Dr. Jason Diaz - Teaching the Next-Generation Scientist

In this episode of The Wistar Institute's podcast, science educator Dr. Jason Diaz shares his passion for teaching, and how he brings Wistar Science into the classroom for diverse students from all backgrounds. Join us as we explore his drive to impart the hands-on skills and mindset needed to build the next-generation scientist.

Transcript

(00:01) Dr. Maureen Murphy

This is Wistar Science Up Close, where we tell the stories of researchers who are global leaders pushing the boundaries of what's possible in biomedical research. I'm your host, Dr Maureen Murphy. I'm the Deputy Director of Wistar's Ellen and Ronald Caplan Cancer Center. I'm also a teacher, and I love to learn. In each episode of Wistar Science Up Close, we'll take you into the labs and lives of our scientists to learn about their special expertise in fields like vaccine development, immunology, infectious diseases and the fight against cancer. We'll also get to know a bit about our scientists outside of the lab, hear the stories of their professional journeys, and find out why they do what they do.

(00:45)

It's my sincere pleasure today to interview one of my favorite people at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, Dr. Jason Diaz. Dr. Diaz helps run our education programs at Wistar, and I'm delighted to tell you that he does so with enthusiasm, panache and integrity. More recently, he was promoted to Director of Education and Inclusive Excellence. Jason, are you ready for some probing questions about your life, your work, and what motivates you in the training of future scientists?

(01:16) Dr. Jason Diaz

I will do my best. I would say, if it was from anyone else, I would be more nervous, but you have been a great friend and mentor already in the two years that I've been here. So I'm really looking forward to the conversation.

(01:27) Dr. Murphy

Wonderful. So my first question is, let's say you meet someone at a party who doesn't work in science, how do you describe the Wistar Institute to them?

(01:37) Dr. Diaz

So I'm not attending too many parties nowadays, but I do encounter this problem all the time when I am going out to schools in Philadelphia, trying to get high school students excited about what we do at Wistar. So when I am interacting with those students, I like to say that we at The Wistar Institute are scientists who are studying and trying to better understand disease and also trying to discover cures for those diseases. And broad themes that we kind of focus on The Wistar Institute include cancer, vaccines, immunology, but we're also a great place to learn how to do science, and there's a lot of opportunities for students at any stage of their career to come to Wistar and start their path to becoming a scientist

(02:21) Dr. Murphy

Since you joined Wistar a few years ago, what was the one thing about Wistar that pleasantly surprised you? You weren't expected to find but you did...

(02:29) Dr. Diaz

I think one of the things that was, I was not sure how it was going to manifest, was, you know, Wistar is that we're not a school, which is something I have to sometimes remind people, because they just assume, "Oh, you're scientists, so you must be a school." So we're not a school, which means that -- while we do have trainees, like graduate students and postdoctoral fellows -- our education and training center where I work is its own special place, kind of within Wistar. I wasn't really sure outside of the center how much integration and buy-in we had, really, across the institute, and I was so pleasantly pleased. I don't think I was surprised, but I was really happy to see really how integrated the education and training mission is across the institute. 

(03:08)

And actually, I think one of the things that makes Wistar such an amazing place to work, to do the kind of work that I do, is that integration between the faculty, who are doing really amazing science, but who are also really committed to training and being a place to foster the next generation of scientists. And there's something about our size also where we're big enough to have a really robust community, but small enough that we can really work strategically and collaboratively, that I haven't really been able to find something quite this magical at either research institutions are even small, primarily undergraduate institutions. So it's been really nice.

(03:45) Dr. Murphy

I would agree with that, that we're really the perfect size where we all know each other by first name. So tell me about how you explain what you do for a living - give me your 30 second elevator pitch.

(03:57) Dr. Diaz

I am a science educator, and when I think about those terms, I really think about science education; really across what you like to call "the life cycle of a scientist." So here at Wistar, I really work on training programs for young scientists as young as high school age all the way through graduate students and post doctoral fellows and actually eventually into junior faculty, although that's a little bit of your space, Maureen, so I don't want to step on your toes there. And so I really think about what are the best and most effective ways for getting people excited about doing science, but also giving them real skills and the mindset of thinking like a scientist?

(04:32) Dr. Murphy

Wonderful. I'm going to start early in your journey. Tell me where you grew up, how old were you when the science bug bit you, and your trajectory from being a young Jason Diaz to now.

(04:44) Dr. Diaz

Where I grew up, is always, I -- even now I'm 37, I still don't know how to easily answer that -- and that's because we moved around a lot as a kid. So I guess I'll start by saying that my dad is from the Jamaican Republic. He immigrated here when he was about 12 years old, and he met my mom in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. And her family is from Puerto Rico. And so I was born and grew up in a really rich kind of Hispanic/Latino immigrant community in Perth Amboy. But growing up, we moved around a lot as a family. So I've lived in Wisconsin, Illinois, Connecticut, and eventually Pennsylvania. And so I've really been a lot of different contexts, and kind of had the experience of maybe feeling a little bit different in all those contexts, and that was sometimes difficult, but I think ended up being really good formative experiences for me. 

(05:30)

And I think what really helped me get through that was really identifying as a nerd when I was in high school. We had moved to Pennsylvania at that time, and I think two important things happen at the same time: 

(05:42)

The first was the neighborhood that we lived in. It seemed like everyone around me, it was probably only like four or five houses, but most people around me had adults who were working at Merck Pharmaceuticals at their West Point campus. And so I just kind of heard lots of conversations about pharmaceutical companies, and that got me questioning like, well, who are these people who are actually making the drugs and therapies that doctors are using? Now, by that time, I had figured, I think I wanted to become a doctor. I think, you know, I liked the idea of helping people, but also using, you know, my nerdiness to kind of help diagnose people and also take care of people. I had not really considered, like, where do the drugs come from, actually, right? And so that kind of set the seed in my mind of thinking, oh, there's other ways of being involved in kind of helping people with disease that are also really nerdy and in this kind of other space. 

(06:32)

So at the same time, I had the first of a very long line of amazing teachers and mentors who really got me excited about science. So when I got to high school, I had amazing science teachers. So I had an earth and space science teacher -- and I don't do any earth and space -- but I still remember so much from that class with Mrs. Bobby Paul, because she just really inspired us to ask questions, be curious about the world around us. And that really set me up for junior year, when I had Dr. Barbara Russell teaching chemistry. And that still remains, I think, a central love of mine, even though I don't really do chemistry anymore. And she, again, really challenged us to think about, how is chemistry, you know, in our lives around us right now, and that happened around the same time that I was really thinking about, what is this pharmaceutical industry everyone's talking about, and realizing, oh, there's this connection of there's a lot of chemistry involved, and just thinking about how cells work, how we'd come up with therapies and things like that. 

(07:31)

So maybe biochemistry, that's when the word "biochemistry," like, really entered my brain and was maybe a path for me. And I had some other amazing teachers, Mrs. Mary Cattillo and Mrs. Sandy Knotts, who coached me on Science Olympiad. So yes, I was that kid doing science after school too, right? And just really kind of guided me on my development in my identity as a scientist. So that really set me off to become a biochemistry major at Ithaca College in Upstate New York. And there I had an amazing set of teachers, and since then, you know, I've really been lucky to have lots of great science mentors throughout my graduate degree and beyond. So I trained with Dr. Jianxin You, who's a faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, studying tumor virology. I did my post-doctoral fellowship in Dr. Kimberly Gallagher's lab in the biology department at Penn, doing plant research and was mentored by Dr. Janis Burkhardt at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and she's still a key mentor for me now, and even after, you know, finishing my training and going into teaching, my current supervisor -- she hates that I call her my boss -- but Dr. Kristy Shuda McGuire, our Dean of Biomedical Studies here at Wistar, she is my boss, but she is more than that. She's a mentor, and she has really been focused on developing me as a professional. So I'm just so grateful for their mentorship and for the impact that they've had in my life.

(08:57) Dr. Murphy

It sounds like you think a lot of your key mentors shared one common attribute, and that is that they fostered your curiosity.

(09:05) Dr. Diaz

Yes, and actually I would add to fostering curiosity, instilling in me the confidence in my own ability. And that actually is something that I take very consciously with me in my approach to training scientists. Because I think, you know, as someone who came from a Hispanic/Latino background, and I'm also a gay man, and that was something that I didn't really come into until I was a college student and was really grappling with how to integrate that with my identity as a Ph.D. student beyond, I think that there are a lot of ways that people from different backgrounds that have historically, maybe not had the same amount of participation are really kind of given messages that either:

(09:46)

A. They're not capable, or B. That they have to just work so much harder in doing it. And sometimes one of the best gifts that we can give trainees in those situations is to instill in them the confidence and the faith in themselves that they do have what it takes to do this, and it's just a matter of recognizing it, drawing it out, and also helping them recognize that, you know, one of the things that makes us all stronger is being able to rely on each other, and that, you know, reaching out to people you know, asking for help and having trust in each other is important. So I think that's a theme for all of my mentors, and something that I really take with me in how I design our training programs here at Wistar, as well.

(10:27) Dr. Murphy

Did you always know that you would combine teaching with science? And what advice do you have for people who want to combine teaching in science?

(10:35) Dr. Diaz

I love this question. I did not always know that I wanted to be a teacher. I think, as I mentioned, when I was maybe middle school into high school, I thought I wanted to be a physician, and then I was thinking, "Oh, maybe scientist?" And throughout that time, I knew that I enjoyed telling people about how awesome science is, right? I was the nerdy kid in class that people knew they can go to to ask for help on their homework. And I really enjoyed that, and building on that, when I went to college. I really took advantage of opportunities to tutor and to be a teaching assistant. And actually being a teaching assistant at Ithaca was amazing, because I really got the opportunity to work with my peers, really, and help teach them. And I was teaching them introductory chemistry, helped develop different strategies for different students and realizing, oh, everyone kind of approaches things in a different way. I remember, actually, one of the experiences that I love from my time as a teaching assistant was talking with a physics student who was taking chemistry, and I had taken just enough physics have some idea of where she was coming from. And we were talking about, like, polarity. It says the idea that molecules can maybe have charged ends. You know, one end is maybe positive, one is negative, and probably, like, three people listening to this podcast are gonna understand what I'm about to say. But I -- she was having trouble grasping the concept -- I knew that if I explained it using the concept of vectors, which is very important in understanding physics and math, that she would get it. So I explained it to her that way. No one else in the recitation period knew what I was talking about, but it immediately clicked for her. And that was a really cool experience for me to recognize that it's really fun actually, to kind of meet people with different contexts and try to figure out what's the best way to help them connect to this material, right? And so I was so excited by that, and that really changed my trajectory from really wanting to go into the pharmaceutical industry as a kind of a researcher, and instead think about, well, I still like doing research. 

(12:24)

I mentioned some of my summer research experiences, but I also really love teaching, and it's been really meaningful. So that really changed my trajectory to want to teach at the undergraduate level. So I kind of coalesced my identity or my desire to teach in college. That really informed my decision of, you know what I want to do as a graduate student. That kind of takes me to the second part of your question, which is, what would my advice be? 

(12:46)

And that is, there are amazing resources for learning how to teach. All the big universities are gonna have centers for teaching and learning where, you know, these are professionals who are going to teach, not just graduate students and postdocs, but also faculty like best practices and teaching. And there are also amazing programs to learn how to teach. So I took advantage of a National Institutes of Health training program called the IRACDA program, which is an acronym that's extremely long. It stands for Institutional Research and Career Development Award through the General Medical Sciences Institute. And this is a national program that runs out of 20+ institutions where it's a funded post-doctoral fellowship, where part of the fellowship is formalized teacher training and actually opportunities to teach in the classroom. And it's a fantastic program. And I took advantage of the one at Penn as a postdoc, and it was really nice to kind of go back into the classroom after graduate school as a postdoc and be like, "Oh, yes, this is what I want to do, is interact with students and teaching." And that has remained the case ever since. And it is the greatest joy of my life is transmitting my passion for science, but also witnessing people kind of make connections, grow in their knowledge and develop skills. I just love seeing that growth.

(14:01) Dr. Murphy

Wonderful. You're obviously very passionate teacher. Tell me some of the challenges that you navigate trying to teach young people.

(14:09) Dr. Diaz

A general challenge I have that I think is inherent with teaching that I kind of alluded to, is the best teaching really is relational and empathetic to this, to the student, right? The most effective teaching you're ever going to have -- or learning experience you're ever going to have -- is when that experience is really informed by who you are as a student, the context that you bring, the background that you bring, the experiences, etc. Because when you can bring that into the classroom and into the design of the learning experience, then you have really robust and rich learning experiences. That takes a lot of work. I like doing that work, but if I have a classroom of 30 students, or 100 students, that's impossible to do that kind of level of teaching. So that's, I think that's a problem that's still kind of inherent in how we teach. And there are lots of ways that we could maybe address that problem. But I think one of the things that people broadly, I think, underestimate when it comes to teaching this is teaching at every level, from preschool all the way up to teaching undergrads, is how much time it really takes to do this, right? How much, really, thought and preparation really goes into making really rich experiences? And I think there are a lot of ways that we try to get as many students in the classroom as possible, sometimes to the detriment of the learning experience. And that's a problem, I think that exists in lots of different ways, in different contexts. 

(15:29)

You know, I feel really lucky at Wistar in that our training programs are really capped at around 20. That's partly due to the size of our actual physical training lab space, but that's also a number, especially now that I've had, you know, enough experience in the classroom that feels just about right for me. As far as like this is enough students where a you can also make a learning community, which is really a powerful way of learning, but it's not so many that I lose track of the students and like, what the individual context might be.

(15:57) Dr. Murphy

Can you give me a specific example with our younger Philadelphia based high school students, how you can really reach in and make science more personal to them, or really engage them?

(16:08) Dr. Diaz

Yeah, thank you for that question. So we have an amazing partnership at The Wister Institute with Heights Philadelphia, which is a nonprofit here in Philly that is really aiming to increase access to Black, Latinx, and first generation students in Philadelphia to a variety of careers, not just STEM. Now, I work with Dr. Jeremy Heyman in there, who's the director of their STEM pathways kind of life sciences kind of programming. And I mention all this because they have really robust and rich relationships, not just with schools, but with a community of students there. And so by partnering with them, it has given me an opportunity to really have an entryway into these communities and kind of learn from these communities. And so we last year, we started a pilot, which we are continuing this year, of really trying to bring Wistar science and research into the classroom. And we started this at Kensington Health Sciences Academy. And so many of them who I think the first day of class, when I came in, I think, were just completely disengaged and did not care who I was, suddenly were really excited and activated. And we had one of those students, Brandon Urania, who actually joined the summer program last summer, and he had an amazing experience. I don't think he had any consideration of going into science for a career, but now he's, you know, kind of considering it. He now knows that he actually does have what takes. He can learn how to pipette and make mistakes doing PCR and analyzing the gel results to figure out what he did wrong, what we could do differently to, like, improve our skills, or maybe, actually, he did everything right, and the result was just unexpected, which happens all the time in science, right? And so I'm just so excited that, you know, by putting myself, maybe out of my comfort zone, I helped connect with the students and inspire them to kind of join our programs.

(17:56) Dr. Murphy

All just signs that you are really in the right place, right? So you have a new role here at Wistar. You're the Director of Education and Inclusive Excellence. Tell me a little bit about this role- do you have short term goals for excellence and long term goals?

(18:13) Dr, Diaz

Yes, this is something that happened this year where we're really trying to grow at Wistar our work in diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's one of our core values at Wistar, being an inclusive place that's rich with collaboration and rich with facilitating the growth of individuals. And I bring to my job here -- from my other experiences at La Salle University and other places -- a lot of experience kind of working in this space. And so short term, something that I think I'm working on right now is just to put into place more frequent and regular assessment of who are we actually training and more specifically, what are the outcomes, right? So what is the impact, not just immediately, but afterwards? 

(18:57)

So for our high school program, for example, we're generally pretty good about seeing like where they what happens the next year, but a lot of these students are still in high school, so capturing what happens to them after they finish high school and go into college or into their careers is something that, you know, we're really trying to capture as many stories as we can there, but also really to learn from their experience to see, are there other ways that we can really make our training more modern and up-to-date as possible to set them up for as many different types of careers as possible, but also to get as many kinds of students into the classroom as possible. And think about, okay, what are the specific ways that, you know, we can structure the program to really make sure that it's accessible? So, for example, one of the things that all of our programs do already is all of our programs are paid opportunities, okay? 

(19:44)

So not only do people not have to pay to do our training programs, we actually pay you in a kind of learning-on-the-job model to learn. And we know that's a huge factor in making this accessible to, like, first generation students, right, who may be spending all their free time with working or attending to other responsibilities. So this type of, kind of being inclusive and making things accessible, is really important. So short term, they're just kind of like just very easy and simple things that we can do to really just collect more data and collect more information to help us really be more strategic in what we're doing.

(20:17)

Long term, again, I just want to build on what Wistar is already well known for. We are known internationally for being an amazing place to do science. We're known for being extremely collaborative. I think people have had amazing experiences being trained here, and we've had several new faculty in the last few years who have come back, right? They did their postdoctoral fellowships here, or even were graduate students, and they've come back because of the amazing training that they've had. And I think there's an opportunity to really continue to grow our education and training and really be a model for the best place to be trained. I think again, we're already doing that to some extent. I really want to take it to the next level and to really be the envy of all training programs out there in the world. So, maybe a bit ambitious. I'm still young and excited, so ask me again in 10 years how we're doing.

(21:08) Dr. Murphy

Wonderful. Tell me a little bit about an initiative that you're doing right now that you're particularly excited about.

(21:15) Dr. Diaz

So I already mentioned, or at least introduced a little bit earlier, our partnership with Heights Philadelphia. So I want to take this opportunity to kind of expand on that a little bit to kind of talk about what the broader mission there is. So the partnership with Heights that I'm really excited about is we're trying to see, can we find a way to bring -- in this case, Wistar science, actually science that's based off of your work, Maureen -- into the classroom to give high school freshmen, actually, the opportunity to do an actual experiment where we're going to interpret the results and see if we can learn something together, right? And this is really exciting because our hypothesis is that we're going to see the same kinds of learning outcomes for high school students as we would see with college students. And one of the big things that I will highlight that we see at the college level - yes, they learn the concepts better, but what's actually more exciting for me anyway, is it helps people identify and develop their identity as scientists. And you know, Maureen, better than me even, because you've been doing this way longer than I have, right? Doing science requires a lot of grit. You are going to fail way more than you're going to succeed, and you have to learn how to not get discouraged, or maybe you'll get discouraged, but eventually you pick yourself up, you'll lean on support, you're going to figure out the problem that you're trying to handle. 

(22:38)

And those skills really translate beyond science, right? So even for the students who have these research experiences who decide not to go into science, it still gives them some kind of internal skills and resources to be able to get through hardship in the future, right? So that's kind of what we're trying to do at Kensington Health Science Academy, and this year we're also trying this at Carver School for Engineering and Science. Now the second part about this that I'm really excited about is how this plays into larger program that Heights is doing. So we are benefiting greatly from our partnership with Heights in that, as I mentioned earlier, they have established relationships with these schools that I don't have. So they are really a great partner for me because they are helping me connect to the students I'm trying to reach. At the same time, we are providing a real benefit to Heights, because what they're trying to do is set up a whole suite of programming for students to be, I want to say, bombarded with, but actually kind of cultivated with, for multiple years. So that 9th, 10th and 11th grade students are getting mentorship, career counseling and really amazing in-school and out-of-school experiences that will stay in the life sciences, so that they're really developing skills throughout their high school career in the life sciences, we'll say. So Heights is really providing that kind of sustained interaction relationship with the students, and so I'm also really excited to see how my partnership with Heights -- I should say, Wistar's partnership with Heights -- is going to be making impact on their programming to really kind of get more of our Philadelphia students, you know, into the amazing career opportunities that are happening in their backyard.

(24:19) Dr. Murphy

When you say Heights, spell it for our audience. Is it H-E-I-G-H-T-S?

(24:23) Dr. Diaz

Exactly. H-E-I-G-H-T-S, Heights Philadelphia. They are a relatively recent merger of Stepping Stone Scholars and Philadelphia Futures. And again, their mission is really to help provide more access to great careers in education to Black, Latinx, and first generation students in Philadelphia, and they work at the high school level as well as the college level and kind of career preparation. And I've had an amazing time working with them. I think they're doing really impactful work, and they're -- for what I do at the high school level -- they are one of our great partners, for sure.

(25:01) Dr. Murphy

Wonderful. I love that you're talking about grit, because grit will help you in any career, but you absolutely have to have it in science. And I don't think people realize that. You know, most of us as young scientists, we have an idea, we write a grant, we think it's a brilliant idea, and we are promptly told that this is not such a great idea by our reviewers. And so something that's helped me through my career is working on African-descent cancer disparities, and telling people in my lab we don't think about whether or not people like our ideas. We think about the people we're going to help. And when you just think about the people that you are helping and are passionate about that, all of the people who don't like your ideas just don't get it, and it's easy to move on. Otherwise, I think when I was a young scientist, I would get these reviews. "Murphy, this is the stupidest idea we ever heard," and you can take it really personally, and you can really be devastated by it. But once I sort of got on the track of "I'm helping this group of people, and here's how" then it didn't matter to me what people said. I had all the grit in the world. 

(26:09)

So Wistar and education, you're right. We're most known for the quality of our science, but the quality of our education has been for so many years, and in fact, has been the you've been the recipient of numerous grants from outside agencies, even a call out from the mayor of Philadelphia --

(26:29) Dr. Diaz

That was very exciting.

(26:30) Dr. Murphy

Recently about Wistar education. So why Wistar? Why is education at Wistar so particularly successful that we had the first internship program in the country? Why are we so good at education?

(26:45) Dr. Diaz

This is probably my favorite question, and answer. This question is also, in some ways, answering why I came to Wistar, right? You know, I've had experiences at big research institutions. I've had great experiences at big research institutions. I've had great experiences teaching at small undergraduate institutions, and at each of these institutions, there's always been, for me, a gap, or, yeah, a gap between what I felt would have been the most impactful way to teach and train people in science, and it came from different directions. 

(27:19)

And as an example, so you mentioned Mayor Cherelle Parker kind of gave a shout-out on one of our programs, and that program was with Iovance Biotherapeutics, and they do a cell based therapy that I'm not even going to try to explain, because I'm sure I'm going to get it wrong. But the key there is that in talking with Iovance about what they would really like in a training program, we recognize, oh, we would really want to adjust our training program to include these type of experiences. But no one in our office is an expert in this type of cell therapies, right? But we know across the hall we have our CAR-T cell therapy specialist, right? Let's go talk with him to see what he might say. And so we literally had that conversation. He was so excited to help us. I kind of think through what the best training would be that would really introduce students, not just to the fundamentals, but to really like what he feels is going to be the best practice right in this field, and that ensures that our training is relevant and on the cutting edge, and is really going to set up our students for success. And so that's something that where, you know, at a small undergraduate institution, or even a large institution, where the academic structure is so labyrinthine, right, like it can be hard to really figure out, who do I go to to help with that? 

(27:19)

So for example, a big research institution, it can be really hard and more focused on undergrads for a moment, so that could be community college students or four year college students, but it can be very difficult for undergraduates at big research institutions to really have authentic research experiences in the labs, because they're fighting for space with many, many other students. And those students, those labs are really doing cutting edge research with lots of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, it can just be really hard to kind of get your foot in the door. At the same time at primarily undergraduate institutions, it can be difficult to get connected to those high, cutting edge research because the mission is different. People are still doing amazing research at undergraduate institutions, for sure. But you know, when we think about Philadelphia, for example, and the explosion of cell and gene therapies and immunotherapies, right, it can be difficult for small, primarily undergraduate institutions, to really kind of keep up with the advances in technologies and bring it into the classroom, right? And so what I think makes Wistar a really amazing place for education and training is the way in which we are so intimately tied in education and training with the research that you guys are doing, right? 

(29:44)

And so that kind of perfect size that you mentioned, Maureen, where I can literally just go across the hall to get some advice on how would you design a training program, and I can bring in my knowledge from best practices in teaching and learning to really make sure that yes, they're going to learn. This technique that is really going to be the way that we're going to be doing things moving forward, but we're going to introduce it and do it in a way that I know is going to have the best impact on the students, and it's going to be rooted in best practices on teaching and learning.

(30:13) Dr. Murphy

One of the things I love about your program is that whatever level -- undergraduate, high school, whatever level -- you take all of the students together into the laboratory where you guys train them basic techniques, how to pipette, how to make a solution, how to ask a controlled scientific experiment. And as a Wistar scientist here, I am here to say that many of us wish that our graduate students and postdocs could attend your two week crash course in making a solution, and I'll leave it there. 

(30:44)

So you and I have gotten to know each other pretty well by commuting together on the train, and I know that at Wistar, you're regarded as a favorite professor and a role model. Tell me your thoughts about being a role model. Intimidating? It's okay?

(30:58) Dr. Diaz

It's very intimidating, because I still feel like I'm trying to figure things out, although I'm quickly approaching 40, so at some point I have to actually figure out what it is I'm doing here. But I also think the intimidation is not just about the experience, it's also about recognizing the tremendous impact you can have on another person by being a role model or mentor, and it's something I take very seriously. So from my perspective as a potential role model or mentor, I guess, things I think about are I want to be as authentic as possible and recognizing what my strengths are and what my weaknesses are and to be really transparent about things that I struggle with. But I think it's important for anyone looking for mentors or role models to really be thoughtful about what is it that I'm actually trying to get out of this role model or this mentor, right? And I kind of think of role models and mentors a little bit differently, like role models, like someone that I kind of see in the distance, who's doing something amazing that I want to emulate or be inspired by, whereas a mentor, someone who I have an active relationship, right? Who's really kind of investing in me and my growth. And in both cases, though, I want to be really thoughtful about as a mentee, what is I'm trying to learn from this person and to recognize that that person can't be everything to you, right? Like, as much as I would love to like, encapsulate everything that you do, Maureen, I know that there are going to be things that I need, that maybe you as a mentor for me, or as a colleague for me, that you're not going to be the best person for what I need to grow, right? So I think being very thoughtful about what is we're trying to accomplish in these in these relationships, is important. 

(32:34) 

It's something I find very rewarding. I know you do feel the same way, Maureen, because you are also recognized as -- if not the best -- you have to be the best regarded mentor at Wistar, from my perspective. And I think it's a very fulfilling and rewarding experience. But, you know, it's intimidating, because you want to make sure that you're doing the best thing that you can for your trainee, for your mentee. I think one of the things I think about law again, is just thinking about, what are the limits, actually, of what I can provide, right? And to do that in a way that really empowers the mentee to continue to go out and really grow with a community of mentors, so...

(33:11) Dr. Murphy

I love the idea of a community of mentors, because no person is perfect. Yeah, so Jason, tell me about your favorite motivational quote. Do you have a favorite, and why does it mean so much to you?

(33:22) Dr. Diaz

This may not be immediately motivational, so let me explain kind of why I really like this quote. So this quote is from the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is my husband's hero. He's an attorney. And one of the quotes I really think about a lot from her is she had been asked many times, you know, as someone who is really committed to advancing equity access and inclusion of women in all spheres of life, right? How many women would she like to see on the Supreme Court? And she has famously said "Nine." 

(33:34)

And I will be honest, when I first read that, I was shocked, and I was like, That can't be right. Nine? Isn't that just replacing one kind of homogenous group with another? Right? The reason why I really like this quote is because it's really challenged me to really think creatively and broadly about diversity, equity, and inclusion, right, and to really think kind of on a more long-term and holistic way, in the sense that I think with some of this work -- and this manifests in the classroom, in the lab, in every sphere, right? When we're trying to really increase inclusion, I think there's this tendency to want to everything, to just be proportional all the time, right? But we live in a dynamic world. We live and organizations change, communities, change, etc. And I think this, the reason why this quote motivates me, is because it challenges me to consider, you know, maybe sometimes it can be okay to try something different. So I just love that quote and that thought process, because it's really kind of helping me think about, can we make dynamic spaces, right, where things can change over time, and we should really kind of welcome and be excited by the opportunities and the potential of seeing things very differently, right? And not in a very static way, but rather very dynamic way. So that's my favorite quote, and I'm sure my husband would be proud that I highlighted Justice Ginsburg, so... [laughs]

(35:17) Dr. Murphy

That's wonderful. Thank you so much. Jason Diaz, it's been such a pleasure speaking with you.

(35:22) Dr. Diaz

This has been such a delight. Thank you so much, Maureen.

(35:28) Dr. Murphy

That was my interview with Dr. Jason Diaz, the Wistar Institute's Director of Education and Inclusive Excellence at Wistar's Hubert J.P. Schoemaker Education and Training Center. The show is produced by The Wistar Institute in partnership with Rowhome Productions. Our executive producer is Michele Schiavoni and Rowhome Production executive producers are Alex Lewis and John Myers. This episode features music from Blue Dot sessions. The show was produced by Justin Berger. For more information about the Wistar Institute. Visit us at wistar.org and make sure to subscribe to Wistar Science Up Close on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Dr. Maureen Murphy, and thanks so much for tuning in.