Paying it Forward: Embodying the tripartite mission of research, teaching, and outreach with Dr. Debby Good

Dr. Deborah (Debby) Good is tenured faculty of Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise at Virginia Tech. She embodies the tripartite (three-part) mission of land-grant universities via her research, teaching, and outreach.

We dive into insecurities in being “on” (looks, words, deeds) in web-conferencing, in front of the classroom, and in any community with which we interact. The conversation walks us through the journey of not knowing what the scientific process really looks like and then becoming a key driver of discovery and training students over time.

 

Key takeaways are:

• Don’t let someone else’s opinion get in the way of your flourishing
• Check in on how much the construct of your identity is tied up in being a professor, an academic, a person with a PhD
• Engage in undergraduate research (as an undergraduate scholar or mentor [grad student, post doc, PO])
• Thank a professor who has meant a lot to you
• Being a bit more casual with mindfulness is ok (an especially important reminder in new years, seasons, semester, jobs, etc.)
• One of her favorite moments in research, “when you are the only person in the world who knows this discovery.”
• One thing they don’t tell you about tenure conversations is that updates to the faculty handbook makes things looser and tighter over time.

More about TOUR scholars: https://www.hnfe.vt.edu/TOURS.html

More about Dr. Good's research: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=GnJUkJoAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao