This month, we are featuring two faculty members who are sharing experiences in Europe: Dr. Rodrigo Martinez Duarte and Anne Salces y Nedeo. Together, they represent two different faculty paths of success at Clemson.
Rodrigo Martinez Duarte is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty member of the Eukaryotic Pathogens Innovation Center (EPIC), and a Faculty Scholar in the School of Health Research (CUSHR). He was previously a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland in the group of Prof. Philippe Renaud. He obtained his BS in Electrical Engineering from Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico and both his master and doctoral degrees from the University of California, Irvine under the guidance of Prof. Marc Madou. He has also lived and worked in Spain, India, and South Korea and collaborates with interdisciplinary research group around the world. His expertise lies at the interface between micro/nanofabrication, carbonaceous materials, electrokinetics and microfluidics. Anne Salces y Nedeo is a Senior Lecturer of French at the Department of Languages. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts in British & American Studies and a Maîtrise in British & American Studies both from the University of Paris X. She also obtained a Master of Arts in English Literature, Civilization & Translation from the University of Paris Ouest; a Master of Arts in Language Acquisition & Didactics from La Sorbonne University; and is now enrolled in the PhD program in Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design (RCID) at Clemson University.
How long have you been a faculty member at Clemson? What aspects of Clemson should everyone know about?
Anne: I have been teaching at CU since January 2015. I believe CU should be known for its academic strength and successes, not only for its football team. CU is becoming a strong research university and attracts more and more top faculty from all over the world, even though the diversity of its faculty, staff and students is not yet ideal.
Rodrigo: I’ve been a faculty member since August 2013 when I joined as an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering. One of the main things that attracted me to Clemson was the upward trend in research and the university in general. The one thing to know about: I would say that Clemson puts more attention to the development of the person as a whole and the community than many other US institutions I know of, which I truly hope we keep emphasizing further.
Tell us about your work at Clemson, what aspects are you most passionate about?
Anne: I teach French language, culture, literature and history, conversation and composition at CU, depending on the semesters. I really love my students and my greatest pleasure is to see them succeed in their academic careers and to be happy. I love to help my students (and colleagues whenever I can) to achieve their goals and thrive in what they do.
I enjoy sharing my knowledge of the French language and culture and to see my students become independent users. Even though all Language faculty work on developing the four linguistic skills (reading, listening, writing, speaking), I specifically emphasize listening and speaking in my classes. I want my students to be ready to actually use the language to effectively communicate with employers or while traveling. Through the use of Talk Abroad, my students always speak with native speakers from different countries, which is a linguistic and cultural challenge that offers them a unique experience.
I have also taken advantage of the virtual reality facility and teams at CU to create two spaces for learning French. One displays the Ile de la Cite, in Paris, which is dedicated to strengthening advanced students’ presentation skills and historical knowledge; the other one is the rue Mouffetard, in Paris, which targets beginner to intermediate level students. I am proud to have been the first faculty in Languages to have created and used such spaces. My students really enjoy interacting in these virtual environments and showing their linguistic and historical acquisitions. These spaces are available for anyone at CU to use, which gives me even more satisfaction, knowing my work can benefit others.
Since I am passionate about people, their success and well-being, it is natural that I am involved in my communities and do a lot of service for the university, my college and my department. Indeed, I have been involved in the organization and the promotion (radio + TV) of the Day of the Dead since its creation in 2018. I have chaired the lecturers review committee for two years, and participated in countless other committees and commissions. When faculty were leading the Language Club, I was in charge of the French Club which participated several times in the International Festival at CU.
I was video interviewed several times to promote the university and the department, which I am always thrilled to present, represent, and praise.
I am a team player and I love to experiment with novelties. I have recently been elected University senator and will undoubtedly do my best to serve my college and colleagues.
All in all, I am passionate about what I do and this is key to a successful career and a happy life!
Rodrigo: There are so many things to say about what I do at Clemson! My research has two main focus areas: healthcare diagnostics and carbonaceous materials. As part of the Eukaryotic Pathogens Innovation Center (EPIC) and the School of Health Research, we apply engineering principles for the development of technology to be able to identify the cause of an infection in a timely manner. On carbonaceous materials, our focus is on determining the relationships between the processing/manufacturing of a carbonaceous material, its nano and microstructure, and the property, i.e. mechanical strength, we are interested in. Particularly, we have been focusing on materials, like biopolymers, that are renewable and potentially more sustainable as the precursor to carbonaceous materials!
I also usually teach two different courses every year, one at the junior level focusing on Manufacturing Processes and their Application and another one at the graduate/senior level focusing on the Fundamentals of Micro and Nanofabrication, this last one I introduced to the Clemson curriculum. Both courses are fun to teach and I believe quite engaging for the students as we discover how pervasive manufacturing is in our daily lives! 4 years ago, a colleague in ME and I enhanced the Capstone design project in ME by working together with Michelin and enabling an engineering experience that teams students from Clemson and universities in Mexico to work together on problems posed by Michelin plants both around Clemson and in Mexico. This is a unique experience because of its international component but also interdisciplinary as the students come from Mechanical engineering, Mechatronics, and Industrial engineering.
Last but not least: service! I cherish the opportunity to be useful to the community and have been involved in multiple initiatives at Clemson. In particular, we started the celebration of Day of the Dead in Clemson back in 2018 and, thanks to an effort from faculty, staff, and students throughout the university, have been growing it every year! If you haven’t got the chance to celebrate with us, you are welcome to come this year 2024 to the Carillon Garden in the evening of November 1!
I also have been involved in increasing our Global Engagement at multiple levels, currently I serve as the Chair of the Global Engagement Committee of CECAS and have been working in developing and executing a Strategic plan to increase our Global Learning and Research collaboration as well as attracting international talent. If you are interested in engaging internationally, I’d love to have a chat! I’m also serving as one of the founding members of the Commission on Latino Affairs at Clemson , and have served as one of its past chairs, working to help the Latinx community thrive together with the rest of Clemson. With the same purpose, I was honored to accept the invitation from our Clemson chapter of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) to serve as their faculty advisor. It has been a blast working together with many bright and dedicated young engineers and looking forward to great things in the near future!
Like all faculty members, the research, teaching, and service keeps me busy and I do feel passionate about the three of them. Above all, I enjoy networking and working with people: colleagues, students, and staff. Thanks to the focus on people and community at Clemson, I find that collaborations are easy to start and most colleagues are willing to help. While we still have a way to go, we have been enriching the university with know-how, better processes, systems, and equipment to streamline and advance initiatives in teaching and learning, service, and research. I do believe that we have a lot of potential!
How do you manage your time to balance teaching/research/service with your personal life?
Anne: It is not always easy to balance all these activities and I must say I do work a lot at home and over the weekends. I teach four classes (+ labs) per semester, do lots of service and do research in feminist rhetoric. To balance all these is an aspect of my life that I still need to figure out. Evidently some people are better at keeping a very strictly organized schedule. Personally, I just try to enjoy everything I do, so that I do not feel that I am working that much.
Rodrigo: By accepting the idea that this “balance” keeps changing every year and making it a point to plan my year ahead as much as I can, leaving time to be able to respond to opportunities that become available during the year. In my case, my wife (Anne) is also faculty at Clemson and this has definitely made everything easier as we share similar calendars and try to overlap our schedules and activities as much as we can. But overall, it is not easy, the “balance” usually tilts towards work.
What advice would you give to your first-year faculty self?
Anne: I would tell myself to ask my colleagues and chair for support. We are so lucky to have a wonderful chair and some other faculty willing to help. To be very organized since day one really makes a difference. Be involved with the CU and wider communities as much as possible and as early as possible to create valuable long-term connections. Do not be shy about sharing your fear and especially your achievements! And, as I always tell my students – never forget that communication is the key to success.
Rodrigo: Follow your instinct and try not to get too hung up in the tenure-track path. Getting tenure is not the end goal but a major milestone, where do YOU want to be in 6 years from now and what path do you envision to Full Professor? How does this vision of yourself fit with the university strategic plan? Keep communicating this vision to your chair and the TPR committee. Be strategic as soon as you can but not too soon, you might miss opportunities early-on in your career. Experiment so you identify the things you will say no in the future. Get involved in the university early, as a whole and not only your department, to start developing relationships and understanding how things work. Make it a point to try to understand your students, remain intellectually and emotionally (to a degree) available to them. Leverage OTEI and all their resources to become a better educator. Network with a sense of service, what can you do for others and for the Clemson community? Work smart to identify the funding opportunities that have the most potential for YOU, you have a high chance of burning out early by chasing everything. Leverage the Office of Research and all their resources. And most importantly, carve time for yourself and don’t feel guilty about it.
What resources, tools, and programs at Clemson facilitate your success as a faculty member?
Anne: The libraries are great resources. Librarians purchase all the books and DVDs needed for my classes. The online library with Open Educational Resources, the streaming app Kanopy, etc. greatly facilitates my teaching and research. The labs that we teach in the 1000 and 2000 language classes allow to practice more listening and speaking in class and to speak with French native speakers from all over the world (Morocco, Benin, Togo, Senegal, Canada, France, etc.) which unequally strengthens our language students’ linguistic and cross-cultural skills.
Rodrigo: See above. OTEI has been great! The Critical Thinking Institute was a game-changer and I highly recommend it. Seed funding like the TIGER grant, and the R-initiatives have been very useful. The university commissions have also been a great instrument to feel part of the Clemson community as a whole.
How do you see your department, college, or university evolving in the next 5 years?
Anne: I see my university becoming a stronger R1 university and attracting more top researchers. There have been many changes in the college over the last few years and I believe these will soon bear fruit, especially in terms of research. At the departmental level, we have a newly elected fantastic chair who is a true leader willing to help everyone in need, who supports his tenure-track faculty as much as his lecturers, and who is open to creating new programs, majors, and minors. This is what the department needs and I’m happy to see it healthy.
Rodrigo: We are getting stronger and stronger in research and this will continue. As I said before, we have a lot of potential and there are many productive efforts to keep enriching our research environment. Despite the research growth, we still emphasize teaching and learning and I believe this is a crucial differentiator of Clemson with respect to other R1 universities. There will always be opportunities to serve the community and we should emphasize these opportunities more. A threat to our growth can be losing the balance between research, educating, and service and we have to be careful about this.
How did you know it was time to apply for a sabbatical? What prompted you?
Rodrigo: I knew of the possibility to take sabbatical in academia before joining Clemson. Around the 4th year mark the idea of a sabbatical started being more prominent as I saw some senior faculty go on sabbatical and eventually some of my friends who joined around the same time as me. I’m in sabbatical right now, 10 years after joining. The plan was to go on my 6th or 7th year but COVID delayed my plans. We now have a page that clearly outlines the process, so that has made it much easier.
How did you determine your priorities or goals for your sabbatical?
Rodrigo: By assessing the state of my research and what facilities and know-how I would need to move forward. Also considering what location would provide opportunities for student exchange in the future as well as long-term research collaboration, i.e. joint funded programs. Additionally, choosing the location that had the most potential for an enriching experience outside research for both my wife and I, i.e. innovative teaching, exposure to sustainability in the university and city, travel opportunities, cultural opportunities. And perhaps the most practical: the cost of living in such a location!
This year I’m also lucky because we just got a NSF grant in the AccelNet program which emphasizes the strengthening of an international network or networks working on carbonaceous materials. The sabbatical thus has been super timely because it is allowing me to visit many research partners in many European institutions including Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden; Denmark Technical University in Copenhagen; Universidad Politecnica Madrid and IMDEA in Spain; and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany; as well as exploring potential collaborations with a few others.
How early did you need to apply? What was your application process like?
Rodrigo: For the fall, I had to apply at the beginning of the spring semester. The timelines are already well laid out in the website
Are you able to keep your research group at Clemson “moving” while you were on sabbatical?
Rodrigo: I’m still on sabbatical, starting it actually! So far, yes, my group keeps moving. They are a great group of researchers and I have no concerns about this. Some days I have to work two shifts due to the time difference but that is not a big deal. My department administration has also been very supportive of my sabbatical and so far administration has been as usual, which I really appreciate.
