For Women in the Sciences, “Nothing Is More Important Than Good Mentorship”

Shannon Hinsa-Leasure, professor of biology, estimates she’s been doing science since she was 8 years old. “I had this chemistry kit that I played with all the time,” she remembers. “Up until I lit a match that broke and landed on my leg…that freaked me out a bit.” To this day, Hinsa-Leasure says, her time spent in lab feels like playtime: “I think very few people get to be as creative in their job as scientists do.”

In honor of International Day of Women and Girls in Science, Hinsa-Leasure sat down to reflect on the evolution of science academia, motherhood, and her role on campus and beyond as a mentor to scientists of all ages and stages.

As a graduate student at Dartmouth College, Hinsa-Leasure had no mentors who were scientists and also managed a balanced life and had a family. So, when she had her first child as a post-doc, she entered relatively unchartered territory. Arriving at Grinnell College sixteen years ago, she was one of the only new hires with a child and a working spouse; most new female faculty were waiting to have kids until they received tenure because of the immense pressure they faced to publish early in their career. “It was isolating,” Hinsa-Leasure remembers, “and I felt like I had to excel at all the stuff I was doing: teaching, researching, publishing, and also being a mother.”

The pressures on early-career faculty have changed in the last 15 years, Hinsa-Leasure says, and Grinnell faculty now frequently have children while pre-tenure. But even as institutions like Grinnell offer greater support to scientists with families, she says, the pipeline for the next generation of scientists is fraught with challenges. Across the sciences, graduate students and post-docs with children struggle to find affordable daycare, and grant money continues to overwhelmingly favor well-established career scientists. Plus, Hinsa-Leasure says, it’s still extremely common for women and underrepresented individuals in the sciences to harbor a sense of inadequacy and imposter syndrome.

Reinforcing Belonging: The Need for Role Models

As she’s progressed in her career, Hinsa-Leasure has chosen to become for many scientists the mentor she wishes she’d had herself as a young woman. From the very first day of her Introduction to Biological Inquiry course, Hinsa-Leasure wants her students to see that they can think like scientists. She recruits students still in their first and second year to join her research team, having seen how the confidence they gain can drastically shape their remaining years. “It took me so long to realize that I belonged in science,” she says, “and if I would have heard that when I was an undergrad, it would have changed things.” When the hands-on focus of the Grinnell biology curriculum is coupled with one-on-one support from faculty mentors, Hinsa-Leasure believes, students are better prepared to attack their next few years with confidence and enthusiasm.

She prioritizes inviting past mentees and students from minoritized groups to speak to her current students — visits which give alumni an opportunity to share their journeys and career paths, but which also expand students’ understanding of what a scientist might look like. “If you see people like you in a certain position,” Hinsa-Leasure explains, “you’re more likely to believe you can do it.” Former mentees — now more like extended family — are typically all too happy to connect with the next generation of scientists.

Hinsa-Leasure doesn’t sugarcoat the realities of science for her students. She regularly shares with them the challenges of academia, of the sexism embedded within, and of juggling all this with the demands of parenthood. “I don’t want my students to think that a career as a scientist will be a cakewalk,” says Hinsa-Leasure. “But I want them to see that they do belong. And that they need to be prepared to find people who are going to support them because nothing is more important than good mentorship.”

Coaching the Next Generation: Creating Empowering Communities

This past year, Hinsa-Leasure took on a new mentorship role: coaching a team of middle school girls in the First Lego League (FLL), an engineering challenge introducing youth to principles of STEM. She was inspired to coach for the sake of her twelve-year old daughter — ever curious and with a love of invention — but she also knew how impactful the experience of being on an all-girls team could be for her daughter and her peers; Hinsa-Leasure is well aware of the mass exodus of girls out of STEM fields and activities during their middle school years. “A team that is entirely girls realizes that they can do it all, though,” she says. “They can do the building, they can do the coding, they can do the designing.” It’s a rare dynamic for young scientists, and it’s been a rewarding one.

Hinsa-Leasure marvels at the deep friendships the teammates have forged, and at the massive bounds in their confidence throughout the challenge. The FLL team has continued to meet in the off-season, and recently presented their robot at the Grinnell Middle School’s Engineering Fair. Hinsa-Leasure and her daughter manned the table. “I choose to use my time and energy to show people what a scientist looks like,” she explains, “which is sometimes just someone’s mom.”