SciChronicles

Career Changes and Church Music

• Kayla Burgher and Risa Schnebly

Share episode

This episode of SciChronicles, hosted by Risa Schnebly, features the inspiring stories of two scientists, Baylee Edwards and Jarrett Joubert, whose personal journeys shed light on the complexities of pursuing a career in science and the challenges of reconciling identity, society, and belief systems.

Baylee Edwards, a PhD candidate doing biology education research, explores the perceived conflict between science and religion and how a life-changing biology class reshaped her understanding of their compatibility. 

Jarrett Joubert, a PhD student, recounts how he pivoted from wanting to study medicine to becoming interested in the history of biology at a time when the Black Lives Matter movement was growing across the country.

The episode concludes with a reflection on the importance of storytelling in science and a call to embrace diverse narratives that challenge stereotypes and promote inclusion.

If you have not already, please consider subscribing so you do not miss future episodes. Also, be sure to check out ASU's Ask a Biologist and its companion podcast, as well.

Risa Aria Schnebly:

Welcome to SciChronicles! My name is Risa Schnebly, and this is a podcast where scientists share stories about why they do science. From the outside, becoming a scientist might seem straightforward, right? You go to school for a long time, then start to work in a lab or the field. But as you listen to these stories from scientists at different stages of their careers, it becomes clear that pursuing this path is anything but straightforward.

Our storytellers reveal pivotal moments in their lives that changed the course of their careers. So whether you're considering pursuing science yourself or just curious about who scientists are, take a listen. You might be surprised by what you discover.

Our first storyteller is Bailey Edwards, a PhD candidate in the Biology and Society program. Bailey is a biology education researcher who studies religious students' experiences in university science courses. She pursued this research for pretty personal reasons, which she'll share with us today. Now, let's meet Bailey as she tells us about studying for an AP biology exam back when she was still in high school.

Baylee Edwards:

Glucose and oxygen react to create carbon dioxide, water, and energy. Glycolysis, the citric acid cycle, oxidative phosphorylation...

Painted in expert marker across the stretch of my childhood bathroom mirror, the steps of cellular respiration stared back at me as I analyzed my work. The colors of the molecules overlapped with my own reflection. I was a junior in high school, and this was the first time that I saw myself in science in the same image.

I could feel my heart bursting with this feeling of nerdy passion for biology, and it was the first time I saw myself becoming a scientist—a title I never thought I’d want. My newfound science identity came with a lot of questions and assumptions about who I needed to be to really fill the shoes of a scientist.

I thought to myself, Okay, I guess I’m going to care a lot about cells. My wardrobe is going to be overrun by white lab coats. I’m going to spend a lot of time looking under microscopes. And, well, I guess I’m officially an atheist.

Growing up, my family didn’t go to church much. You know how there are those people who only go to church on Easter and Christmas? Well, my parents and I went even less than those guys—maybe once every couple of years. As a kid, I didn’t think much about religion or the idea of a higher power. Looking back, I’d say I was a healthy agnostic.

But on the day when I looked into my bathroom mirror and saw myself as a future scientist, I also became an atheist—because that’s what I thought all scientists were.

I thought that religion and science were these opposing forces, with science providing the facts that proved religion was fiction. I thought that by choosing to be a scientist, my decision about whether or not I believed in a higher power was made for me. I didn’t believe in God. I couldn’t. And for a while, this was fine. Like I said, religion wasn’t a big part of my life, so it’s not like I had to wrestle with this conclusion all that much.

But when I started college, that began to change. I met a lot of new people who went to church, and I grew more curious about it—curious enough that I started going with one of my new friends. I enjoyed it at first, especially the music. But the more curious about religion I got, the worse I felt when I went to a service.

There was one Sunday in particular, when I was sitting in this beautiful worship room: creamy white walls all around, brown wooden pews lined up in rows, a huge cross on stage at the front of the room. Next to the cross, the worship band was playing a song. I can still hear the way the words echoed throughout the space, the way my thoughts raced through my mind in response to the lyrics:

The band sang, “I’ve seen it before, felt it before, peace I can’t explain, love that won the war, is here now, can you feel it now?”

            No, I don’t…

“Let it cover you.”

            But I don’t know how…

“Let the Spirit rise up, break through the walls, beat down the doors, and crash through the windows.”

But I can’t!

Tears streamed down my face in sadness and frustration. My own internal exclamation pierced through the sound of the song as I looked around. Dozens of people stood with their hands raised, heads bowed, eyes squeezed shut as they praised this idea of a creator that I just couldn’t wrap my brain around.

All I could think was, I can’t believe in this stuff. It’s just not what scientists do.

But my heart had a different problem. It was throbbing from the impact of what felt like a double-edged sword. Looking around, it was clear that everyone in the room believed in something with their whole being. I felt broken for not being able to believe in something like that, too, while simultaneously feeling like a fraud of a scientist for even wanting to believe in the first place.

I knew I wasn’t willing to give up my identity as a scientist and reject scientific ideas just to believe in God. But I was so frustrated that it seemed like I only had two choices: be an atheist and accept science, or reject science in order to be able to believe in a God.

I carried the thoughts and feelings and tears from that Sunday with me for months. I kept going to church here or there. I kept taking my science classes, and I kept feeling like a broken fraud in both spaces—until the first day of my newest biology class: evolution.

The subject that tends to be portrayed as the one most directly in conflict with religion. But when all 300 of my peers and I were settled in for the 75-minute lecture, my instructor spent the first five minutes of the class delivering a lesson that completely changed my life.

He said that he wanted to address the elephant in the room. Is there really evidence that evolution occurs? Yes, there is. He noted that despite that, some students might not accept evolution, and he emphasized that while the course was going to be focused on the facts that we know from science, all views would be respected in this classroom.

Now, that was great to hear. But the life-changing part for me was what he said next. In short, he said: Many of you might think that religion and science have to conflict with one another, and it’s no wonder you think that—that’s what we see in the media all the time. This isn’t true.

My head turned ever so slightly, reflecting my intrigue as he continued. In fact, most religious beliefs are compatible with an acceptance of evolution, and there are a ton of examples of both scientists who believe in a higher power and religious leaders who accept evolution. Plus, science can only answer questions about the natural world, which means that it can’t actually answer whether a higher power exists in the first place.

A huge weight lifted off my chest. All this time I wasn’t actually broken or a fraud. I just wasn’t well-informed. I had fallen victim to the stereotypes and misconceptions about religion and science that surround us in the media and society all the time.

Now, there were still a few twists and turns in my own religious journey after that day. Questions I had to ask and grand truths that I had to ponder. But I finally felt free to explore my own answers without guilt. I felt a new sense of peace when I went to church and listened to the worship music.

And I also recognized a problem that I’d never thought about before. I had been driven away from religion because of my background with science. But I couldn’t help but wonder how many people are driven away from science because of their background with religion and the idea that they’d have to abandon their faith to accept it.

How can scientists best help those people recognize the possibility of compatibility?

So today I stand here as someone who still accepts evolution, who still loves biology, who still sees myself in science in the same image. But more specifically, I stand here as a scientist who’s spending my PhD studying the ways that we can help show people that religion and science can coexist.

And I do this all while believing that there’s a higher power watching over my journey.

Risa Aria Schnebly:

Our next storyteller is Jarrett Joubert, a PhD student in the Biology and Society program studying the history of how HIV treatments were developed. Jarrett’s story tells of his time at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, where he was taking post-bachelor courses with the hopes of becoming a medical doctor. But in fall 2014, the world and his career trajectory changed.

Jarrett Joubert:

 Hello everyone. My name is Jarrett Joubert. Many who know me know that I stutter, and I’m working through my fear of public speaking—which includes what I’m doing right now: speaking on a microphone. With that in mind, I’m going to tell you a story that starts in the fall of 2014.

I was getting off the bus in Saint Louis to head to class when I saw another Black man on the sidewalk wearing a white t-shirt and jeans. He put his fist up in the air—a gesture in support of Black power, a reminder that the struggle for truth and freedom is still being fought.

That summer, just a few weeks before, Michael Brown was murdered by Ferguson police, only 20 minutes away. I learned of the tragedy on social media. Bearing witness—it could have been me.

Before Michael Brown’s murder, I had already started feeling uncertain about my future. I was taking post-bachelor credits at Washington University to prepare for a career in medicine, and I was struggling to fit in with the toxic and competitive pre-med culture that existed among my peers. When news about the police murder of Michael Brown broke, my struggles intensified.

In a town grappling with its own racist dynamics, this event ignited fury not just within the region but across the nation. So much so that even now, years later, when I say, Black Lives Matter, I know you’ve heard it before. And I know you’ve also heard, Blue Lives Matter, too.

So now, not only did I have grades to worry about, but I genuinely began to question the very career path I had chosen. What if people didn’t respect me or my clinical judgment because of the color of my skin?

Beyond worrying about my own experiences with racism, I worried about how much pursuing a career in medicine would allow me to actually change the system. What if a career as a doctor meant only treating symptoms and not addressing the source of the problem? What amount of medicine can heal racism?

During the months-long period of unrest following the killing of Mike Brown, it was harder to sleep. I went for long walks at night on the main campus of WashU. What a lot of my friends don’t know about me is that I love to explore buildings, especially science buildings with cool labs.

The historic biology building was Rebstock Hall—five floors with endless corridors to explore. Let me tell you, it is so surreal to be in academia, safely privileged inside the walls of the ivory tower, while so much social turmoil occurs outside that deeply affects you personally.

I was feeling that on one of my nights wandering the campus. But that night, something also happened that would change the course of my life. I was on the second floor of Rebstock when I stopped to explore a rather weird hallway. I walked down the fluorescently lit corridor and stopped to read the plaque on an office door that caught my eye. It read: Garland Allen.

I swore I’d seen that name before but couldn’t remember why or from where. When I got back to my studio apartment, I started sifting through old articles from an anthropology course I took in my senior year of college. I had a hunch that I might find the name I was looking for there.

Finally, I found a one-page commentary piece on the history of eugenics at the front of my class folder. And there it was—the name from the office plaque: Garland Allen.

I reread the article to refresh my memory of the scholar, and I found the words on the page to be striking. The writing was not in favor of eugenics but instead sought to expose its incredibly nefarious history.

If you don’t know this, you need to: eugenics and eugenic thought—the belief that we can selectively breed out undesirable traits within the human population—has a history that predates the policies enabling the atrocities of World War II. It’s not that racism is a result of eugenics; it’s that eugenics is the result of racism.

Learning that history was absolutely mind-boggling, and I wanted to learn more. I thought about how different the world could be if people understood genetics and the history of eugenics—if people knew just how much science and society intersect. Gar had devoted so much of his life to research and writing about such topics.

Fascinated by an approach to science that took politics, history, and society into account, I knew I had to talk to Gar. When I got the chance to meet him, it opened up a new world of ideas and possibilities to me.

Gar, dressed casually but conservatively. His office, was something out of a museum study, really. There were books upon books upon books, and many of them were older editions that probably should have been in a library archive. He was a scholar of the history of 20th-century genetics and had written extensively on histories of eugenics.

After meeting Far, I was astounded and relieved. He took interest in me after that, even confiding to me, I am very invested in your success. That was something no one had ever outright said to me before. I not only felt heard but seen, too.

We especially talked a lot about graduate education in the history and philosophy of science—a field that touches all fields and draws connections between things that are seemingly disparate and unrelated.

History might seem boring for some, but for me, it’s so exciting. Through conversations with Gar, I learned that maybe I could work to reveal to people the histories of science, showing them how science is so wrapped up with society and social justice.

The thought of a career like this made me feel connected with the world of higher learning, even when I didn’t feel connected to most of my classmates, or when I felt that medicine wasn’t right for me anymore.

I thought, If I could devote my life to helping people understand the connections between biology and greater society, the world would be better for it. Gar advised me on how to obtain a master’s degree in biology through my school at WashU—a program he once directed. He would later recommend the Biology and Society program at Arizona State University, where I could work with two of his longtime friends and colleagues.

Gar’s insight helped me work through exactly how I want to use my strengths within the world of higher education: to study the causes of social and scientific problems, rather than just the symptoms.

So I decided to pursue a PhD in Biology and Society. I decided to live my life for me and pursue the highest degree attainable in academia. And while doing it, I hope to inspire others to do the same.

I know that getting a PhD won’t solve systemic racism, and that it still remains a privilege to exist within the walls of the ivory tower—something that continues to feel so surreal. But choosing to do research within this extraordinarily white-dominated field does feel freeing.

One, because it allows me the freedom to think about science in a more creative and socially conscious way. And two, because I get to study topics that matter to the communities I identify with.

Michael Brown—it could have been me. Yes. But instead, I got off a bus this morning in Tempe, Arizona, to come tell my story to you all.

When I think about where the world is now and the movement for Black lives, I think a lot of people have forgotten what we mean when we say the phrase, Black Lives Matter.

By choosing to live my truth, to pursue a PhD studying the history and philosophy of science, I am but one example of what happens when you allow Black life to flourish.

Risa Aria Schnebly:
Thanks for tuning into SciChronicles! We’re taking a break in December for the holidays, but we can’t wait to bring you more science stories in the new year.

This podcast is recorded at Arizona State University, which sits on the ancestral homelands of the Akimel O'odham and Pee-Posh peoples, without whose care and keeping we would not be here today.

We would like to thank the School of Life Sciences, the Center for Biology and Society, and Ask A Biologist for helping us make these stories into a podcast.

In case you’re new to Ask A Biologist, it’s an amazing website for all types of learners, young and old. Best of all, it’s free—including its companion podcast, which we highly recommend checking out. We’ll be sure to put links to the website and podcasts in the episode notes.

This podcast was developed by Kayla Burgher, Risa Aria Schnebly, and Charles Kazilek. Thank you for listening! If you haven’t already, please subscribe to this podcast so you don’t miss future episodes.