Episode 2: Dr. Beronda Montgomery - Lessons from Little Rock, academia and plants
Welcome back, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the podcast, knowledge unbound. For those of you who are new to us, we are an interview podcast where we've been in conversation with people who do social justice work in science education and education in general. Knowledge Unbound is brought to you by the RIOS Institute for a Racially Just Inclusive Open STEM education. We are generously funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
Bryan Dewsbury:I'm joined here in the studio by my wonderful producer, mister Segef Amasai. Segef, what's up? Hello, everyone. It is a pleasure to be back for the second installment of the Unbinding of Knowledge. I'll cut your mic.
Bryan Dewsbury:I swear to god. Cut your mic. Did you did you work on that? Like, the way you said that? I feel like you practiced that voice.
Bryan Dewsbury:Well, maybe. Alright. Who knows? Segev is, a computer engineering major class of 2025, and Segev is going to apply and receive a ton of scholarships this week to make sure he graduates debt free. Am I right?
Bryan Dewsbury:That is correct. Segev is a wonderful producer for this episode. Thank you so much. Today, have a really exciting conversation for you. I'll be talking to doctor Brenda Montgomery.
Bryan Dewsbury:Doctor Montgomery is the vice president for academic affairs at Grinnell College in Iowa. She's also the author of a very wonderful book called lessons from plants and she's been known in science education and education circles for a long time as somebody who really really thinks deeply and thoughtfully about mentoring and inclusive education in science. And we unpacked that. We went on that journey and it was just so good to hear her really give thoughtful reasons for everything and why and I I really hope you enjoy every element of this conversation from the personal to the professional and I hope it inspires you as much as it did me. Welcome.
Bryan Dewsbury:So I I know like I know when you you when we go to places to give talks, and I say we are not I do this from time to time. You know, they they they read the CV thing.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Right?
Bryan Dewsbury:And but I I've heard you say offline that if people look at your CV, they will see a very traditional ladder, right, which you kind of expect of an academic. But there's a lot of nontraditionality that sort of encircles that has led to that. So wondering if maybe by way of introduction, could kind of unpack that statement for the audience.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Absolutely. So I think even as early as where I did my undergraduate degree at Washington University with a bachelor's degree in biology, ultimately, I had no intention to be a biology professor. I had decided really early that I wanted to be a lawyer. And then in middle school it was clear I was really good at science and math and so through kind of reason and deduction I decided I wanted to be a biotech lawyer. Okay.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:So as an undergrad, I pre law, focused on getting into law school and ultimately committed to that until the very senior year when I decided to do an undergraduate research experience to understand the science I would be writing patents about.
Bryan Dewsbury:Okay.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:But that undergraduate research experience just changed the whole trajectory and that I hadn't known any professors and the idea that you could have a career just pursuing curiosity. So I decided not to go to law school and instead to try to get into graduate school.
Bryan Dewsbury:Time out. Did you just say you hadn't known any professors?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:I hadn't known any professors personally. Oh, okay. Okay. When I decided to be a lawyer, I knew you know, I grew up in a neighborhood where being a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher were things. Even though there were few in the neighborhood, those were valuable careers.
Bryan Dewsbury:I I just find it a little remarkable. This is obvious not on you, but just that so many of our students come to university Yes. And they are literally surrounded by professors. Yes.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Right? Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:And at least in my experience, so many of them don't even think this is a thing. Absolutely. And I I just wonder how is it we don't lean into that reality that we they are being taught by us, mentored, served by us, and we don't kind of explicitly lay our pathway out to the point where they don't even make it a consideration.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:No. I think it's a really important point, which is something I brought into my own career of being a professor, is to have conversations with them about why I chose this path and how it is a possibility. Because I think too many of us look at them only as teachers in the classroom or professors in the research, and often they don't lean into it. Frequently when we do lean into it as a professor, we're telling how stressful it is, how stressed out we are, and so leaning into it as a space of possibility is a completely different kind of Exactly,
Bryan Dewsbury:how you have that conversation. So okay, you're gonna be a patent lawyer?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yes, so then ultimately after I did an undergraduate research experience and realized that I could have a career of pursuing interesting questions and mentoring students, I decided to take a year and work as a technician back in Arkansas, and ultimately the person I was working for said, You're doing really great work. You should get a master's degree while you decide what you're gonna do. So I got a master's degree, spent two years, and then went to graduate school. During the master's degree I took all kinds of classes to decide what area of biology I wanted.
Bryan Dewsbury:And where was your master's?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:University of Central Arkansas, so I'm from Little Rock, Arkansas, went back And I took a whole range of classes, I did work assessing snakes in nature, I worked with rats, I did a whole kinds of thing, and then I took a plant physiology class.
Bryan Dewsbury:How do you assess snakes?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Well you look at where they are, you look at the population, you look at how the aging of the population, my mother was shocked because I am not that kind of person, but it was the person who was doing that work, who was a great mentor, so I wanted to work
Bryan Dewsbury:with her.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And then ultimately I took a plant physiology class, not even really interested in the class, but it fit a schedule and the professor was so enthusiastic and I had thought at that point that plants were boring and he really brought them to life and that's when I made the decision to go to graduate school in plant biology.
Bryan Dewsbury:Okay. I mean, I'm thinking like assassin snakes. See you. You're stuck with snakes. I run the next direction.
Bryan Dewsbury:I was assassin
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:I was thinking them up. I was like, this I was in mentors can get you to do things you never thought
Bryan Dewsbury:you would I know. I know. So I I wanna before we move on career wise, I wanna talk a little bit about Little Rock. Yes. Right?
Bryan Dewsbury:You mentioned earlier about, you know, in that community, there are these very particular career choices that you typically went after. Yes. Right? Can you tell me a little bit more about that community?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yeah, so I grew up in the city, right in the city in Little Rock, a working class family. So my mother had gotten her associate's degree from Shorter College, which is a historically black college in Little Rock, Arkansas. Both my parents were from the Delta Region, they grew up in agricultural Delta Region. And so my mom had an associate's degree. My dad did not graduate from high school and went back after they were married and got his GED.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:So I came from a family that education was valued, but it wasn't a family that was deep into education. And so we grew up and of course my parents wanted us to do well in school, but it was kind of a working class community and as it was clear that I was excelling at school, you know, the default was you should be a lawyer or you should be a doctor. And we did have a few teachers in the neighborhood and so those all seemed like valuable careers and I had a brother who was into music and it was like, nope, that's not a path towards sustainability.
Bryan Dewsbury:Is that a reflection of him or you just understood
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:No, just the, it's like when we had people who were in these areas, my family was like, how do you make a living there? So my parents had worked really hard to get out of poverty. They grew up in poverty in the Delta region of Arkansas. They were, I was telling someone recently, both my parents were pulled out of school every spring to pick cotton with their parents to make extra money. So they grew up really having to struggle to make it.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And so for them, they really wanted us to focus on getting to a path that we could sustain our lives. And so even I remember when I decided I wasn't going to go to law school, that was a long conversation with my mother. She was like, I think you should still go and you could do that later. But it was just this idea, those seem to be paths that you could get a good job, sustainability and make a life for yourself. And so really the community was trying to help us choose paths that would keep us on a path of economic sustainability
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. So you you you keep using it with community which I appreciate. Yes. But I'm wondering from a numerical standpoint, was that encouragement beyond just your family?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Absolutely. So I grew up at a time where really it was like the whole neighborhood was raising you. And so across the street there was a woman who owned a daycare and so if we were out of school, we would go to her daycare and so she would, I grew up at a time where you would be outside and anyone could correct you, right? The woman two doors down, we could freely go down there, but it was all, it was this community where they looked out for us and my mom looked out for their kids. So it really was a couple of blocks of people who had become more than neighbors and were friends.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And it really was this kind of village like atmosphere where if you did something wrong, by the time you got home, your mother already knew, if you did something good, the entire neighborhood So I really did grow up in that kind of, it was a communal raising of everyone.
Bryan Dewsbury:Any family members still there?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yeah, so all of my family is still there. So I'm the youngest of five kids. My father passed away in 2019, but he and my mother lived in Little Rocker right outside their entire marriage. My momma's still there. And all five of us kids at one point moved away.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Everyone else has migrated back other than me. So, everybody else now is within probably thirty, forty mile radius.
Bryan Dewsbury:You're a prodigal child. Yes. I'm going to come for Thanksgiving.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yes. Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:Couple times a year, right?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Well, I tell them that they need someone to visit, right?
Bryan Dewsbury:Well, how is that community now?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:You know, the community has changed. I was talking about this with my mother because I was there some time ago and someone ran out into the street, a young girl from across the street and I just by instincts said, you know, get out of the street, be careful. And later they came to my mom and said, please tell your daughter don't yell at my child. Right? And so it's, I think we've broken down and kind of gone back into our entrenchments, which you know, I'm like, I have a son.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:I'm like, anybody who sees him in danger, snatch him. Right? And we can talk about why you snatch them later. But I think we have lost some of that, not in all places, but some of it has broken down as the city's grown and, you know, there are other challenges.
Bryan Dewsbury:So I mean, I'm excited for conversation. Mhmm. But there is a part of me that almost wants to talk to your mom. She's the one to talk to Right. Right.
Bryan Dewsbury:Who who Yes. Would have grown up in a a very different era and I watched that to her own growing up and then raised you and your siblings and watched that change and then now in 2023 and
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Well, it's so interesting. We have some amazing conversations about equity Uh-huh. And equality and sometimes some deep family debates. Because my parents who grew up at a time where my mom is brilliant, a brilliant mathematician, we always say she could have been the first professor if she wasn't brought up at this time. And so they look at things and talk about how much things have changed and my siblings and I are like, things are still pretty bad.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And so we have this whole conversation about whether we're in a better state and it is fascinating to talk with them because I do think often we can lose sight of how far we've come, right? Because I sit there and talk with my mother who didn't have the possibilities that I have. And so I think you're right, there's a lot. My son's, one of his teachers in middle school had as an assignment that they talked to someone who was in their eighties or so who wasn't their grandparent, right, about their experience. Because I think we do sometimes, we can focus so much on what all the paths we still need to take that we forget we've come some ways.
Bryan Dewsbury:So I'm assuming at some point your mother's mother and perhaps even your dad's mother was alive. Mhmm. What you know, you talk about your son's assignment. Yeah. Right?
Bryan Dewsbury:What about your assignment? What what about when you were growing up and talking to them about that time period and then you're kinda reflecting your life now? How has some of those stories kind of come through the generations of your
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:It's really amazing. I used to spend a lot of time with my maternal grandfather. He would sit on the porch of his home.
Bryan Dewsbury:Same community?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:No. This is in Helena, West Helena. So, this deep in the country right between Memphis and Little Rock. And we would get sent there in the summer for a couple weeks, know, and I would sit with him on the porch almost all day because he was mostly quiet and I could sit there and read. But every once in a while he would bring up a story and it was fascinating because my maternal grandfather was born and lived in Elaine, Arkansas, which is a site of a major racial insurrection.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And he remembered that, right? And so sitting there and talking to him about that, sometimes it was shocking and now when I read about these histories, we come through these really deep kind of generational, I call it a generational lineage of bravery, a generational lineage of hope. Someone asked me how do I remain hopeful? And I said, know, I come from a generational lineage of hope and I'm not gonna be the one to drop it. And so I do think it's so important to connect with those prior generations to understand kind of what our lineage is, what we're made of, but also kind of what the paths of success, the paths of change and where we still have struggles.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. So were there things that in talking with your maternal grandfather that then came to inform your own thinking about your work, about your thoughts on equity and social justice? And I wanna maybe add some nuance to this question because I know, I mean, just thinking about my own life, right? When I was 18, 15 or whatever, and I would have similar conversations with my dad Mhmm. In a Caribbean context.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:I didn't at 15 say, oh, when I become a professor at 34, this is gonna impact how I how I teach my class. Right? Mhmm. But when I teach my class, I realize I'm I'm recalling things from my ancestors, things from from the way I was raised, things from his own past in ways that I hadn't planned. Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? I'm I'm just wondering what that journey is like for you.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:No, I I think similar to you. Some of them I've come to know later or to recognize them. Right. Later. One of the biggest ones is that my family has always had this sense that, the kind of sense of Sankofa, right?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:You're always looking back. You're going to get something, but you're looking back. And it's been a practice in our family. Like if you go off and get education, then you need to bring it back in a way that we all can process and benefit from it. And I look at that now a lot in the ways that I go about collaborations and the ways that I go about mentoring.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:It's really trying to encourage people, okay, you've gotten this knowledge, what are you going to do with it beyond yourself? Because we existed in a space, it's both fun and humorous, right? Even now when I go back for Thanksgiving, I can be talking to my mom about it in a major accomplishment and she's like, get as cute, get the sweet potato pie done. This is your job today, right? And so there's this constant, but then you hear her telling the story to someone else with great pride.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:So there's this constant negotiation of you've done an amazing thing and yet that doesn't just belong to you and you can't let it elevate you. And I think that one of the dangers of the academy for me is that it can sometimes be easy to try to, you know, the academy kind of encourages you and pushes you into that space of look at all you did, celebrate yourself. And I'm constantly reminding myself and those I work with that this is a communal knowledge and we don't get it alone, so we can't just take the spoils alone.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right. Did you get the sweet potato pie done?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:I did.
Bryan Dewsbury:Okay, so you took this really interesting plant physiology class. Piqued your interest. Yes. I take it that's what then led to pursuing that at a doctoral That's
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:that's right, yeah. So that was ultimately, I became really fascinated with how plants have to spend their whole life in this one place, right? And so if we are unhappy, we move somewhere else, but they're there and so they have to be really sensitive to what's going on around them. And that was so fascinating to me. I wanted to learn more about that.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And the more I studied plants, the more parallels I saw in terms of communities broadly. So I just became completely and totally fascinated with them.
Bryan Dewsbury:So you're fascinated with plants. Yes. Right? And I know that for several years, I think, you know, you've you've said several times that you're a trained biochemist. Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:That was sort of the lens through which that was studied. And and it was it was several years in Mhmm. Right, that you you started to make this very explicit connection between mentoring and some of the things that you were Yes. Internalizing from your work with plants. Could you walk us through that transition?
Bryan Dewsbury:I don't wanna call it a transition because it's not like you stopped being a biochemist per se, but but I but but there was some, you know, some metaphors that were becoming more apparent. And and so what what made what surfaced that for you? Yes. And then what made the change happen?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:So I think pretty early in my career, I started to really struggle with the way. So my entire academic career until recently was at a primarily white institution, Research One, I'm still at primarily white. And one of the challenges I really started to deal with in the scientific spaces were that we study these amazing systems and we understand how critically important the external environment is for the success of these systems that we study, and yet with the humans we were interacting with, we shut all of that off, and we're judging people based on what we felt their capabilities were, their own personal agency from deficit perspective. So during my first few years in my tenure track position, there were six black women recruited to PhD programs, not to my lab, but in PhD programs that I was associated with. And I was really excited because the timing was such that if I got tenure and was successful, they should be finishing their PhDs, and I said, we're gonna have the biggest black women in STEM success party when this happens.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:So I kinda had my head down focused on tenure, and as I was getting close, I started to look, okay, where are they? They all six were gone. Nobody with a PhD. So three of them decided the environment wasn't for them and left. The other three got to the point where they didn't get successfully through, so they left with master's degrees.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And when I was talking to the program directors about what had happened, there were these conversations that some of them we had recruited from HBCUs, they couldn't make the transition and others
Bryan Dewsbury:This is the director seeing this to Yes, yeah.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Right, yeah. And so there was this whole deficit framing, right, that they hadn't made it and I said I knew at least four or five of these women and they were brilliant. So, and they also have been successful elsewhere, right? They came to us having demonstrated success. And I also started citing papers for them that HBCUs are actually the training ground for a vast majority of black people who go on to get their PhDs.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And so I asked the question at that time, we have to stop and say what did we do to derail their success?
Bryan Dewsbury:Right.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And when I would enter those conversations, what I would find is that people's defenses would go up really quickly.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Because we're talking about race, we're talking about gender, we're talking about whether the primarily white spaces have done their work, and so I was desperate to find a way to get deeper into the conversation before people shut down, and several of the people on this first committee were plant biologists and I said, you all understand this, right? And I started to break it down to them and not to say it transformed everything, but they couldn't deny that we understand this in a biological context and we don't use it in our own environments. So I really started to use the plants as a way to say, you know, if a plant is growing and it's struggling in its health, we don't look at the plant and say, well, you plant have a deficit and can't grow. Right? We start to ask questions.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Who watered it last? Does it need nutrients? Does Brian always kill plants? If so, maybe he shouldn't have plants or let me teach him how to do it.
Bryan Dewsbury:I would like my listeners to know that I have a great
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:I know you have a garden with great tomatoes. Oh, you know, what what would happen, my mother has a great green thumb. We were growing up, sick plants would show up on the porch, and they'd say, can you nurse us back to health and then to health and tell me what you did? So we from it's because we interact with plants from an expectation that they should grow. And I simply started asking what would happen if we interacted with each other from that perspective?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And it's hard for people to deny that. And so we could get deep into the conversation before people realized that I was saying, yeah, you're the problem, you're killing the plants. So it was really a desperation to ask how can we have questions about topics that otherwise, if we focused on the humans, would shut down before we could get to some insights.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right. Let let me ask you two follow-up questions on that. Yes. One one is maybe based on, you know, the way in which I remember doing biology early on, which may not have been correct.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Mhmm.
Bryan Dewsbury:But this very clear message that the difference between humans and say a plant is that we are sentient beings. Right? That we can we have consciousness, we can make a decision. And when I when I reflected on what that statement came up in my mind again when I read your book, Lessons From Plants. And and I guess my takeaway was not from the book, but from that lesson is that that message then kind of I don't wanna say it gave us too much agency, but it it completely negated the rule of environment.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yes. Right? It's almost as though conscientiousness was was it. That was your whole being. Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? And and and so I wonder if part of the problem that you're describing here is a big pendulum swing towards this, you know especially, we can bring up sort of the culture of America and the pull your bootstraps up kind of thing. So that's the point number one. And then number two is specifically in academia, where you're raised to be the smartest person in the room and the problem solver and the one with all the answers. Is it a difficult conversation when a Bruno Montgomery comes along and says, you know, we might actually be part of the problem.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yes. Right? Right? We are creators of the environment. So how has those themes bubbled up in the conversations?
Bryan Dewsbury:How have people responded, and how do you sort of get around defensiveness?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:No. I think it's a really important point. You know, the first point you make about consciousness. I had a great conversation with someone also from The Caribbean, maybe you guys are thinking, but this idea of how do we balance the fact that we as humans do have agency in a different way than other organisms, and I agree with your point that we can go so far to agency that we still ignore that what we know. So people who study any kind of organism, whether it's mammals or environment impacts them, right?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:It impacts their capacity for growth. It doesn't completely reprogram that, but it impacts their capacity. And I think we do put so much into consciousness that we forget we are still biological organisms subject to our environments impacted by community. I think also your point about us being the smartest in the room, it really goes to this idea that much of academia is built on an individual success model.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And even when we don't, most of us, hardly anyone does all their work alone, we still reward it, right? And so every time I stand on a stage for an award, there are dozens of undergraduates, graduates, postdocs, collaborators, but somehow we tease it apart into individual success and because our systems resist the idea of collective success, we go back to that and it can be really hard then to understand that collective success means we need collective stewardship. Those two have to go hand in hand. I think the last thing that I would say related to the two points that you brought up is that, you you said what happens when someone comes in and say you're wrong, we need to change. One of our hardest challenges I'm convinced that we still have to grapple with is that it's really difficult to ask people to change the system that affirmed them.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Uh-huh. Because if the system affirmed you, it must be good, right? And I think we have to get to a place to say that I've managed to navigate the system and it worked, but how are we going to make sure that there are micro environments or micro climate so that more people of different kind you know, so because what happens is you get people who are very similar or you get people I I don't you can take yourself out of this category. You get people like me and you who are finding own way but we're not depending on the system to tell us we've got it right. Correct.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:But there's a whole range of other people who we need to be at the table. Yeah. Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah, I mean, because one of the takeaway messages for me from that path which you accurately described is but who else got left out? Yes. Because they didn't have that navigational capital, right? They didn't have, you know, the parents I had who said, no, no, no, your decisions are guided by your values, not by anybody's dictation to you and And
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:I think if I could say, I think one of the things we have to recognize is that when those people get left out, it's not just the sadness that they got left out. I get sad that the system then couldn't benefit from their input and also change. So the systems haven't evolved and individuals haven't been successful. And until we see both of those as detriments, we'll keep thinking we're just helping people be successful. But our systems are actually suffering from not having that diverse input.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right. What happened to the Were there any changes made in the program as a result of the conversations
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:talking about Yeah, so we did make some changes, and one of them was that we moved to having additional people in the graduate school as well as the provost office who could do mentor training. And a lot of them use the mentor training work that comes out of University of Wisconsin with Angela Byers Winston and Chris Fung. You know, trying to get mentors to think about students beyond just what they're producing, using some of their culturally competent mentoring. So we, that was one step. I think the challenge that I was still pressing on while I was still there is that those kinds of changes are good.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And yet if we don't change the administrators who are assessing us or the ways in which we get assessed, we can make better individual mentors, but the system doesn't change.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. Yeah. I wanna talk about that a bit because administrators, I know you've been one for a while. Actually, let me let me put a plug on that real quick because I wanna go back, just chronologically speaking, back to there was a point where you you went full on mentoring. Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:Like, you're gonna this is gonna be what you write about research on. Was it that conversation, that experience you had with that group and the six black women who didn't finish, was that the the thing that turned your work into full on mentoring or did that come later?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:So that was the catalyst for me to start getting involved myself and understanding what was possible in mentoring. And so at that point, I I didn't know what I didn't know. And so I did what I would do with any experiment at the bench. I went to say, what's in the literature? What can we learn and how can we put that in our practices?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:So I started first trying to learn myself what was out there and how to implement it, but then to be in community. So for a long time I was doing mentoring kind of service. Was on committees, I was working for my disciplinary society, and a mentor of my own said that if you're going to continue to do this work in meaningful ways, you've got to capture it in ways that the university will give you time and commitment to do it. So what I have always encouraged people is that if you have something that's critically important to you and you understand the powerful ways in which institutions look at that, whether it's writing, research grants, talks, then you have to figure out which of those paths is something that you can do and capture that work. I'm a writer, I love to write, so I said I can start writing about mentoring and capture it as scholarship.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And then I volunteered to be a co PI on a grant for disciplinary society. So I had grant money and papers and people started to refer to me as a scholar. Right.
Bryan Dewsbury:Because that's
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:what makes you a scholar, Right,
Bryan Dewsbury:that's a code.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And so I pulled it into my kind of scholarship such that by the time I went up for promotion to full, they recognized that along with my biochemistry Okay. Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:Okay. Very nice. So I like your very positive take on being an administrator.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yeah. I don't know if it's completely positive, but let's Well,
Bryan Dewsbury:I know it's a mixed bag, but I wanna get into it because it's it's it's it's it's something that's been thrown my way, not offers per se, but just discussions as as sort of my own growth has happened. You know, my kids are young right now. I I think there's a lot of things on the table that that perhaps, you know, I see it in the future, but not now. And I I I look at higher ed academia, I look at some administrative bloat, maybe some cases where that's an unfair criticism, cases where it is fair. And I try to be fair in my assessment.
Bryan Dewsbury:Mhmm. Right? Because at the end of the day, somebody has to run the university. Mhmm. Somebody has to keep the lights on.
Bryan Dewsbury:Mhmm. Somebody has to keep the budgets balanced. Somebody has to enforce rules. I mean
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:So somebody has to be there doing the things that perhaps we who just wanna teach and write papers Right. Don't either have time for or want to. The upside of I think that role is kind of what you said is when you look, if you see inequity as a systemic issue and you have a little bit more power and privilege in that system, then you have more opportunities to ride that ship in ways that you can't as much as a faculty member, even a full professor. So knowing that you had that have that mindset. Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:How did you kind of approach your various administrator roles and and able to kind of implement that?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yeah. So I got into administration the right same way I got into mentoring scholarship to be frank. I was doing mentoring scholarship and realized that we could work on mentoring, but we were gonna have to work on leadership, right, to get this. And so then I started doing academic leader scholarship, right, papers. And ultimately that work that I was doing started to have impact nationally.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:I was working with a lot of colleges and university and so Michigan State where I was at the time wanted me to start working with department chairs and such. And they just said, can you go help this department? Like a department would call me up and my mentor said they're gonna pull you left and right doing this and still have all the same expectations for you. So you need to tell them this is leadership. So they actually, the first role I had was a brand new role.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Created a role as assistant provost for faculty development focused on research to teach department chairs and deans how to set up mentoring programs. And I have always been of the mindset that I'm not really like dying to be an administrator, but if you're going to be one, you wanna be one where you have a title and a budget where you can impact. So I negotiated the title so that it would be one that the deans and chairs knew they had to listen. This wasn't just that she's doing good work.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah,
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:yeah. So I became an administrator to capture the time to do the work that the college has started to call up me on and it was really trying to have a balanced life. It was gonna be too much. And I said, if you all want me to do this, you need to create some time. So I was a part time administrator to create that time and to get a budget to do that work, and then realized that you can try to have impact in that regard if you can get your administrative higher ups to set the evaluation systems and they gave me a budget and once I had a few million dollars the deans were like, well we guess we have to listen.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And so part of
Bryan Dewsbury:Not entitled. The budget. Right?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:So I realized a budget and title opens ears. Right. And so for me then, those are the roles that I've taken on not because I I you know, when I was in a leadership program once, several of the people, I say, what do you wanna do? They say, I wanna be a dean. I wanna be this.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:They say, Baranda, what do you wanna do? And I said, I wanna be able to impact our systems so that people have equitable chances to understand pathways towards success, the stroke. So it's about that for me. And then it becomes which position has a budget that allows you to set that as a standard, not just for individuals, but hopefully from a systemic perspective. Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. So you have the the why first.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yes. Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:And we can figure out the title and the budget stuff after. So what are some of the things that you you you've really enjoyed about being in that position and what are some of the challenges that you feel you have to navigate?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:So I think the challenges, I'll start with those, the challenges are that systems are designed to function as they have.
Bryan Dewsbury:That's what an institution Inherently conservative.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yes. Right, yeah. And so a lot of the change that I see needs to happen, trying to come up with a strategy, find the counterparts who will work with you, that is intense mental work, sometimes finding the resources. And often it looks like we're gonna start moving towards success and then we hit the structures of if we do that, how's it gonna impact our graduation rate? How's it gonna impact our ranking?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And I have argued that sometimes if you know something is the right thing to do, to right the ship, your graduation rate might drop a couple years because you gotta get something, and we can't be worried about that. Those are the challenging parts, the systems are designed to stay the same, they are designed for status quo. They are designed for the appearance of change. There's this leadership author called Deborah Roland who says that often our approaches towards change leadership are to layer change on the system. And I always say that's like putting chocolate frosting on a vanilla cake and telling someone they have chocolate cake.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:I like chocolate cake, that is not chocolate cake. That is vanilla cake with chocolate frosting. Right? That's the hard part.
Bryan Dewsbury:To get bread pudding. I'm just saying.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Oh, yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:I'm gonna start talking dessert here. I mean, call it call it like you see it.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:But I I I think the things that keep me at the table are that for me personally and many people I know, my personal friends in the academy who have done kind of out of the box things, most of us had to fight to do that, or we had to do it even when we knew it wasn't going to be recognized, or we had to really make our own case, and that can be exhausting. And one of the things that I like about being an administrator is that if you figure out the system well enough, sometimes you can use levers that are there to make different things possible for people, you can invest in new areas. And so I think for me, one of the things that brought me to administration is to ask what work I could do to try to make it a little easier for someone who sees their career in a nonstandard way, the way I see mine, not have to fight so hard to do it. Because there are a lot of people who left because they didn't wanna fight. If I can work in an administrative space and keep at least some of them at the table to make their unique contributions, that can put institutions on paths that I think they need to go.
Bryan Dewsbury:Are you beginning to see good examples of that out there in the field?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:I do think so. I mean, look at, in addition to being an administrator at a couple of places, I've also done a lot of consulting across higher education. And I think some of the things I've had a chance to collaborate on either as a consultant or in the spaces I've been, you see people at the current institution I'm at, we've done a couple of pilots, right, to try to make teaching flexible enough for people to do the work that's meaningful for them, that's not seen as standard teaching, but to get it recognized as teaching, and you see these people really excited about their work, some of them who are doing community engaged work, you see the communities change, but the ways that I know it's having impact is that I now have new people coming to the table saying, I've been thinking about this thing that's out of the box, is it possible to think about? And in the past they probably would have never spoken about that with someone in my role, But inviting people to the table to do that kind of thing, I think can have impact locally and hopefully over the long time get us to rethink our systems a little bit altogether.
Bryan Dewsbury:Let's talk a little bit about Lessons from Plants.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:What made that happen? What what led to that book? Why was the book we needed why was that book we needed for 2020, you came out?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Came out 2021.
Bryan Dewsbury:Twenty '20 '1. Yeah. What led to that project? What was it like making that happen? Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:What kind of impact you're hoping that happens to happen to the community?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:I love to share the story because I I at that time, writing a book was not on my radar. Okay. I went to give a talk at a conference. I was in the opening night presidential symposium at a microbiology conference giving a very technical talk on biochemistry and proteins and how it affects, and I gave that talk and every time I give a talk my goal is not to impress anyone with my knowledge, but to invite them into my enthusiasm for science and then come with the facts. And I gave that talk, went back to my room, and got an email from the person who became my editor at Harvard University Press.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Said I'm here in the exhibit hall exhibiting books, have you ever thought about writing a book? I heard your talk and it was great. And I said to her, I have to have coffee with you just to understand how we got from, you know, mutating cysteines to prolines and can you write a book? And so when I talked with her and I actually had the conversation with her because at that time I was assistant provost for faculty development, now in charge of supporting faculty who wrote books I had never written a book. I said, you know, if nothing else I'll learn more about this process to support the faculty.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And I said to her, what? And she said, you were so clear and enthusiastic that I know I can send you on a book tour, I just need you to write a book. And so she said, what have you been thinking about? So initially we were thinking about writing a very academic book on how photosynthetic organisms respond to light. We were gonna go from very academic.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Said, but I also have written a couple of papers about lessons from plants and what I think humans can learn from plants. And she said your whole face lit up with that. So let's go that direction. So we went that direction of writing it and there was some serendipity. I wrote the book and my goal of writing the book was that if someone were a plant biologist, they could hand it to their family who had no plant biologist and the plant biology would be accessible enough.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:But also that someone who just has a very small interest in plants could pick it up, learn something, but also perhaps learn what plants had to share with us about being better humans. And so I was not really sure what would happen with the book and then the book came out during the pandemic. And I don't know if you remember this, but during the pandemic, people were growing lettuce from scraps, they were falling in love with house plants, there was like Monstera So there was all this interest at plants at the time the book came out and I was devastated, was like, I can't go on book tour, but it ended up being amazing because all these people were sitting at home and then I got very lucky, two early people who do podcasts, Jonathan Van S, who does Getting Curious and is also on Queer Eye on Netflix, loves plants. So he was one of the first people to reach out and say, can we talk about plants? And then Alan Alda reached out.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yeah. And so it was perfect because Jonathan Van Ness was a audience that I probably, you know, a younger audience. Mhmm. And Alan Alda was someone who my mom says, oh, yes. I know who this is.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Right? And so it was this Right. Whole range. But I think it was just serendipity of this person saying, have you written a book? I'd like to write.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:I thought I'd learned something to support faculty, do my core job better, and then it came out at a time where people were fascinated with plants and I had some unusual opportunities to really get out there and talk about it publicly. Okay. But I think it also just resonates with people. You don't have to be a scientist to say, yep, if I see a plant that's wilting, would give it water. Right.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And then the translation to what that means about should talk about it.
Bryan Dewsbury:I just, just seeing. Like, I didn't see it. It's literally mixed. Anyway, whatever. So so okay.
Bryan Dewsbury:Speaking of, you know, kind of accessibility and relatability of it, there's a couple of things that came up, you know, when I read it. I I told I mean, several things were interesting, but just for the interest of time, I wanna zero in on two things. And one was this discussion about the the things in your professional and personal life don't have to exist in competition. And I think that's a really important point because, you know, one of my favorite former ESPN panelist was Jamil Hill. And she used to have a phrase, she used to say DTM, doing too much.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yes. And she used to use that to describe, like, I think mostly basketballers. I was just trying to like, ball handlers. Don't worry. Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:I I don't know. For some reason, love the phrase, but I I feel it's an is an apt phrase to describe what's expected of us Yes. In a very consumer driven society. Right? And it it for me is a math problem.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? You have twenty four hours in a day and you have to be keep your marriage interesting. You have to be a good parent.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:You have
Bryan Dewsbury:to spend time with your children. Keep up with the news, know who to vote for, teach your classes well, publish, get money, exercise eight hours. I mean, at some point you're like, well, okay, something on this list is not gonna
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:happen, right?
Bryan Dewsbury:Yes. And unfortunately, I've seen so many cases where the thing that gave Yes. Was the personal relationships, was the health. Yes. Right?
Bryan Dewsbury:Because that mortgage is not gonna pay itself. That's to do the bean counting to get the Yes. You know, and all of that stuff. So you you take that on explicitly. So talk to us a little bit about, you know, how you manage that that conflict to make it not a conflict.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yeah. I think one of the things I tried to do really early was to see synergy between those areas, right? And so I do have a son and it was critically important to me when he was in his kind of elementary school stage, I would try to be done 05:30 to six and like six until his bedtime, would try for that to be his time. And then there would be some times where something would come up and so it's like, how do I deal with this? And so I always tried to say, okay, if I've got to go out to the field, how do we make it fun for him, right?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:If I've got to go into the lab, how do I make it fun for him? So for years he had a bench in the lab Oh yeah,
Bryan Dewsbury:oh nice.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Where we worked with these organisms where when you extracted the proteins they were very colorful, so he had all these tubes that were food color, but he thought they were proteins, right? And so he would be there and you
Bryan Dewsbury:know Academic misconduct. Yeah,
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:yeah, yeah, yeah. So he would be there in this little room, it was the food safety, right, so he's working and so it was it was a case of if I have to have you in my space, how do I make you think this is also about you and for you? The other thing that I learned really early was I built a community. I had a group of several women at Michigan State who we all had kids and one of the things we did was introduce, we all had boys that were then like five years of each other, we got them to love each other and then every Wednesday night one of us had all of the boys. For four Wednesday nights a month, he was with his friends and one Wednesday I was overwhelmed.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:It was so important because
Bryan Dewsbury:Can't imagine one.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:It taught us that we needed to depend on each other, but it also taught the kids that they needed to learn how to depend on other adults and literally they were having the time of their lives. And then the last thing I did is, you know, sometimes in these spaces it is inevitable that a grant deadline or something is immovable. So I've had a principle that if I have to ignore my loved one, I should honor them. So, know, my son loved Legos, my partner loved golf, so if it was a weekend that I knew I couldn't get away, I'm like, I booked you a golf weekend with your friends.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And they were like, this is lovely, or I would buy my son on weekends I knew I had work to do, would buy him a 700 piece Lego kit, and he would say, oh my god, he said, mom, I feel bad because I'm gonna be so busy this weekend with this kit. I said, it's okay.
Bryan Dewsbury:I think we'll
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:be already
Bryan Dewsbury:here. Right,
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:so it's like how can you honor someone if you have to be apart from them? So I think there are ways to still try not to, because I agree with you, too many relationships fall apart, kids' relationships are not as strong as they could be because we don't figure out that how can I honor you even in this space where there's another demand on
Bryan Dewsbury:that And and I'll take this point a step further because, you know, this is not just about academia life, but this is the kind of topics that you write about, talk about, has everything to do with equity mindedness, has to do with social justice, has to do with, you know, like how do we create this environment for our students and for our colleagues? And I dare say more than say studying protein folding.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yes. Absolutely.
Bryan Dewsbury:That kind of work can be very exhausting. Mhmm. Right? And, you know, a piece of advice I try to, you know, share with people is like, you can't measure the quality of this type of work by how exhausted you are. Right?
Bryan Dewsbury:And then the goal isn't to get oh my god. I'm so tired. Was
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:We have exhaustion Olympics.
Bryan Dewsbury:All weekend, I was fighting. I quit, you know, like yeah. I mean, that can't be the model. But so so that means that you have to have a strategy as an activist or as a as a worker in this space to to manage that. Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:So so a little bit separate from academia and some of the more kind of logistical things, how do you manage that piece?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yeah. I think the most important part is that you have to recognize you have to have a group. Right? A group of like minded people. And it doesn't mean we think exactly alike, right?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:But I have a group of people who do a certain kind of work. I have a group of women who I work with who are all, we're all interested in promoting diversity in the academy. And so sometimes I'm exhausted and can't speak up, but I can tag Robin in. Yeah, Or Robin, sometimes they will say, you're tired, you need to rest, we've got this, right? And so I think you do have to, I think earlier we were talking in some context about civil rights, right, and marching.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And I have a sister who loves civil rights and she always says that she would love to march and I said, oh, that would be great, she said, but I would march in the middle, right, and I said, well why the middle? I said, why not get in the back? She said, no, you don't want to be in the back, right, because if you're at the forefront, you might be the one that faces the danger. But if you get turned back, the back becomes the front, right? And so the middle you can support but not be, and I think you have to have a collective where you can rotate into the middle.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Sometimes you're at the front, sometimes you're at the back ready to be in the front, but sometimes you have to be in the middle and saying, I'm still here holding up the structure, but I can relax a little bit. I think that's been critically important. And it's one of the things I try to tell students so much because a lot of times they're trying to do work against all this power. And so you have to have a group that some have more power than you, some have less, and people can tag in and tag out. Yeah.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:The work moves forward, but sometimes you get to rotate in and rest a
Bryan Dewsbury:little bit. Yeah. And and and being and and knowing that it's okay to rest. Right? I mean, and that's just because sometimes the there's this sense of, like, you know, almost there's some formal associated with the equity work.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? You have a lot of part of it, like
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Rest is radical. I mean, when you look back at some of the people who were doing some of the hardest work, they aged so quickly because they didn't rest enough, and I think we have to rest, I try to model it, I had some faculty recently I was talking to, I said what are you all doing this summer? They said I'm working all summer, said I'm not impressed, I'm taking off, right, the president's taking off, And so I think we have to model it that Yeah. It's not that you just are taking the rest as a luxury. You need it to come back strong in the work.
Bryan Dewsbury:I I was reading a book several years ago called The Slow Professor and and Yes. You know, one of the things in that book that I remembered the authors were talking about is, you know, they they created this sort of scenario Mhmm. When you come back to to to campus, like, on a Monday or Tuesday or whatever, and you say you're talking to a colleague in the hallway and you're just casually chatting about your weekend. Mhmm. And this person says to you, oh, yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:Was working on NSF grant all weekend. And it immediately sort of triggers Yes. This feeling in you of Yes. You know, why wasn't I doing that? Why did why did I take it off?
Bryan Dewsbury:And you you realize there's a meta message
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:Of if you're not burning out, you know, you're not doing it right. And you're right. I think we ought to model that. You also talked about homophily.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:And I I I thought it was a really interesting way to to describe kinship and and you know, make that point. Mhmm. It reminded me a little bit of a point I'd read in a book by James Baldwin and Margaret Mead called A Rap and Race. Where he you know, there was a line where he says this was a whole kind of conversation they had throughout the entire book, and he was saying, you know, I'm I'm looking for the day when we no longer decide define ourselves by our ethnicity, but as Americans first and as you know, he said it much.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:You know, much more articulately than I just did, but it it it felt like that is what you're calling for, kind of a redefinition of the parameters for how we define. Not to be dismissive of
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:Of how we identify ethnically, religious wise, whatever, But but to not have those become so salient that it it it creates inherent divisions. Yes. And I mean, just my personal opinion is maybe one of the more powerful lessons I had learned Mhmm. From Planzip to the extent that's a lesson. Can you talk a little bit about that and what where that idea came from?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yeah, I think it's just so critically important for us to recognize each other's humanity first. It doesn't mean you don't look at me and see that I'm a black woman. But do you see me as a human first? And I think the way our society, particularly in America is so focused on race first and the ways in which we sort ourselves, it's not just race, We sort ourselves, if we're the same socioeconomic status, we might see each other as kin. Yeah.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:If we are all scientists, we see this commonality. And so I think it's this strangeness that we look for commonalities to connect with people, but the ways in which we do that are so much impacted by the social constructs, race, socioeconomic status, education versus not. And it is so interesting because often people that we are most closely related to, we don't even see them as our kin anymore because now I'm in this middle class, higher educated, you know, higher education. And so it actually, we entrench into these camps where we really fight for the things that got us entry into that as opposed to really seeing our own humanity and just the coreness of humanity. And I think if we could get to that some of our problems, right?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Climate change, poverty, homelessness, it's because when you see someone else, you don't even see yourself in that person anymore. Right?
Bryan Dewsbury:Right. Yeah. So, okay, we're in education.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right? Yeah. How do we begin to teach that?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:You know, that's one I'm still, it's a challenge, right? It is a challenge because we're in education, we're in disciplines, and if I meet another biochemist, I'm like, hey, biochemist. And I was like, wait. Am I feeding into the problem?
Bryan Dewsbury:Seen biochemist. I'm sorry. You are not my people. I'm not your people. Yeah.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:But I mean, I think one of them is to to I think about the thing that keeps me in education and in science is my curiosity.
Bryan Dewsbury:Okay.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And that's the thing that gets me to break out of that, being curious about someone. Because a lot of times the homophily is that we're not really curious and we can go straight to what we think we share in common. Curiosity about the other person, but not in a kind of, I'm looking at animals in the zoo kind of curiosity, right? But this whole, what would happen if I had a conversation and didn't make presumptions? And so I think really elevating that curiosity.
Bryan Dewsbury:What would it be like if you had a conversation and didn't make presumptions?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:There's a term in restorative restorative justice called listening.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yes.
Bryan Dewsbury:Which is, you know, to me is just sort of beautiful description of what it means to keep your thoughts in abeyance. Yes. And allow something new to emerge from the interaction without you trying to superimpose your Yes. Your story, your life, your brain on it. And yeah, I know, I mean, that's a challenge, right?
Bryan Dewsbury:And
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:I think part of the answer is that we have to release our fears about difference. Because fear is what causes you to make a judgment quickly, right? If you are afraid of dogs and you see a dog, the fear causes you to say, I gotta get out of here quickly. And so if we could lessen our fears about difference, we could sit in the space that you're talking about and not have the preconception. So we have so many fears, people are afraid.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:I will never forget, my son is now six'two and as he was about 13 and getting to be six feet, I saw people go from he's this cute little boy to oh now I see a black man, right? And it's that fear, but we don't have conversations about fear because our fears drive how we interact with each other even in education but we don't talk that.
Bryan Dewsbury:Did he pick up on those different patterns?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:He did, he did and he's such a social person. Remember his dad is from Uganda and so, you know, in America when you're from a different country as a black person, you can have a different experience.
Bryan Dewsbury:I know.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:You know, right? And so his dad often engaged with people because people were curious about him. Right. And when he saw his son moving into this, he said, we need your son to sit with your brothers, your dad who've grown up in The US and to understand how you navigate that without losing yourself.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. Right? So, I mean, he's you told me earlier, he's 21 now.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:21 today. Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:How has all of how is he now in terms of that space?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:You know, he's very Happy
Bryan Dewsbury:birthday to him.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yeah, thank you. He's very aware and yet tries to stay engaged, right? And it's this delicate balance of being aware and trying to be open to the conversation with people who are open, but also taking care of yourself mentally and emotionally so you're not always trying to. So he's very adept at moving in and out of these spaces. And over the years I've seen him have some conflicts with some friends about language choice or around election season and they will navigate through it.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And then I've also seen, I'm like, what happened to that friend? And he said, you know, we tried and it got to a point where it was too much for me. So it's been really interesting to watch him navigate that space and to try to affirm him in those choices, right? That there are times where you wanna be able to lean into people's curiosity and then there are days where it's not the day that you can handle that. Navigating that and giving yourself grace and Yeah, being
Bryan Dewsbury:okay with that. Did he become a patent lawyer?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:No. So, he is he is studying engineering and anthropology. Very interested in culturally relevant. Okay. Impacts of engineering.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:So, I don't know exactly where it will take him but as I was saying how I grew up with parents who said you gotta get this education or your life is over, he has a little bit more flexibility to explore and it's fun to watch.
Bryan Dewsbury:I am going to take as a given that all that food coloring is what led to this
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:I think it's the legos. Somehow,
Bryan Dewsbury:it it weaved its way into yes. This this very interesting mix. I think that's good. Well, best of luck to him, man.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:I really appreciate it.
Bryan Dewsbury:So what's what's what's next after Lessons From Plants? What sort of so there's sort of two questions here. I know you mentioned at some point that you have other book projects. Yeah. But Lessons From Plants had a very particular message for our community.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Mhmm.
Bryan Dewsbury:Is there a what's the follow-up to that message in your mind that whether you deliver that follow-up or not? But what's the follow-up message to lessons from plans?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yeah. I mean, I think one of the lessons I hope people get, and I've talked about this as a lot, is I've been invited into all kind of communities from economists to forensic scientists and other to talk about lessons from plants. That part of the lesson that I hope comes for everyone is that there are lessons all around us for our own self reflection and our own thinking, right? And so whatever you do as a profession, whatever your hobbies are, there's enjoyment there, but there are also some lessons for us if we self reflect. I think the more that we can share those, we can help each other have different perspectives around these really tough ideas and hopefully move things forward.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And so that's my biggest hope is that it is an example of what's possible. The other thing that I've really leaned into, a friend of mine, Chanda Prescott Weinstein had a book out at the same time I did. She's a physicist. She had a book out The Disordered Cosmos. And one of the lessons from our books that she and I and others have talked about black women is that the lessons from Plant is also an example that you can be someone who does social justice or black feminist work from science.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:You don't have to go into sociology. Right. And I think that's been eye opening. Both of us have encountered young black women who said, was about to get out of science because I didn't wanna do this, but now I see that science can take us into many different conversations, and I think that that is important as well. Okay.
Bryan Dewsbury:That's that's that's wonderful. So let me ask you this as a as a closing.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Mhmm.
Bryan Dewsbury:When you're not book writing, when you're not being a scholar, when you're not being an administrator, what's the thing things you enjoy doing most?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:So one of the things I enjoy doing most is traveling.
Bryan Dewsbury:Uh-huh.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And my favorite travel partners are my sister who's three years older than me and she's my best friend and my son. The three of us make an amazing trio.
Bryan Dewsbury:Okay.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And we've traveled the world and we have so they have shared interest in African American history and they're both foodies and I have different interests. So we go to this place and one day I choose the things that I wanna do and another day he chooses and she chooses and we really try to enjoy each other's company. So I really enjoy exploring new places, new food, traveling, and they are great travel companions.
Bryan Dewsbury:Is there anything that you learn from your non work hobbies that sort of comes back to impact your writing and scholarship?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yeah, know, it's funny that you say that because the next book I'm writing actually starts with a day trip I took with the two of them.
Bryan Dewsbury:Okay.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:So they are very much into African American history. We were in Charleston, South Carolina and they wanted to visit plantations. I had no interest. I'm like, I I don't yeah, family past has been there. Don't think I need
Bryan Dewsbury:to I'll see you at Taco Bell.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yes. Yeah. But they said, you know, yesterday we went to the botanical garden and looked at all these plants all day with you, so you're
Bryan Dewsbury:not Okay. Alright. Alright.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:So we went and at one of the plantations I encountered a 400 year old tree. And it occurred to me that that tree was alive at the same time our enslaved ancestors were there. And me understanding photosynthesis the way I do, said, you know, their breath, their carbon dioxide is captured in the wood of this tree, right? So we're literally standing with their captured breath. And my next tree is called When Trees Testify, and it's about looking at
Bryan Dewsbury:Your next book you mean?
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yeah, my next book. Okay. So what did I say?
Bryan Dewsbury:You said your next tree.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Oh, see, I'm so into the plants. My next book is called When
Bryan Dewsbury:Stats the We gotta keep that in.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:And it's really about how standing at that tree led me to re understand kind of my legacy as a black planet scientist that many of my enslaved ancestors were there, not just because they were strong, but because they were botanical experts. And standing with that tree just changed me in a way. So my son is waiting on his cut from the book advance because he said you didn't wanna go. We dragged you there. And so now you think this is what's happening.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:So those kinds of experiences do change me a lot.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. Well, I'm I'm really looking forward to to reading that.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Thank you.
Bryan Dewsbury:I mean, you know, guess partly given my background, you know, when you use the word testify.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:You know, people people, they have expectations.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:I didn't know that until early. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:They have expectations when you say that. Yeah. Doctor Montgomery is a pleasure.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Thank you so much.
Bryan Dewsbury:Look forward to look forward to seeing that book come out and hearing more from the audience when they when they read it.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:Thank you so much. This was so much fun. Thank you for inviting. I really enjoyed this conversation.
Bryan Dewsbury:Thank you. Thanks. Knowledge Unbound is brought to you by the RIOS Institute for a Racially Just Inclusive Open STEM education. We are generously funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, our producer Mr Segev Amasai, Computer Engineering Major Class of 2025, Florida International University. Closing song by artist Infinite the Ghost from Providence, Rhode Island.
Bryan Dewsbury:His name is Malon Carey. The song is called Breakthrough. We would especially like to thank Doctor. Bronner Montgomery for spending the last hour with us, for sharing her story, her journey, her sense of why, her reflections and the ways in which she will continue to impact the STEM universe going forward. I have heard Doctor.
Bryan Dewsbury:Montgomery speak several times and I feel like every time I've listened I've just taken one more new thing from it I guess this time perhaps you know it's through conversation. And I know we closed on it and we didn't get into it because it's our next project. But what does it mean to testify? What does it mean to be in the presence of things that are communicating to you that history matters? And that the work we do in education or classrooms in our research is in service to those ancestors who gave so much for us to be here and be alive and to thrive.
Bryan Dewsbury:So with these words my friends, thank you for tuning in, I wish you a great week and as you go forth please be excellent to each other.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:So I really started to use the plants as a way to say you know if a plant is growing and it's struggling in its health we don't look at the plant and say well you plant have a deficit and can't grow right we start to ask questions Who watered it last? Does it need nutrients? Does Brian always kill plants? If so, maybe he shouldn't have plants. One of the things that I like about being an administrator is that if you figure out the system well enough, sometimes you can use levers that are there to make different things possible for people.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:You can invest in new areas. And so I think for me, one of the things that brought me to administration is to ask what work I could do to try to make it a little easier for someone who sees their career in a non standard way, the way I see mine, not have to fight so hard to do
Bryan Dewsbury:it. So
Dr. Beronda Montgomery:I think there are ways to still try not to because I agree with you. Too many relationships fall apart. Kids relationships are not as strong as they could be because we don't figure out that how can I honor you even in this space where there's another demand on that time?