Dr Megan Sumeracki - Cognitive Psychological Scientist

In this podcast, the students are going to introduce you to Dr Megan Sumeracki who is a Cognitive Psychological Scientist. Megan’s work is about trying to understand how we think and process information, and in particular figuring out the best ways for students to learn.

Megan recommends...
The Learning Scientists website, podcast, blog, book and YouTube
Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Roediger, McDaniel and Brown (ISBN: 9780674729018)

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Likewise, if you know anyone who would be a great role model, let us know by emailing podcast@untappedinnovation.com

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Check out our website

If you know a group of students who would like to interview one of our role models, please get in touch by emailing podcast@untappedinnovation.com

Likewise, if you know anyone who would be a great role model, let us know by emailing podcast@untappedinnovation.com

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Connect with us on LinkedIn @STEMUntappedCIC
Check out our website

Transcript

Intro 00:00

Hello, and welcome to the Stem Untapped Podcast series. We're delighted that you could join us. Research from Microsoft reveals that having a role model was one of the most effective ways to prevent girls falling out of love with STEM subjects. As all partners at Untapped are female scientists, and many of our clients and associates are female scientists, we felt that we had a unique opportunity to map students with a variety of role models of their choice. This way, students can ask the questions that are most important to them, allowing them to gain access into a diverse array of different STEM careers. In this podcast, the students are going to introduce you to Dr. Megan Sumeracki who is a Cognitive Psychological Scientist. Megan's work is about trying to understand how we think and process information. And in particular, figuring out the best way for students to learn.

Student Interviewers 00:52

We picked you because we wanted to learn more about neurology and Cognitive Psychology. So we're both studying chemistry and Walsh Bac, but I study IT and I picked biology and maths as well.

Dr Megan Sumeracki 01:03

My name is Megan Sumeracki. I have a PhD in Cognitive Psychology. And with that, I am an Associate Professor of Psychology at Rhode Island College in Providence, Rhode Island, which is on the east coast, a little bit south of Boston, and a bit east of New York City in the States. And my work is all about trying to understand how we think and process information, and specifically how we can use that knowledge of how we process and think, to figure out the best ways for students to learn, and for teachers to instruct in their classrooms, just to try to maximise student learning in a way that is effective, but also efficient, because we know that students have a lot going on. And time is not limitless. And so being efficient is really important. If two things are equally effective at helping you learn but one takes a bit less time, well, then we want the thing that's effective, that takes a bit less time, right. So that's, that's what I do. I as a part of my job as a professor, I do a bit of research, in my position, mostly with students engaging in research projects, and I teach some classes, Cognitive Psychology, Research Methods, Introduction to Psychology, those types of things. And then I also do service and some of that is service to my department of the Psychology Department, to Rhode Island College, to the community and internationally. So I do a lot of work at trying to explain the most effective and efficient study strategies and making that freely available so that students and teachers all over the world can use that information.

Student Interviewers 02:56

So the first question we wanted to ask you was, how would you define your role as a Cognitive Psychologist?

Dr Megan Sumeracki 03:02

My role? Well, I am a professor, like I mentioned. And so my role really is to, to teach and to try to gain new knowledge and disseminate that knowledge to as many people as possible. That's my role as a Professor. Cognitive Psychologists can really do a lot of different things. Some of them might be in industry working on creating apps for students or even understanding perception and you know, working with people who trying to improve their, their ability to perceive hearing aids, cochlear implants, those types of things. So there's a lot of different things that cognitive psychologists can do. But since I'm in academia, teaching, generating new knowledge, and disseminating that knowledge is my main role.

Student Interviewers 03:51

What subjects did you study in high school?

Dr Megan Sumeracki 03:53

When I was in high school, I followed the standard United States curriculum and we tend to stay a bit more general compared to some of the schools in the UK and in Europe. So I took classes in Math, in English Literature, in Science, so biology, chemistry, physics, I unfortunately don't remember most of it, but I more so in biology than anything else. But they did have us take all of those subjects, history. I did Spanish, art. I think I did pottery one semester, we have to take gym. I ran cross country and track and did marching band. I was a colorguard performer for a while so that fulfilled that requirement probably did music. I know I did band, drama, they made us do all kinds of things. They keep us very general here in the US. I know that you are all able to specialise a little bit earlier than we are and there's pros and cons to both I would imagine.

Student Interviewers 04:58

As a teenager, you said you want to study law, so what made you reconsider from studying law to go into psychology?

Dr Megan Sumeracki 05:05

I really wanted to become a lawyer. And I like arguing. And I like logic. And I like talking. And so I thought, Oh, this will be great. I also really enjoy learning about true crime and shows on TV like Criminal Minds and Law and Order. Those are not, they're based on done true things. But they are dramatised for TV, I enjoyed those types of things. And so I thought that law made sense. I picked psychology because psychology was something that seemed interesting and could feed into law. So you can major in psychology, and then take the LSAT in the US and that helps you get into law school. But during my first semester in college, I started thinking about what I actually wanted to do as a lawyer. And what I was really most interested in was criminal law. But when I thought about actually engaging in criminal law myself, I realised that probably it wasn't a good fit for me. I couldn't imagine myself as a prosecutor, really, because of some things that seemed like that wouldn't be a good fit for me. And I couldn't really imagine myself as a defence attorney. And so I started to reevaluate and really kind of looked and realised that a lot of people that go to law school do things like contractual law and real estate law. And I thought, well, that's really boring. I don't want to do that. So I decided to just explore psychology. Since I was already majoring in psychology, I figured, alright, let's see what I can, what else I could do with psychology. And I learned about all different types of careers, like becoming an industrial Organisational Psychologist, and I could have become a consultant and travelled all over working with companies and how to maximise their performance, or working with little kids developmental, and I just realised that psychology was so broad that I could stick with psychology, but try a lot of different things. And it wasn't until my third year in college, so junior year for us, that I landed on Cognitive Psychology. And it was really because I continued to be interested in working with kids. And I continued to be interested in learning. And it seems like Cognitive Psychology could be a good fit. I honestly didn't even plan to apply to PhD programmes in Cognitive Psychology until my fourth year. Now, that's when I finally said, Okay, I'm going to make them, I’m going to apply to these programmes. So it took me a little while, even though I didn't change my major in college, and you know what I'm applying for jobs, I can sort of spin this lovely story about how I explored all these different areas. But really, I didn't know what I wanted to do for a while. I was probably 21 when I figured out Oh, yeah, Cognitive Psychology. That's what I'll do.

Student Interviewers 07:50

And did you participate in work experience or volunteering for law before you did psychology?

Dr Megan Sumeracki 07:54

Nothing directly related to law, which tells you perhaps maybe why I was a bit confused about what I was going to do and figured it out a bit later, but I did do some volunteering. When I was in high school, I sat on, it was almost like a jury for kids who had gotten themselves into a bit of trouble, maybe minor things, relatively speaking, like shoplifting, or breaking curfew, skipping school, those types of things. And if they qualified, they could go in front of a quote unquote, jury of their peers, which was other high schoolers. And we basically doled out community service, we've listened to their explanations for why things happened and their plans to try to sort of turn things around. And instead of going through the official criminal justice system, they went through this system, and I think it was called Teen Court or something like that. And they, they could get community service and then have the infraction expunged from their record. So I suppose I did do that. And that was related to law. But I did other things like cleaning up the Des Plaines river with our biology course. Des Plaines River was a river near where I grew up. I grew up north of Chicago. So things like that I really kind of was all over the place, and I did sport, I ran cross country and track and did colour guard in a competitive way. So I really did all kinds of things.

Student Interviewers

Did you do anything for psychology as well?

Dr Megan Sumeracki 09:20

Once I got to college, I started doing more volunteer and extracurriculars related to psychology. I got involved in research labs, and I did research in a lot of different types of labs. My first was a clinical research lab, where the principal investigator was interested in understanding the relationship between alcohol abuse and domestic violence. And so I was running these interviews where we'd put these men who, college students, but they had a history of inter partner violence in some way and a history of abusing alcohol, which actually wasn't that hard to find in a college setting, and they recorded kind of some of their thoughts and things and I helped by just taking those recordings and then transcribing them. But I wasn't overly interested in that clinical aspect. There was a project that was going on at the Indianapolis Children's Museum. And so I would drive down to Indianapolis and help record interactions at this museum for part of a research project. I did a summer programme at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and I lived in the dorms at Oklahoma State that summer and did some research on younger kids and their, the way they relate to one another. Some of it was on sort of this relational aggression. So it's thought to be that girls are aggressive, more in this way in this relational aspect, as opposed to physical aspects. I did some work there. I did this next summer I was in Minnesota. So a lot of a lot of research in psychology. I was really interested in the research, I just had to explore a lot of different types of research areas before I figured out what my particular area would be.

Student Interviewers 11:15

Why did you change your profession from alcohol abuse and violence to Cognitive Psychology?

Dr Megan Sumeracki 11:20

When I was in that lab working on alcohol abuse and inter partner violence, it was really just because a graduate student who was involved in my Intro Psych class, he was one of the teaching assistants, invited me to come be a research assistant. And I had learned since going to college that my involvement in research was really important. And then it didn't really matter so much what area of research but that I was getting some sort of research experience. So I don't think I was ever particularly interested in alcohol abuse and inter partner violence. But I knew that that experience and being in a research lab would help me get other research experiences. And just to help me explore. So I actually learned pretty quickly, I didn't like that clinical lab, but I liked the research process. And so I just kept doing all different types of research experiences to collect experience, and to try to kind of leverage my way to doing more independent projects. By my third and fourth year, I was working in an honours programme in a cognitive lab. And the honours programme really was a goal from early on, I just never knew what that area would be. So it was really just about gaining research experience any way that I could. And this graduate student thought I did well in the course and asked me if I wanted to be a research assistant. And so I agreed, even though it wasn't exactly the type of research that I probably would have picked by myself.

Student Interviewers 12:55

So whilst you were at college or university, what study techniques did you use to use to help you study?

Dr Megan Sumeracki 13:00

I did not do what I was supposed to do. I learned later that that was not… what I was doing was probably not the best. I went to Purdue University. So I keep saying College, we say in the US colleges, this is basically the same as university the way we speak. I know it's different in the UK and in Europe. So when I was at Purdue University, I really did reread my notes a lot. I did try to sort of cover up my notes and sort of see if I could recall what I could remember sometimes. But I really was just sort of doing what felt like it was helping me learn. And I did a lot of it, and I got away with it. But as I advanced, it started to become more difficult. That's when I was getting into those cognitive research labs and starting to learn and realise that rereading your notes over and over again, isn't particularly effective. It's a good idea to put your notes away and try to recall what you can remember. So you can do that by just taking out a blank sheet of paper and writing it down. Or explaining it out loud to a friend, or a parent, or just the wall, or your dog, it doesn't really matter. As long as you're producing that information from your memory. Or you could, as long as the materials are put away, you could draw what you can remember. Flashcards can be good as long as you recall the information before you flip the card. So I know sometimes, you know, we look at one side and we're like, oh yeah. And then we look at the other side and we're like, Yep, that looks familiar. That's really just rereading, right? You have to really make yourself produce the information if you can, before taking a look. And this strategy is very difficult. I think when a lot of students try it, they tend to sort of think, Oh, this isn't for me because it just feels difficult, and it feels like it's not working. But in the long run, that difficulty is, is a really good thing. And it actually makes it such that it's easier for you to then recall that information on a test, or when you need it in real life. And so I sort of, I mean, I did well, and I was lucky in that way. But there always comes a point where the material starts to become really difficult, or the amount that you have to remember, is, is high. And you need to start using more effective strategies. And frankly, I probably would have been more efficient if I had used recall earlier on. But thankfully, I figured it out during my third and fourth year when my classes did start to get really difficult, and when my time was more constrained, and it made it better in the long run. So I certainly didn't know while I was in high school. And I probably could have done better in high school, I didn't do poorly, but I wasn't one of the top top top students either. I didn't earn all A's, I probably could have if I had used more effective strategies. But the past doesn't, doesn't matter so much, right, we did what we did. And we can just sort of move forward and try to improve as we go. And you certainly don't have to be perfect at every single thing in order to succeed in life, you just have to, you know, keep trying and do the best you can. We also don't have quite the same pressure that you do in the UK, in terms of the testing, we do testing. And it's important. But I mean, at least from my understanding about the GCSEs. And your A Levels, your tests are a little higher stakes earlier on, which means that you are forced to learn effective and efficient study strategies earlier on. Learning those strategies can be a good thing. There are pros and cons either way.

Student Interviewers 16:44

Do you have any other regrets? 

Dr Megan Sumeracki 16:46

You know, sometimes I look back and I think oh, I wish I'd done this, or I wish I hadn't done that. But it always sort of then boils down to exactly how everything turned out, brought me to the job that I have and brought me to my husband. So, who I didn't meet until I was a little older. I was 27. And I had finished my PhD and we didn't get married until I was 30. But our lives together is really great. And so, you know, I was sometimes wish that I had known to study differently in high school, and maybe I could have gone to an even better university. But then I probably wouldn't have worked in, I wouldn't have worked in the same research lab, which means I wouldn't have gone to the same graduate school, which means I wouldn't have gotten my job at Utah State, which is where I met my husband. So it's, it's hard to say that I have regrets. There's certainly things that I probably could have done better. But I enjoy where my where my life is now. And I enjoy my job at Rhode Island College. And I love my husband and we have a nice house. And so it's hard to say that I have regrets. I know that that's probably difficult to think about so far ahead, when you're, when you're in your teenage years and in high school. But looking back, I really wouldn't change it, because it would have changed the whole path.

Student Interviewers 18:07

So whilst you were choosing like your classes at college, did you feel pressured by society, to not study a STEM subject, but perhaps study a career, which was not as male dominated?

Dr Megan Sumeracki 18:19

You know, my mother was very, very great about telling my sister and I that we could do whatever we wanted to do. So she didn't push STEM on us. Although both of us have gone into STEM fields. My younger sister, she's four years younger than me, and she's a doctor. She's an OBGYN, and she delivers babies and perform surgery and that’s sort of crazy to think about since she's, you know, my baby sister, but we both ended up in STEM fields. But my mom didn't really push that on us. She told us we could do whatever it was that we wanted to do. And let us try all different types of lessons. So I don't know if this is something that everyone does in the UK, but in the US they tried to get you know, there's all these different types of lessons. You could take ice skating lessons and swimming lessons, and you can join volleyball camp and all of those things, and horseback riding. And we did all kinds of different things, and tried all different kinds of subjects in school. And I mean gosh, when I was like five years old, I thought I was going to become a football player, which is a football, American football, which is quite aggressive and only for males, and not really for small people. And I'm you can't tell but I'm very small. So, I mean, I was five. I liked watching the American football on TV and I, so I was like, Oh, I'll become an American football player. And my mom was like, Okay, you can do that. And she just sort of later told me she figured I'd figure it out after a while and kind of adjust. So I never really felt pressured to do anything other than to do the best that I could. It allowed us to explore a lot of different areas and Psychology is a science. And Cognitive Psychology actually is somewhat male dominated. Some of the other areas in Psychology, tend to be a bit more female dominated, but Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience tend to be male dominated. And so, but I just sort of fell into that area. And I don't even think that it occurred to me that it was male dominated until I got my first job and was going to more conferences and started looking around and said, Hey, wait a minute. Why are there so many men? And particularly white men, we definitely need to do more in our field to try to promote diversity. But yeah, I don't, I don't think I felt pressured. My mom, just let me do what I wanted to do, but pushed us to be good at it. And also to make sure we enjoyed it.

Student Interviewers 20:51

Around how many female colleagues did you have compared to male colleagues?

Dr Megan Sumeracki 20:54

So when I was in grad school, there were more female grad students. And that's typically true. There's more female grad students. But then when you get into academia, when you become a professor, there tend to be more males. I'm going to pick on Purdue University, but it's not just Purdue, there's a lot of institutions that are like this. But Purdue is considered what we call in the States an R1, research one institution, which means it gets a lot of federal funding grant money, they're doing a lot of research at that institution. And, you know, in theory, the best jobs are the R1 jobs, they're the most prestigious. Although, if you don't enjoy doing as much research and grant writing, and you enjoy teaching, that's probably not the best job for you. But in terms of prestige, and what you're sort of, quote unquote, supposed to think is best, R1s are tiptop, and of my professors in Cognitive Psychology. When I first started, there were five professors, one was female. I did go to Washington University in St. Louis for my master's degree, and there were more women, I honestly couldn't tell you the breakdown. But there were there were more men than women. Where I work now at Rhode Island College, there's more women in my department than men. But it's a teaching institution. And research is not, research is important, but it's not as important as it is at those R1s. And so that's probably why I have more female colleagues than males. In the quote unquote, most prestigious institutions, the balance is a little bit different. And this is pretty typical across my field where there are a lot of women, female graduate students, but they don't as often get those kind of highest level highest paying jobs. They either go into more teaching related professions, or they leave academia altogether. There could be a lot of reasons for that, I suspect, I kind of know some of some of those reasons related to having kids and family. And also just, there's a lot of men on top and Cognitive Psychology. But that doesn't mean that a girl, a female, couldn't decide they wanted to try to get one of those jobs. And I honestly, maybe could have if I had stayed in grad school a year longer and published a bit more taken a postdoc, and I probably could have gotten one of those really prestigious jobs. But by the time I was getting towards the end of grad school, I was just really enjoying teaching, I decided that that I didn't want to go for the most prestigious thing. Is that because I'm female, would I have been more driven to do it if I was male? I don't really know. It's hard to say it's sort of a complicated issue, but I don't regret it because I really enjoy my job and my life. But I do sometimes wonder at a larger sort of systemic, looking at the field as a whole. Why is it that more women choose to do that, whereas more men kind of push to get that top position?

Student Interviewers 24:02

So overall, do you feel like there are enough females and people of colour in the field you work in?

Dr Megan Sumeracki 24:08

No, definitely not. I wished that it was more diverse. Certainly, we need more women who push and kind of go past the graduate school and early career level. And we probably even more importantly, we need more people of colour. And I think that our field is finally starting to recognise that. Our top society where a lot of Cognitive Psychologists belong to this organisation, it's called the Psychonomic Society. They are starting to really pay attention to the lack of diversity in our field and even put together a task force to try to examine, you know why that might be and what we should do to try to encourage more diversity in the field and they have some plans and some kind of ways to try to approach that. Unfortunately, it's probably not as simple as just putting together a little group of people looking at it and saying, Oh, I know, we'll just do this one thing, and then that will solve the problem, right, it's probably going to take a bit more than that. But I think that people are starting to pay more attention. And that's really good to see. And I think maybe, by the time both of you are getting, you know, if you decide to go to graduate school after university, and if you decide to go into academia, become a professor, I think that things will look differently by that. And that's a good thing,

Student Interviewers 25:33

At any point of your career progression, did you feel disadvantaged as a woman?

Dr Megan Sumeracki 25:37

I don't think I noticed, I probably was, but I don't think I noticed, in part because I think my mom really just never pointed those things out to us. And so I think I just sort of bumbled along thinking, I'm good at stuff, it'll be fine. I did notice it more, once I got closer to finishing my PhD, I started to notice that some of the men in the lab, the graduate students who were men were treated a little bit differently. And their attitude was a little bit different. And sometimes, you know, a female graduate student might say something, and our principal investigator would say, Ah, I don't know. And then one of the male graduate students would say, basically the exact same thing two minutes later, and it was a brilliant idea. I'm sure it wasn't purposeful. And maybe it wasn't because of a female versus a male, maybe it was just one student versus the other student. But it did start to seem a little…the pattern kind of holds a little bit. But I never felt like it was going to prevent me from getting to where I wanted to get to, it just seems like maybe it was going to be a little bit more challenging. But also many, many young girls, who then turn into women are used to things being a little bit more difficult, and really can kind of kind of push through. I don't think it dramatically changed my trajectory. But but maybe there were things that that influenced me that I don't recognise.

Student Interviewers 27:15

So you previously said that you used to work in a clinical lab, and you sometimes still do. What's the environment of a clinical lab like?

Dr Megan Sumeracki 27:23

Honestly, very similar, I think in many ways. Clinical Psychology, is actually much more competitive. It's extremely competitive, because a lot of students like the idea of getting that PhD and being able to do clinical work, therapy and practice in addition to the research. And so it was similar. I think that there are more female, graduate students in clinical and more female professors in clinical, but it's, it's a very competitive environment. So, kind of similar, honestly, by the time I got to graduate school, so I was an undergraduate in university when I, when I was in the clinical lab. By the time, I was working on my PhD, you know, we didn't really commingle as much with the clinical students. And that's partially because they also have a very strict curriculum that they have to do in order to get credited and get their licence to practice as a psychologist. I don't know what it would have been like in terms of as a graduate student, but as an undergraduate, it was similar to me.

Student Interviewers 28:32

So do you have any funny stories you could tell us from when you worked with the children or anybody else?

Dr Megan Sumeracki 28:38

I tell this story, some. I can't tell you where it was treated, you know, for confidentiality purposes. But when I was a PhD student, I did some research in a fourth grade, in fourth grade classrooms in a school. And we were trying to figure out the best ways for those kids to learn. And we knew that for university students, high school and university that trying to write down what they could remember, is a really good way even though they you don't remember, a tonne, you might only remember 50% At first, that it feels really difficult and you feel like you're not learning. It produces really good really durable learning in the long run. So we were trying this with fourth graders, and I don't know why we thought that you could just give a fourth grader a blank sheet of paper and just have them write down what they had read. Fourth grade, I should say fourth graders, that would be year 5 for you. They're about 10 years old. So we've got these 10 year olds, and we're just like, giving them this little paragraph about clouds, for example, and then saying write down what you can remember. And they really just were not good at it. And at first, it was discouraging in some ways, because it was like, Oh no, this strategy doesn't work for these 10 year olds, but I do remember sometimes some of the kids were kind of funny. Like instead of they couldn't really remember and so some of them weren't paying close attention and one of them took a marker and was like colouring on their hand and stamped it on the page. And that's what they put on the page, instead of writing what they could remember. There was one kid that was writing a tonne. And I got really excited thinking that one kid was finally retrieving what they could remember. I mean, this wasn't going to be great for the experiment, but I was just really excited. And then when I got the papers later, and I was looking through them, there was only one that had a lot of writing, must have been this kid, because the rest were like, nonsense. And it was like, this passage was about clouds, I'm going to tell you about my cat. And it then went on and on about the child's pet, like, all right. Things like that are kind of, you know, kind of amusing, I always enjoy as a as a professor in the classroom, I enjoy working with my undergraduate students now. Sometimes they'll come up with excuses that are interesting, or, you know, say things that are that are kind of wild are off the wall, but I do enjoy it.

Student Interviewers 30:58

Has COVID impacted the way you work?

Dr Megan Sumeracki 31:01

Yes, a lot. In particular, I was pregnant, when COVID first hit, I was about halfway through the pregnancy. And so I really just like locked it down and was like no one in no one out. We’d be trying to really, because we didn't know what how COVID would affect a developing baby. So I really, I pulled everything from the classroom even a little bit early and went fully online. And I have not gone back to teaching in person since. Because I've remained in this high risk category of you know, first the pregnancy and then postpartum. And then I've been trying to get pregnant again. And so I've stayed, I've stayed online. And so I haven't really collected data in my lab, or worked closely with students on research, other than data that were already collected, I've mostly just been teaching over zoom. I think I've gotten good at it. And while many of my colleagues have gone back to the classroom, we still do want to offer some online classes. And I think that I've, I've gotten to a point where I'm good at teaching over zoom, I do a flipped classroom model. I don't know if you know what that means. But basically, the students watch the lecture on video ahead of time, and I break it up into small chunks, so they can watch it on their own time. And they can rewind, and they can pause to take notes, they can tailor it as they like. Then when we're in the classroom, which is not a physical classroom, but on Zoom. I'm not teaching them new content, they've learned it from those videos. Instead, we engage in activities, I put them in breakout rooms, and they do small group discussions. And we come back and do larger group. And we come up with examples together and really focus on understanding the information and focusing on remembering it. So I think I've gotten a good system, and it's working well. But it definitely has changed my workflow. But honestly, having been pregnant, my trajectory, the way I was working for a little bit was going to change anyway. So yeah, and I'm still at home. But you know, eventually I'll go back to the classroom.

Student Interviewers 33:10

Could you describe to us your day to day schedule?

Dr Megan Sumeracki 33:13

Yeah. So it varies. Being a professor means that we really do have a lot of work to do. But we create our own schedules a little bit. And we can kind of shift things around. So some days, I am teaching most of the day, so I might spend most of the day on zoom now, or I would have been in the classroom. And you know, just prepping for those courses, getting prepared, getting prompts ready, getting any slides ready. And then teaching. Some days, I do a lot of advising. So I might meet with students and talk to them about their progress towards graduation, what they need to do to make sure that they're succeeding, if their grades are not doing, are not where we need them to be. We talk about effective study strategies. Some days I spend a lot of time in committee meetings. So that's part of that service that professors do. So I might I serve on the Department Advisory Committee, which basically academia is full of committees. We basically, at the Department Advisory Committee, we review faculty in our department materials when they go up for promotion and make recommendations. We do peer observations we watch each other teach and give each other feedback and make recommendations those types of things. I serve on the bias response Committee, which is a large committee across the entire college that is focused on any sort of like implicit bias or explicit bias on campus. If someone makes a negative comment about women or people of colour or you know those types of things, we look to see kind of where those things are concentrated and try to come up with ways to teach about how to avoid those types of biases. So we're not punishing anybody, we're just trying to identify the areas where, where there's a lot of bias or maybe more bias than we want and try to kind of help make adjustments. So service. I do, you know, I used to be in the lab collecting data. Now I do more just sort of review, writing papers or books, giving workshops, I do that a lot. Probably more than the average professor. I work with students or teachers or any other educators to talk about effective study strategies and effective learning in the classroom. It varies a lot, I have a lot of freedom to kind of shift things around. But there is a lot of work to be done. So it's meetings and classes and research and writing. And then you just sort of keep reshuffling that.

Student Interviewers 35:53

What's the most effective study method you could recommend to us?

Dr Megan Sumeracki 35:57

So the combination of spaced practice and retrieval practice, those together are the most effective, they're sort of the gold standard. I've talked about retrieval already, setting your materials aside and trying to produce what you can remember, write it down, say it out loud, draw it, whatever, however you want to produce it. As long as you've set your book and your notes aside, then go back to the book, the notes and check to see how accurate you were. And you probably will not have remembered everything, you might have actually forgotten most of it. But the act of producing it is really helpful. And then you look and refresh by looking at your notes again, and then set them aside and try to retrieve again. But you don't want to just do that all, you know, take, say take a Saturday, you're like all I'm going to do on Saturday is retrieval practice. That's it and then not touch it again, spacing means spreading it out into smaller pieces over time. So give yourself maybe 30 minutes or an hour, most evenings or after school and do a little bit of retrieval practice over time. So for students who are taking their GCSEs, not this year, but next year, we say start with the spacing, because it's spacing out retrieval over time, that makes the learning really durable, and it makes you more flexible. And it also gives you more time, you know, if you try to write things down, and you only remember half, that's okay, because you have plenty of time to work your way up to remembering as much as you can, and the different ways that you retrieve, and the kind of different ways that you kind of put things together and remember, even coming up with your own examples from your memory. All of that is really, really effective.

Student Interviewers 37:54

Throughout your whole career, what did you enjoy the most?

Dr Megan Sumeracki 37:56

I think I have enjoyed my work on The Learning Scientist project the most. The Learning Scientist is, I've mentioned it, I just haven't named it. It's the work that we do, a couple of colleagues and I, where we take the information about the science of learning from Cognitive Psychology. And we try to make it as freely available to students, and teachers and other educators as possible. So we write blog posts, and we do podcast interviews with people like you and your podcast. But also we have our own podcast, The Learning Scientist Podcast. And we write books, and we give workshops. And we basically just try to produce as much free science of learning content that is digestible by students, and teachers, and other educators who maybe are not trained in reading Cognitive Psychology papers. I don't know if you've ever tried to read one, probably not. They're very dense. And there's a lot of meticulous details in there that that we need to know as Cognitive Psychologists, but the rest of the people don't need to know that. And so we just tried to make it as freely available as possible. And it's been the most enjoyable because we get to hear from students who say I was really doing poorly. And then I started this method, and I didn't think it was going to work. But I stuck with it. And I did really well. Or teachers who have changed the way they're teaching in the classroom and their students are just flourishing or other educators who are really excited. It's, it's nice to have the recognition and it's really nice to see that the work that we're doing isn't just living in some academic journal where no one's paying attention to it. It's nice to see it living and breathing out in the real world.

Student Interviewers 39:38

Do you recommend any other resources for the subject?

Dr Megan Sumeracki 39:41

I mentioned The Learning Scientists podcast and we have a bunch of different episodes. A lot of them for teachers, but some for students. I think it's episodes 14 and 15. But they say for students right in the title. Those are good. You know our blog, and we have a YouTube channel and videos that we produce as well. We have a book Understanding How We Learn that has a chapter that the whole book is about Cognitive Psychology and the science of learning. But there's specifically a chapter just for students, if students just want to, you know, sort of learn about how they can use the strategies on their own. But if you're interested in the Cognitive Psychology behind it, the whole book might be interesting. There's a book called Make It Stick by Roediger, McDaniel and Brown. That is a great book that applies Cognitive Psychology to studying and learning. 

Student Interviewers 40:36

Do you have any role models? 

Dr Megan Sumeracki 40:37

I think my main role model really was my mom, even though she wasn't in a STEM career. And she actually stayed home with us for many years until our parents got divorced. And then she went back to work. But she really sort of has lived her life in a way that's, I think, really lovely, just sort of treat others the way you want to be treated, and try to help as many people succeed as much as possible. And she was just an excellent mom. I also look up to a lot of female politicians. So in the US, not, not all of them. But Hillary Clinton, I think, even though I know she has a bit of a bad reputation among many, for my generation, you know, she's done a lot of really good things. And I think some people in our country have really focused on a couple of things that maybe we're not perfect, and you know, nobody's perfect. And certainly, it's not that we should sweep those things under the rug, but I don't think we need to constantly talk about her emails. That's, you know, maybe not the most important thing she's done. But Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, who's our first female in the White House. I really, I like Dr. Jill Biden as well, and I, she's the current president, his wife, and she is more than just a first lady right? She's, she has her PhD and I love that a lot of us in the States and are insistent that we call her Dr. Jill Biden, not just Mrs. Jill Biden or whatever. So I look up to a lot of a lot of those women again, not all. But certainly we have some good ones that I look up to.

Outro 42:19

Thank you for joining another STEM Untapped podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, then subscribe for free on your podcast app. You can follow us on Instagram @stemuntapped. if you know of a school or group of students who would like to interview female role models to get in touch. Likewise, if you know of anyone who would be a great female or non-binary STEM role model please let us know. More details are all documented in the show notes.