Member Spotlight: April Ulery, Soil & Environmental Science Professor and Past SSSA President

 

What project are you currently working on that excites you the most?

Improving my teaching and working with students is always the most rewarding part of my job. Seeing their excitement as they learn about, and apply the principles of science, to solve problems on their family farms, natural spaces, and the world around them is always a great feeling. Every teacher lives for their students’ “ah-ha” moments!

What is the best piece of career advice you’ve received?

Don’t give up. You CAN do it - don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t. Show up, be prepared, and do your best – but don’t feel like you have to do everything – it’s ok to ask for help and let others shine too. If you make a commitment, follow through on it.

Do you have a mentor that has helped you in your professional career? How have they helped you?

I’ve had SO MANY wonderful mentors throughout my professional career that I’m afraid to list them all for fear of not including someone! There were people who believed in me more than I believed in myself and who guided me on a truly productive and rewarding professional pathway. Every teacher who ever encouraged me obviously made my path easier, but it’s the ones who argued with me and even actively discouraged me that made me work even harder just to prove them wrong!

Obvious great mentors were the graduate faculty at UC Riverside including Lewis Stolzy, Bob Graham, and Bill Jury, but I’ve also had wonderful supervisors who always gave me opportunities and good career guidance including Rien Van Genuchten (US Salinity Lab), Phil Gschwend (MIT), Waded Cruzado (MSU), and John Mexal (NMSU). They all taught me the power of connections and networking. Additionally, they listened to my ideas and encouraged me to think creatively, but to keep the end goal in mind. In sharing their thought processes and taking the time to explain why they made their decisions; I was able to understand their strategy for success. I try to emulate all of them as I advise and mentor my own students and employees.

Another source of great mentoring is peers and colleagues. As incoming President of the Soil Science Society of America, I reached out to previous presidents and officers who always shared good advice and suggestions to help me be more effective. On campus, I have found that the Teaching Academy, or Learning Center, is especially useful in providing help for time-management, writing grants, conflict resolution, and other issues that professionals need. None of us would be where we are today without all of the people who helped along the way.

As a woman, what is a challenge/obstacle you have faced in your career?

As a young woman, I wasn’t equipped with the same “tools” that most men have, like how to defend my space, speak up for myself, negotiate good deals, or even how to conduct oneself in a professional manner.  In my early career, I would watch tutorial videos on “Dressing for Success”, “Speaking Professionally”, and other skills that didn’t have anything to do with soil science but were about professional success. We’re doing a better job teaching everyone those skills now.

Another challenge older women faced was the need to choose between a family and a career or to try to “do it all”. In my opinion, no one should have to make that decision or have to do it all by themselves, so I am heartened to see that today’s culture seems to encourage more shared responsibilities by both parents and that workforce policies are in place to make childcare and family leave more accessible to everyone (at least for the privileged professional class). At NMSU for example, young fathers are just as likely to leave early in the day to pick up their kids from school as female faculty and that is a positive direction for everyone involved.

Typical gender roles and responsibilities seem to be more open for discussion now and I hope that young girls will see that they don’t have to wait for a man to give them what they want but can instead decide what they want and get it for themselves. I hope that from this article young people see successful female role models and can understand what is possible, regardless of their gender.

What does Women’s History Month mean to you? How does it fall into the context of your industry?

It’s great to see a whole month dedicated to women who have made history, especially those who worked tirelessly to ensure that people like me could go to school, study in a male-dominated field like soil science, and then earn a living as a professional soil scientist. But honestly, it would be best if we didn’t need to set aside time to celebrate those who have made our choices possible. We now have more women than men in our soils and environmental science classes at NMSU, and I hope that we will start seeing those women take their places in the profession as well.