Episode 20: Deb Mashek, HxA in 2018
Show Notes\n\nDeb Mashek (@DebMashekHXA) is the new executive director of Heterodox Academy.\xa0She is currently professor of psychology at Harvey Mudd College, but will be leaving that position to serve full time as executive director. We talk about her career and her three priorities for 2018.\nSelected Quote\n\n"I regularly have students and colleagues swinging by for closed-door conversations where they say things like, 'There is this question I wanted to ask in class, or there\u2019s an idea I wanted to raise in a meeting, but I didn\u2019t feel comfortable with doing so because other people might tell me that I\u2019m being ridiculous, or that it's an offensive question.' And that has a very chilling effect on inquiry and on the pursuit of knowledge."\n\xa0\n\nTranscript\n\nThis is a professional transcript but it may contain errors. Please do not quote it without verification.\n\nChris Martin:\xa0My guest today is Deb Mashek. She\u2019s the new Executive Director of Heterodox Academy and this is her first appearance on our podcast. Deb also goes by Debra. I mentioned that if you want to search for her scholarly publications. She\u2019s currently a tenured Professor of Psychology at Harvey Mudd College and despite being very happy with her job there, she has decided to leave and join us here at Heterodox Academy. You can follow her on Twitter, @DebMashekHxA. So here is Deb Mashek.\n\nWelcome to the show and welcome to Heterodox Academy.\n\n\nDebra Mashek: Thank you. It\u2019s a pleasure to be here.\n\nChris Martin: Well, thanks for joining us for this episode and congratulations on your appointment. So you\u2019re currently a Professor of Psychology at Harvey Mudd. But you started out studying psychology, biology and women studies. So tell me a bit about how you got from there to where you are right now.\n\nDebra Mashek: Yeah. So I was an undergrad at Nebraska Wesleyan University where as you mentioned, I was studying bio-psychology and women studies and then from there, I moved on to Stony Brook University where I received my MA and my PhD in Social Psychology with an emphasis in quantitative methods and my expertise developed there in close relationships and I studied the self-expansion model. The idea there is that through relationships, we take on the resources, the identities and the perspectives of other people and then ultimately increase our own agency in the world through interpersonal connection.\n\nSince then I\u2019ve applied that theoretical frame to the study of romantic relationships and incarcerated people, college students and also inter-institutional collaborations. So after Stony Brook, I went on for a three-year research fellowship at George Mason and then as you mentioned in 2005, made the move to Harvey Mudd College, which is a small liberal arts school in Claremont, California. We\u2019re very STEM-focused and we\u2019re one of the Claremont Colleges, which includes Pomona, Scripps, Pitzer, Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Claremont Graduate University and Keck Graduate Institute.\n\nChris Martin: So last year you applied to our director position at Heterodox Academy. What made you decide to do that?\n\nDebra Mashek: It\u2019s a great question. So I\u2019m at this job I absolutely love working with students and colleagues who just wow me every single day and I\u2019m getting ready to leave it and so the question is, \u201cWhy in the world would I do such a thing?\u201d and the answer has to do with I am worried about what I\u2019m seeing in the broader landscape of higher ed.\n\nYou know, given my relationships work,