Transcript
What inspires you from WFSU Public Media? Here's this week's Voices That Inspire. I'm Stacey Patterson. I'm the Vice President for Research at Florida State University. I was at Tennessee for my undergrad, left for a master's, went back for my PhD, left for a postdoc and a job, and then was recruited back in 2006, and then spent about 17 years there before making the leap to Florida State. I'm a first-generation college graduate. My parents are divorced. I was actually raised by my grandmother. And my father had a high school friend who was a PhD microbiologist who spent her career at UNC Chapel Hill. I didn't know her. Her name is Lola Stam. But when my dad talked about her, he talked about her differently than anyone else that I'd ever heard him talk about, especially women. And so when I was eight years old, I actually told my grandmother, I'm gonna be a PhD microbiologist. And so when I went to college, I picked microbiology as my major. During my master's degree, I had the opportunity to really do a lot of field-based research and just really fell in love with the idea of what research could mean and how it impacts the body of knowledge and impacts our world. And really just decided that research was where I wanted to spend my career. I really get a lot of enjoyment, a lot of satisfaction, fulfillment, out of seeing the success of our institutions and the impact that they could have on the citizens that we serve. You know, I mentioned that I had a role model in Dr. Stam, but I didn't know her and I had built her up in my mind and I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but I didn't meet her until graduate school. And now we meet up about once a year. And she knows that she was my far away inspiration. I'm Stacey Patterson. I'm the Vice President for Research at Florida State University. You're listening to voices that inspire.