Dr. Sarah Barks, Senior Director, STEM Career Communities & Analytics at the CLS, contributed a chapter to the Higher Education Careers Beyond the Professoriate, released this month by Purdue University Press. Dr. Barks’s essay, “Finding Neverland: From Chimpanzee Research to Career Services,” tracks how they pivoted from a career path in academic research to mentoring undergraduates and institutional analytics.
In the new book, one of the first collections to explore through personal essays how individuals with PhDs find meaningful work alongside life balance inside higher education but outside the classroom, Dr. Barks writes about how they thrive in their position at Grinnell. “Perhaps my greatest transferable skill from my life as a researcher and scientist is curiosity.”
Dr. Barks (they/them) earned their doctorate in biological anthropology at Emory University. Prior to joining the CLS, where they advise students across STEM fields, their research focused on great ape social cognition and neuroanatomy at George Washington University in Washington, DC. Dr. Barks has been advising students and wrangling data for the CLS since 2014.
Read more about and purchase the book from the Purdue University Press website. Note that as the Press is committed to Open Access, the book may be read as an e-publication.
