier, or an opportunity that's safer because, and I think for me, that's what economics was. It was safer. It was something that I knew, like, it's just a kind of a business degree, right? Like I could go out and do anything in business. Like there's business everywhere. And so in that, it was not, it was really after doing that, that I recognized that I was going to miss chemistry enough to want to like, to not want to miss out on that opportunity. But not everybody gets that privilege, right? Not everybody gets the privilege to go to college for six years. And so I was really lucky to have a supportive family that allowed me to explore those pathways instead of saying like, no, you graduate, like you've got one degree, like let's just go. You need to do something with it. But instead really being able to find, utilize that support to find what I really did care about the most. 0:17:41 Dadit Hidayat: You kind of like alluded that STEM field in general may be or may present more challenges than any other fields. Maybe speaking from your own experience, shifting between, not shifting, just trying to embrace both chemistry and economy, right? Like, could you speak more on that? Why STEM fields are perceived as more challenging? 0:18:03 Jenny Christus: Yeah, I think that I think that there's a time commitment, first of all. Right. There's a lot of, there's a real difference in in a schedule when you go to four classes and they're each three hours long and you're really you're really only in class twelve hours a week. Right. They're, STEM students, that's not the case for us. They come and they spend three or four hours in lab in the afternoon. And that's if everything goes right, which is also pretty rare for something to happen, that goes perfectly. But then in addition to that, you know, once you leave, there's oftentimes just a heavy burden of reporting. You know, we do a lot of like written lab reports. There were weekly, you know, there's just a heavy amount of work that goes into that. And I think especially for students in these sort of STEM pathways with these labs. That it's just time consuming and it's learning to balance that time. I mean, if you have four different labs for all four of your different classes and then you're trying to and our students in particular are trying to manage employment, in addition to that, they're trying to pay for schooling. It's it's a lot. And so I think for them, you know, it's that's why I also thought that having something like WiscAMP was so important because it's it's really providing that support to where, you know, we could do a project and they could get support for that project. But then they could also turn around and use that project as their capstone project and and and be able to sort of overlap and, and push that opportunity to, one, be, you know, be supported and be funded and not have to work as many hours outside of school, while also then using that in their curricular work. 0:20:15 Dadit Hidayat: Right, right. And I can imagine with these younger students, undergraduates, who also have socializing needs, needs for socializing, right? Oh, “Why do I have to stay in the lab for four hours? And why do I have to do all this reporting? I want to get out,” right? So do you have a story while you're interacting with students as they navigate and trying to balance all this new world for them? Because college is also a new thing for them, right? So do you have a particular story of your students where they were trying to do their best they can in staying in STEM? 0:20:56 Jenny Christus: Yeah, I think, well, I think there's a number of students. I mean, I can think of a couple in particular that did struggle to find an identity in that, in STEM. And at some points, you know, they're sitting in your office crying and saying, “This is too hard.” Like, this is too much. And I think in particular when, the most oftentimes when I've had those experiences with students, it's when I am their faculty research mentor. It's when I'm somebody that they trust that they can come into and say, “I don't know that this I don't know if I can do this anymore. I don't know that this is for me.” And I'm thinking about one student in particular, um, that, and she came into my office and, and said that, and we just started to break it down. Like we started to break down, you know, what she, what her interests were and, and as much as she loves science, you know, how did, how did, what was the best way for her to proceed? What was the best way, um, that like we, as, as, as an institution could support her to get to her career goals. And, and that, that actually in the end meant that she took one last class a semester so that she felt like she could focus, you know, and again, this goes back to resources and opportunity and not every student has that opportunity, but she did. And so we slowed her curriculum down. We slowed things down so that. And we tried to find overlap, these different kinds of places like where she could do things like undergrad research that would apply for class projects and things like that. And I think working together, we were able to do that. And she's still in STEM today to this day. And she graduated probably eight, nine years ago. And I will say that the thing that I think was most, I know the impact I had only because her mom came up to me at her wedding and said that you, when she met me, we had never met before. And she said, “When you send your kid off to college, you hope that they find people along the way to help guide them. And she did. And I'm very appreciative that you did that.” And so it was really like just a really nice moment to, you know, to to say like, OK, so that all of our work really helped. 0:23:35 Dadit Hidayat: Oh, that was so very kind of her saying that. [JC: Yeah.] Oh, yeah. I almost didn't have anything to say on that because I don't I don't have anything. It's just I was tearing up. I'm not faking this. I was tearing up. Like, I feel like that's kind of like, the best kindness, you know, just something to say from someone, right? You didn't expect that, obviously. You just want to do what you were informed by your experience, by your mentor, by whatever it is. All right. So let's try to move on. I feel like I was speechless. So anyway, you also said something. About somehow, maybe clarification first. You said something about the significant population of your student is women. Is it also typical in Oshkosh? 0:24:31 Jenny Christus: Yeah, just Oshkosh. Yeah, Oshkosh I think is typically about forty five percent is what we used to run. Or maybe not. It was forty five percent first generation and sixty percent women. [DH: Campus wide?] Yeah, campus wide. [DH: Oh my. Yes. OK.] Yeah. And I think a lot of that, we have been known, so our institution has been widely known for our College of Nursing and also our College of Education and Human and Health Services. And so I think there's been just traditional pathways that have affected our enrollments. I don't know exactly where we are anymore, but that's where we used to sit. We used to sit about forty five percent first generation. And then I think it was about fifty seven, fifty eight percent women. 0:25:22 Dadit Hidayat: Wonderful. And you don't have to say much about. I just want to acknowledge that also you were also leading University of Wisconsin IDEAS Alliance, which is also, it initially was about supporting women in science, right? And obviously that is still part of your identity too, coming into WiscAMP and still leading the IDEAS Alliance. Why, could you say more about the significance of supporting women in science? Like what was the motivating factor in you that, yes, this needs to happen? 0:26:00 Jenny Christus: Yeah, I think. Well, so I'll say first that when I so I did take over when I took over the program, it was “women in science.” Well, “Women and Science.” So our name was sort of misleading. It was sort of strange. It was the it was UW System Women and Science. So I don't know why it's very separate. Um we uh we changed our name back in 2018, um 2019 to the Universities of Wisconsin Alliance for Inclusion Diversity Equity Advancement and STEM more to align with the movements that were happening nationally. Um but we it, the things I think that were most important for me um were I think um in, I grew up on a farm in Iowa, and that's also a very gendered profession. And so I think early on, I recognized sort of those gender differences. And as the oldest child, my family did not have the opportunity to um worry about that. So I was, I was drug along everywhere with my my father and um and really put into uh into a traditional man's world. And uh and so I um I think going into STEM for me felt natural because I wasn't, it was just the world that I had lived in for so many years, being a man dominated world. So I, I didn't really feel a lot of that, a lot of gender differences until actually later on in my career. And it wasn't really until really until I took my faculty position that I felt it the most. And so I think for me, I started then to recognize differences in how I had been treated earlier on in my career when people would say things to me like, “Oh, well, you probably don't want to do research. You probably just want to teach, right?” Really implying that gender difference as to, you know, well, you wouldn't like as a woman, you wouldn't want to, you would much rather teach right then that that's the way you would want to go. And so I started to really think about some of those things and put those experiences together. And then just had again, I had a few, what I would also say, classify as really inappropriate things happened to me as a faculty member that then turned my interest even stronger into really trying to support women and any sort of, you know, historically excluded individuals from STEM I I just I began to recognize it more and more. I began to think about my experiences more and more my actions my words my you know my language like I started to really I just it, it really started to become a passion for me and thinking about how I needed I needed to do this work and and how important it was for me to do this work. And so um when the opportunity came up to become the director I really wanted to step into that role even though I was, it wasn't my training. I was unfamiliar with a lot of a lot of those pieces but I wanted to learn and I wanted to develop and I wanted to um I wanted I I really wanted to have an impact in that area. 0:29:59 Dadit Hidayat: So throughout your uh, growing up undergraduate and even graduate school, you were in an environment where you were fully supported, right? Until then, later in a career, oh, what happened back then during my, like me, like earlier years? So I guess I never really thought about that because those existed for you already uh thankfully and you get to learn from them um and I think this reminds me one of the things that you said earlier too about providing undergraduate research. I never realized that that was kind of like a gendered also uh like the research part, and now you wanted that the under creative research is one of many that you want to provide to undergraduate students and and given the population that you have too it's just perfect. Because yeah it happened to be um female dominated and then it's good, uh now now we get to do this um but can you go deeper more about the WiscAMP in at UW-Oshkosh, like what sort of programming that you offer um and how students uh navigated those? 0:31:04 Jenny Christus: Yeah so we um, so I really, I did two kind of two different pathways with, or two different things with WiscAMP at UW-Oshkosh. So the first part I was, I was helping the WiscAMP leadership team recruit instructors to try to implement those sort of best practices research. And there were a number of conversations and things that happened with instructors at UWO to, you know, do some of the work that Marcus was doing. But then in addition to that, like our real project with the students was to have them, I wanted to integrate it sort of as seamlessly as possible with our typical research experiences, but still provide just a little bit more around that and then what we had done in the past. And so then, what we typically do, I should say. So students, I would recruit students, I would ask them to, you know, to if they were interested at a really low barrier, like it was basically they just had to meet with me. And we went through sort of a series of questions. And I asked that, you know, I just wanted them to tell me about their interest and, you know, what they wanted to do with their life. And and then, you know, sort of what their current situation was, had they done research, were they, you know, had they been supported in the past? One of the ways we had set up the project also was because we've had a pretty consistently funded McNair program through the summer. It was a real opportunity to sort of help students wrap around McNair. So if they'd started a McNair project in the summer, they could finish it through the fall and the spring. And so just trying to learn about what the student really wanted. And I would say that all of my students had really personalized experiences. So none of them were the same. They were all very different. And we, I worked with a number of mentors across across our campus to help students have an experience with a faculty mentor. And, and so they, they would come in, we would, they would do a research project there. They had to submit some sort of final outcome to me. So typically what we do for an independent study project is we have a student do a five-page report on what they accomplished over the semester. So they could do that. They could also do a poster. So we have a celebration of scholarship event at our institution every April. They were able to present that work at that if they so chose. And so trying to get them to think about I worked with a lot with all of them to think about their career sort of broadly, like, how can you, and it was sort of what I was saying earlier, how can, how can you use this project to get other outcomes? So yes, we can, you can do the poster, but then like, you can also get a poster presentation out of it to put on your resume or your CV by presenting at Celebration of Scholarships. So I tried to work with them to teach them different ways to build their resumes while they were doing this work. And we only, our funding supported up to six students a semester. So it wasn't like a large number of students, but it was a number of students that was manageable to really give that sort of personalized mentoring to. So in addition to my mentoring, though, they were required to meet with their academic advisors and within their own discipline. So at UW-Oshkosh, we all advise our own majors. So whoever they were, whatever their major was, they had to meet with their advisor. And then they also had to attend two STEM seminars a semester. So I asked them to go and to watch, um to and it didn't matter what it could be in chemistry it could be in geology it could be in biology it didn't matter what where who was presenting but they just had to, um they had to do a little write-up about that like that presentation and sort of what they learned from watching that STEM seminar. So um the other thing that I would say about what we did that I, I thought was was really beneficial was the opportunity to support students semester after semester. And one student, I think we supported for two years straight. And so that was just a real opportunity to what I thought give a continuous experience because a lot of the students that I've worked with, I've started with a number of students as first years. And by the time they get to the fourth year, that level of knowledge and connection and belonging to the science is so much stronger if they get a longer period of time to interact with you. And so I think one of the things I felt luckiest about was being able to fund students for multiple semesters, connecting year after year after year, because that really grew, it allowed them the real opportunity of growth. I think you can definitely learn in a semester, but I think you can really grow as a scientist, as a person. You know, as as you really engage with a project over time and have to struggle, things don't go right and and have to work through problems for a long period of time. And so that's I think one of the things looking back now that I feel really luckiest to have been able to do is support them for those longer periods of time with no, you know, no, like oh you you know you have to meet these requirements like academic requirements, you know it was just, it was like I could just support you and you can do the work and that was really exciting for me. 0:37:26 Dadit Hidayat: Would you say that I agree with you, like the continuous support is essential, would you say that the earlier years were more crucial? I think I'm going to use your quote that you felt lost and not supported back then so that initial years in STEM that some of the students, if not supported, then would also be lost. 0:37:49 Jenny Christus: Yeah, I think, you know, I don't know that it's the first year as much as it's the second and the third year, which might be contrary to what most people think. But I think that I see the second year, the second year is when people really start to question what they're doing. You know, you get, you make it through the first year and the first year is kind of chaotic and then you get into the second year. And, and I think that's when you start to see the good and the bad of what you picked, you know, you're like, okay, I could do this, but maybe I don't like this. And, and I think by that time too, you have enough experience to feel at least comfortable with the basics with your, you know, you know how to do your classes, you know how to do that stuff, but then, then what? And, and I think when I worked with students in that second and third year, it's been so beneficial because then they really are able to, to develop, they, they find their place, you know, they find their, like, oh, I can do that. Or maybe their confidence is a better word. You know, they really seem to seem to connect to that then. Um and earlier I've had students I've worked with in their first year and I think they they're they're fine they're just really so inexperienced in that that they don't they don't really know what they're doing yet and and it's good to get them in there and and they get to see things. But then by the second and the third year they really are starting to to feel like they can take on something. 0:39:22 Dadit Hidayat: Would you say because it's quite a small number of students that you work with every year. And then you don't have to show me accurate data or tell me accurate, but would you say that the large majority of them stay on and complete STEM degree? 0:39:39 Jenny Christus: Oh, I think they all did. I think we all, all of our students stayed. Yeah. I think I don't, I can't think of one. I was trying to think of this actually when I was filling out the annual report stuff. I think I, I cannot think of one that didn't stay in STEM. Absolutely. Yeah. 0:40:00 Dadit Hidayat: That's evidence of your work. 0:40:02 Jenny Christus: Yeah. I mean, that's the hope. And I know a number of them still, a number of them are still in Wisconsin and in STEM. And so that's working for like MilliporeSigma, for example, in Sheboygan. So that's, yeah. 0:40:19 Dadit Hidayat: Because the argument is between, okay, can we invite them into STEM? Yes, that's question number one. But number two, can we help them stay, and complete the degree right? So obviously um um you you you have that feeling of accomplishment that oh yeah most of them or all of them actually stay on can complete the STEM degree. Um all right well thank you for all this detailed uh uh WiscAMP experience. Now I’d like to switch a little bit to your leadership/administrator role. Unfortunately, WiscAMP is ending. But even like you said earlier, WiscAMP will help you continue your passion, your approach, right? So the principles are there. WiscAMP helps nurture that principle, but your ideas are already in there, right? So how would you, as a leader, administrator in your university, how would you strategize this without this particular LSAMP funding? 0:41:25 Jenny Christus: Yeah, I think this is a really great question. And as I was telling you earlier, our institution has undergone a restructure. And so we're now the College of Nursing Health Professions in STEM. And one of the things our institution has also undergone is just a, a realignment of workload. We used to have a really strongly supported curriculum reassignment opportunity for, so you could apply to work with students, to do research with students, and then basically get almost like a course credit for that, to do that work. And that has gone away in the past four or five years. And we're fighting to get it back because I think a number, especially of STEM faculty, believe that that's what made our institution strong. And provided that experience and pathway for students to go on to grad school, to go into industry, to go on to pharmacy school, to go on to med school. It's that opportunity to expand their thinking and help them grow and realize what they want to do while still trying to keep people in the STEM fields. And so for me, I have utilized some of the information from WiscAMP more than once. We, in doing some of our annual report work and some of the reporting we used to have to do for the National Science Foundation, I have shared some of that data with our deans, our leadership teams in the past. Just some of the data we had to gather to put together that I thought was really informative about just like demographically who we were graduating, what that looked like, you know, for different different departments. Uh at our institution our our STEM departments are small we we have only about a hundred um instructors total and across you know ten different ten or eleven different um departments and so it's um it's a small community and and while we're still serving a pretty significant number of students. And you see discrepancies and you see some really, you know, you see some demographics that follow sort of the national demographics, but then you see other areas where like a department may have no women majors, which we did see. So I think even in thinking about how how how some of the data has been handled at WiscAMP like that has helped us just as a as a leadership team because it it brought us the data that we weren't even thinking about and asking us to do that. But then I also think that the experiences of students and the data that Marcus's team has been working on for the past few years also trying to figure out, you know, the best practices, if best practices are best practices for STEM, which I always thought was an amazing question. So sharing some of that data, those outcomes are, I think, so important. And I also now think that not just in the classroom, but then bringing it back to the undergrad research, like we really don't want to lose that aspect of connection with the students because I it's what I you know it's what we've talked about with the students from WiscAMP like they had an amazing experience and and the ones that I know of still are in STEM today I don't know I haven't stayed in contact with all of them but um a number of them I have and and and so those um that's only beneficial to our society right like to try to keep um people in these areas and working. 0:45:45 Dadit Hidayat: Right. Now, as you're leading this IDEAS Alliance as well, would you be able to speak more on the inter-institutional aspect of infrastructure, aspect of WiscAMP? Like, how would you see that this is something that should continue? 0:46:01 Jenny Christus: Yeah, I think one of the things I'm saddest about with WiscAMP coming to an end is are the people that worked on the grant. And there was actually a lot of overlap in our advisory board for the IDEAS Alliance and the people that worked on WiscAMP. And I think that speaks to the community of people that are trying to do this kind of work across the state. And I always, it was always nice for me to to be able to come to WiscAMP, have a few familiar faces, meet a few new faces, you know, and expand that community, but also just try to bring connections between the two. I think WiscAMP and the IDEAS Alliance worked for years together trying to, you know, do just inclusive work, trying to bring more students and keep more students in STEM. And, and so I think as we, as we continue to advance that we’ll, I think we share the same mission in the end. And, and so trying to continue on that legacy will be will be critical, I think, for a number of us that were on, especially on both boards, you know, that were both that were in both parts. But I hope to keep that community alive in some way. And if there's a way that we can do that, maybe we should think about that. Like, if there's a way that the IDEAS Alliance can continue to keep that community alive of people that were working, because that's, I always just felt like it was a sister program to us. You know, it was something that was, you know, I would see these people that essentially cared about the same mission as the IDEAS Alliance. It was just being implemented in a different way. And it was nice to feel the camaraderie while not having to feel like you had to do the work. Just building that collaboration. 0:48:12 Dadit Hidayat: Absolutely. And everyone has their own expertise and roles, right? Like when you said immediately, I thought you don't have to do all the work. You can focus on interacting with students. Unfortunately, you still have to do the the invoicing and the sub award thing personally but you can't really get rid of it but at least someone else uh the lead alliance in this case you know the [word unclear] can take care of the majority of the administrative and then the other sub awards can focus on the students. Yeah yeah um yes I can see the similarities I can see the overlap and I hope that I hope too that uh I think it's not impossible. You know the individuals just maintain that connection, because I feel like the most challenging aspect of this is the inter-institutional infrastructure that was developed over twenty years plus, twenty plus years. And I can say a campus-wide unit on campus here at UW-Madison who tried to do, and they have been established for many years, two decades, and they try to do some statewide work. They do not have this sort of relationship with other UW System. So that's, I feel like both IDEAS Alliance as well as WiscAMP have that luxury or privilege of having that infrastructure established. And if we can do some excellent STEMs, excellent work, then it should build on this infrastructure. All right. We are at time. And do you have anything else that you would like to share? that I didn't get to ask? 0:49:52 Jenny Christus: The only thing that I will say, I guess, that I thought about a little bit as we were just preparing for this is that I just, I want to thank all of the staff, you, Gail in particular. Gail and I worked closely together for so many years. She was just a force to be reckoned with, just an amazing human. And I just really feel lucky to have been part of the group. Collaboration is one of my favorite things because I think it's the opportunity to just work with humans that that believe in the same thing you do and so um I really just appreciate being able to be a part of it. 0:50:38 Dadit Hidayat: Yeah well thank you so much. I'm only here for just over a year but I can see especially during that renewal proposal development I can feel these collective energy of making this work uh and and trusting me with some changes although of course I have you all have rights to be unhappy with our approach. But yeah yet still managed to find okay let's do this let's do this together and and yeah during that short time I can feel what you what you just said about the sense of collaborative, collaborativeness. That's not even a word but you know what I mean in this in this collaboration. But anyway thank you so much. This has been great and I do want to talk to you for a minute or two after I stop the recording. Uh but Jenny, I'd like to conclude the oral history interview with Jenny Christus and thank you for your time. Appreciate it 51:33 Jenny Christus: Thanks.