After 28 years in the classroom and mentoring 74 students in her lab at Oxy, Professor Eileen Spain pivots to prepare future generations of faculty in the physical sciences
Growing up in Sonoma County, Eileen Spain demonstrated a natural proclivity for math and science—aided, she says, by an “awesome” high school chemistry teacher. A first-generation college student, she majored in chemistry as an undergrad at Santa Rosa Junior College and Sonoma State University and as a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah, where she completed her doctorate in 1992.
“In my education in the sciences and generally throughout my college career, I appreciated excellence in teaching,” she says. “Not only was I learning from excellent instruction, but it was a model for me to think, ‘Oh, I want to be able to do that too.’ Teaching and chemistry have gone together for me since the beginning.”
After nearly three decades at Occidental, Spain—the Carl F. Braun Professor of Chemistry—retired from the College in August. During a leave from the classroom in the 2023-24 academic year, she assumed a new role as program director for Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA), where she’s overseeing a new initiative to increase the number of faculty from underrepresented groups in the physical sciences.
RCSA “wanted a program that would support community building and job search preparation in the transition of postdocs into their faculty careers,” explains Spain, who’s now splitting her time between Los Angeles and Tucson. She reflected on her tenure at Oxy—and her new role at RCSA—during a recent visit to campus. (Spain will be formally recognized with emeritus status at Commencement this coming May.)
How did you wind up coming to Oxy? I was looking for a faculty position in fall 1994 and hoping to locate in the western United States. I didn’t know much about Occidental at the time, but I heard about the reputation of the department striving for excellence in teaching and research with student collaborators and so I got intrigued and applied.
Was there anyone in the department who was a mentor? Of my colleagues, Mike Hill was closest to me in that he had only been at 鶹Ƶfor a year—we were the two younger, early-career faculty. And all the senior faculty were very attentive and supportive and helping me understand how the department worked; how to support students and get my research program going; and how to do everything from writing a syllabus for my classes to how to think about grading and assessing student learning. I was fortunate to have such colleagues.
Did you have a favorite class? It’s hard to pick a favorite but I’m partial to lab teaching. You have the freedom of more time— you’re in the lab for three hours—so you can talk to your students and guide them and I like the opportunity of engaging with students one-on-one in the teaching laboratory.
You personally trained 74 students in your labs. Yes, and I also mentored four postdocs and two high school students.
You’ve been gone from 鶹Ƶfor a year now. What prompted this career change? The global pandemic was a time to reflect on just where I was at with my career and my personal life. I had just lost my mother. It was a moment where I was thinking about other things that I might do that center on equity, excellence, diversity, and inclusion with specific attention to early-career faculty.
The work that I did with the four postdoctoral scholars that I collaborated with at 鶹Ƶwas really gratifying. And then this opportunity came to me. Research Corporation—which gave me my first grant for my research at Occidental—wanted to start a new initiative to support diversity in the physical sciences among faculty in the United States and Canada. I thought that would be a wonderful set of activities to be engaged in, and now we are building a program to assist early-career faculty in physics, chemistry, and astronomy.
What do you like about your new job? I love that we are a nimble, flexible organization supporting and seeding early-career faculty and helping them realize their ideas for transformative science and research innovation, while also helping to build broader participation in the sciences. For the strength and security of the United States, our lives really depend on a strong and healthy scientific workforce. We need to make sure we’re not missing talent or leaving anyone behind.
Right now, the postdocs that I’m working with have such fantastic ideas for science, teaching, mentorship, and inclusion. Anything I can do to support their advancement in their career is super exciting to me, because they are going to touch so many students’ lives and produce such great science.
What do you miss about Oxy? I miss a lot about the campus. Of course, I miss the important work of personally scientifically training the students that we talked about.
I miss office hours and the one-on-one or small group settings talking with students, finding out what they think about, why they are here, and what they want to do with their lives. And I miss learning from my colleagues. [In addition to her teaching responsibilities, Spain recently served as the special assistant to the dean of the College for assessment and accreditation.] I’m just a much better person because of Occidental, its mission, and all my colleagues here both among the faculty and the staff and the administration.
Are there still things you want to study or research personally? I did a lot of thinking about that before I made this move. I wouldn’t have a lab and I wouldn’t be doing my own research in chemistry. I might do some studies on how the postdoc-to-faculty transition is going, for example. That would be informative to the community, but that’s not scientific research.
I decided that I could be learning about forefront research across three disciplines: chemistry, physics, and astronomy. While that’s not the same as doing one’s own scientific research, it’s very exciting, too. It’s a trade-off.
A long-awaited renovation Norris Hall of Chemistry will commence in 2025. What will updated science facilities mean for Oxy? That the College can continue to attract top faculty. And that those facilities will allow them to do their very best research and attract funding which will carry their projects forward.
Occidental provides a great investment for new faculty. They give you a lab, startup resources, and some funding, but then you have to build on that as a faculty member. And even as you progress and become a tenured professor, you need to continue that work. Occidental’s science facilities are critical to the recruitment of top faculty and production of great science with those students who then go on and do great things with their lives.
Anything else you’d like to add? I’m super honored to be a member of this community. I gave a lot to 鶹Ƶand it gave a lot to me and it was a special part of my life.
