Wearing Multiple Hats and Staying on Mission with Dr. Darin Detwiler
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:41:55] Correct.
Dr. Darin Detwiler [00:41:56] And someone raised his hand and goes, you can’t say that. You can’t stand there and say that. And I kind of jokingly turned around. I said, yes, I can write down my PowerPoint. It’s my third bullet. And this whole idea of of how people were perceiving, you know, you’re looking at technology to provide this Herculean change. That’s not going to be an easy change to make. And it’s kind of like I used another analogy. I said, look, if I’m walking down the sidewalk in Gotham City and for whatever reason, Batman’s bat utility bill falls from the sky and lands on the sidewalk in front of me, I grab it and I put it on. That does not make me Batman just because I have his tools. Right. That doesn’t make me that person. And just because you have blockchain does not make you any more ethical, any more secure, any more confident in your data collection analysis. And I think that that conversation has resonated well and continues to resonate for the last few years. And it’s really kind of shifted to this idea that, you know, we have to think about that, the true benefits, that it’s not purely reactive. Yes. There are technologies that will make it easier to trace back when there’s an outbreak or there’s a recall, where did this come from? But what if we were using that technology to be predictive, to find evidence or instances before food goes out into commerce? What if we we can’t find everything? We can’t predict and proactively find everything, but if we never try, they will never find anything. And once you start doing that, once you start finding things in advance, you for thousands of products go out into the market or whatever, you know, you’re increasing your your resources and your options to to prevent that problem, to mitigate that problem. But you’re also minimizing your liabilities. And when we start talking in these kind of words and people don’t necessarily listen to the tech people that the IT people is they’re going to talk tech and people don’t necessarily listen to the big corporations because, well, they have their experience. We’re not them, but has this kind of independent person from academia coming in and having these neutral platforms for this conversation with them and then supporting when the government says, you know, we can’t focus on the technology if we don’t have digitization of our records right now, we are. So the American food industry is so driven by paper paper-based records and you can’t have a technology that’s interacting with all these paper based platforms. And so you got to look at these baby steps. You’ve got to look at these these issues which people were just not talking about. And ironically, during this period of time, I was serving as a doctoral thesis chair for someone who was looking at who was researching. Global data protection regulations out of Europe and looking at data security in ways that were just fascinating and we started to talk about how the journey of food was so similar to the journey of data, and not only did this really help us with with her doctoral thesis and the work I was doing with her, but as soon as she defended her thesis and graduated, I said, you need to write a chapter in my book on the future of forensic pathology. And she goes, Why? I don’t know anything about food. I said, no, but you know everything about the security of the data. And we won’t have a future of food safety technology unless we have a security that data. So of all the things being a doctor thesis chair opened up new opportunities for me not only to learn about this different content area, but to network with someone who was an expert in global data protection in that industry and now has a significant contribution in this area. Looking at, again, the security of the data in terms of the future of food safety technology.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:46:05] Well, that’s just when you when you stay open to opportunities and learning opportunities, it’s amazing what comes your way and the connections that you can make when you’re working in these communities. So I’ll tell you, one of the things that’s been inspiring to me listening to your story is that this mission is so much about helping people, about reaching across various aisles and bringing people together to work on a problem that that is close to you, something that you’re passionate about. But it helps everybody. And that’s something I find so rewarding about dealing with doctoral students and doctoral if people who have earned their doctoral degrees in general is. I’m sure that it’s not an absolute rule. There are exceptions, I’m sure. But it has been a trend that I’ve noticed that so many people are doing things that really help the world. It’s not just about helping themselves. It’s about making this world a better place. And that’s that’s something I find inspiring and I hope inspires our students who are who are still in this process of getting there themselves.
Dr. Darin Detwiler [00:47:05] Well, I think, you know, it’s easy to talk like a mission and my background kind of stuff, everyone has a different background. Everyone has a different story. And I think that. Regardless of your topic, regardless of your your program, your college. Every research, every doctoral research, project and thesis. That is, quote unquote, worthy, if you will. It’s got to be something that has an incredible why behind it. What’s the why behind this? It could be how am I impacted? It could be how you are impacted. It could be how others. It could be how a select group, a narrow group of people are impacted. It could be, however, when it’s impacted, it could be how people in a far different place are impacted. But regardless of that, we can talk about quantitative and qualitative data analysis until you get a great, great amount that course, until you’re blue in the face talking about all of your data analysis and your methodology and all that kind of stuff. But if you don’t have that strong foundation of why of understanding your stakeholders and how people are going to benefit from this and how people are going to say that this is important to me because of this, it doesn’t necessarily finance itself well into a doctoral thesis. Yes, there’s a place for it, but we’re not necessarily talking about this emotional, persuasive plea to the extent of what you might find in a magazine or something like that in terms of hope for the readers. But it can come out in terms of how you are framing the need for this and how you are framing that word and how you stay motivated. There’s a lot of moving parts and believe me, there’s some long nights and some stressful moments and some frustrating activities you go through. And and not all of us have a person in their lives that can pull or push us through this or a personal reason why. But we have to find that in terms of what’s in it for us. How are we how if I, the actual doctoral candidate myself, am not invested into this, it’s going to show. It’s going to show and to in terms of the amount of work I put into it and the care I put into it and how I capture and describe this in my thesis and how I defend this thesis. And so we have to stay focused on the why or the mission or both behind what we’re doing and I’ve worked with four doctoral candidates now as a chair and every single time, the very first thing I do, the very first weeks I spend with this person is getting to know them and their story behind the story. So I understand where they’re coming from. What the what what what brings them to this point and why this is important to them and what they want to do with this beyond. Because I think that it’s one thing for me to edit them and say, you need to do this. Use the calendar. But it’s also important for me to. To hold them to their emotional and their their mission driven, why behind what they’re doing and to understand that so they can better understand not only where they’re coming from, where they’re going with this.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:50:41] And I use that word specifically why what your why is with our students all the time. I asked you first need to know your why for your doctoral degree. Why are you getting your doctoral degree? And then you have to make sure that you are intentional and strategic about pursuing that the entire time through through your doctoral degree program. And so how you that is reflected in your your dissertation? There is a lot of things we can do, depending on what your strategic focus is, but in making sure that that is impacted on in your life goals. I think that’s that’s always very, very important. So your doctoral dissertation can be very much aligned with your your your why or it can be a tool to get you to your why. Either one of those is valid. But but to be aware of that why and to be intentional about it is important because as you mentioned, there are going to be some long, difficult times to go through in this dissertation process. I tell students you’re going to look in the mirror late one night and ask the person on the other side of that mirror, why are you doing this to me? And if you don’t have a good answer, then it becomes awfully easy to recede into the background or to walk away from a program that you actually are committed to. You just have to know why.
Dr. Darin Detwiler [00:51:59] Well, the number of people who can stand there at this moment where they have a diploma in their hand, but they have no path in front of them, they have no plans, they have no dreams, ambitions. They have no network in place. They have no momentum, if you will. That is something I hope we can always avoid, because just having this diploma doesn’t do anything for me right now. But it is really what I do with this diploma and how it is. And at least where I went to school, I defended my doctoral thesis and there was a good amount of time we had the convocation that the hooding. But in terms of the actual graduate. Graduation, I mean, the graduation ceremony was sometime down the road, and for me it was close to a year between earning my diploma and being able to graduate at the ceremony at the university. And in that time, not only had I become a full time professor, but about nine months later, I went from being a full time professor in the faculty to being the assistant dean for the very this is all the same college where I was a student. And so here I was. Know there’s a point in my life where I’m standing on stage as an assistant, dean shaking everyone’s hand and adding a diploma on. I think I was on the right side or the left side of the stage and my counterpart was on the other side of the stage. And, you know, you get through the undergrads, you get to the grads, and then you get to the doctoral students and then comes my name and it’s like, OK, I’m on me. I’m literally I’m like you said, both sides of the table in the program whole year. Yeah. It’s like, oh, thank you. I give a good job. Good job, you know, but but, you know, you don’t necessarily know where your path is going to take you. I’ve been very fortunate to be able to. Be in academia and still write and speak and advise and consults and and work with media on this. It does go hand in hand very well. There are times where I’m not feeling nearly as limited as I did when I was a public school teacher. Right. And there’s times where I’m able to be inspired by my students. If I had to still teach a class or go down, then. And I do a lot of guest lectures, be inspired by my students and collaborate with students and grow with them and continue to be that lifelong learner who wears these multiple titles. And, you know, when lifelong learning becomes difficult with one of my titles, then I swap it out for another one. I’m lifelong learning as a as an assistant dean or is a professor, as an author or as a speaker. But that lifelong learning really goes along with my mission. But it also has served me well in terms of trying to achieve what I can for my mission.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:55:12] And I. I don’t think you could say it any better. I think that that lifelong learning is important and that combining that with a sense of mission can get you quite far as you have have have demonstrated for everyone.
Dr. Darin Detwiler [00:55:33] You know, and sometimes you ask yourself, but, you know, how far as far you know, how far too far, how far far enough. But, you know, I’ve said this before, and when I’ve written and when I when I’m on a stage, they’ll never be an end to foodborne pathogens. There will always be failures in food safety. But we can lead better. We can educate better, we can inspire better and and support each other. We can continue to nurture those those Herculean efforts of of heroes in this industry. We can continue to build trust in our systems and in our policies and even in our brand names. We can help create a culture where food safety is not an afterthought or even if food safety is something that just people normally talk about. And some might think that that’s kind of a very niche thing. But how niche is that? If literally everyone was in contact with it every day of contact with food and is vulnerable to a failure in food safety? So it’s like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If we’re all dealing with failures in food safety, we’re not going to rise to that. The ability to focus on those higher rungs.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:56:55] I think that we’re far enough through the pandemic now that I think we’re safely to the other side of some of these concerns. But I was worried for a while about what happens if our food supply chain breaks down and what happens on the other side of things, sanitation, if that breaks down. Those are the two things you ask anybody in the military, what do you need to do to hold the forward installation? And it’s we have to have supplies and we have to have latrines. And that’s those are the first things we do all.
Dr. Darin Detwiler [00:57:28] Well, I spent six years on a submarine and submarines constituency for a lot longer, but when the food runs out, your mission stops. And the last year with the pandemic is definitely shown that not only the level of resiliency that we have in terms of universities and changing our modalities to have classes that are online or that are hybrid online on ground, but even specifically in terms of food, we have changed how we buy, how we eat, how we order, how we deliver, how we prepare, how we we deal with food. And we need to look at that resiliency. There’s there’s no one silver bullet blockchain would have not helped us in terms of this pandemic. So we have to look at our bigger picture of resiliency as consumers and even as students and even through the doctor research process, you have to be able to deal with the need for resiliency. I’ve worked with doctoral students who their entire of this one student, particular her entire doctoral research, hinged on Hillary Clinton winning the election four years ago. And as you can imagine, when she didn’t, she could have walked away from everything she did. But she did. She chose to reframe and restructure and continue with her bigger picture. And I know that many of us have other things that have put us in a position where we have to radically change or even determine if we’re going to continue on with our thesis. And I know in talking with you that even you have had a reason why out of the blue you need to rethink what you’re doing in terms of your doctor research. I’m assuming you’ve talked about that with your audience.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:59:17] So, yeah, you’re talking about I was I was at the University of Chicago. I was a graduate student there. I was working with a just towering figure in the field and he died in the plane crash, obviously very unexpected. And that did make me reevaluate some things. The university told me I could either start over or I could take a break. And I decided in my case to take a break. But because of the identity issues I had wrapped up in the doctoral process, I ended up going back and I did kind of start over, but in a different field based on where life had taken me at that point. So this notion of being open to changes is certainly something that we all deal with throughout our lives. And to figure out how to make the best of that is is the the key to the game, I think.
