DISCOVERING THE HARMONY IN LIFE WITH DR. JESSICA BICKEL
CURRENT POSITION: Assistant Professor of Physics at Cleveland State University
LOCATION: Cleveland, Ohio
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN DEGREE: Ph.D. in Materials Science & Engineering
GRADUATION YEAR: 2010
ACTIVITIES AT MICHIGAN: Michigan Pops Orchestra, Campus Orchestra, Tau Beta Pi, Society for Women Engineers
MICHIGAN POPS ORCHESTRA INSTRUMENT: Oboe
Listen to one of Jessica's favorite Pops pieces while you read about her Pops Life!
A CONVERSATION WITH JESSICA
KELLY COMPTON, our Pops Life correspondent, talks with Jessica about how the Pops Experience has helped her find balance and happiness in her life today!
KC: Jessica, where are you now, and what have you been up to since graduating from Michigan?
JB: I'm in Cleveland, Ohio working as an Assistant Professor in Physics at Cleveland State University. I've been here for four years now. I did my undergrad studies at Johns Hopkins University. I did a dual degree (which took me five years!), so I have a Bachelor’s of Music from the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Oboe, and a Bachelor’s of Science in Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in Materials Science & Engineering. I eventually realized that while I really loved playing oboe and performing with a group, I didn’t like practicing all that much. Plus I learned that I could be a scientist/engineer that dabbled in music, but it would be a bit harder to be a musician that dabbled in science and engineering.
I went on to get a Masters and Ph.D. at Michigan, and while I was there I played in both Pops and the Campus Symphony. While Campus Symphony was nice (I did that so I was playing multiple times a week), Pops was my orchestra. If you’d forced me to choose between the two, Pops would have won. The only reason that I did Campus Symphony my first semester was that they were playing Tchaik 4. Once I was in, there was an inertia to just stay in.
I was at Michigan for 5 ½ years and was on the Pops board for 4 ½. After that, I was in Germany for a little while. Unfortunately I haven’t found an orchestra to join because with the Cleveland Institute of Music nearby, there are far too many semi-professional amateurs in the area. Since my son was born, I have been on somewhat of a hiatus, but I’m looking to get back into it soon. I’m getting a piano so I can at least play that!
KC: What was your musical background before going to undergrad?
JB: I started playing oboe when I was in middle school. I was actually really bummed because my elementary school had a band for 4th and 5th graders, and when I hit 4th grade, they canceled it. So I didn’t start music until middle school. I had a great band director there who said, “If you haven’t picked an instrument yet, DON’T.” He spent the first two weeks showing us all of the different instruments. I was debating between the oboe, the French horn, and the clarinet, but when I heard the oboe I knew that’s what I wanted to play. And I never looked back! I think that if I had started playing before that, I would have picked up some pretty bad habits.
I played in the jazz band in middle school on tenor sax and was in marching band and the youth symphony in Albuquerque in high school. The youth symphony did tours, so I got to travel to Mexico, California, and Germany. When I was leaving high school, I thought I wanted to be a professional musician, but I was nervous about putting all of my eggs in one basket, so I chose a college where I could get a double degree. I also got into Michigan, and that was my second choice school, so I almost went there for undergrad.
KC: Once you got to Michigan, how did you find out about the Pops Orchestra?
JB: I found out about Pops by word of mouth! I was asking around about orchestras on campus and someone told me I should check out Pops. I auditioned both for Pops and Campus Symphony, and what I loved about Pops was that it’s just a good group with a lot of fun music, some of which you don’t typically play in the more traditional orchestras. The motto of the “serious orchestra without the stress, the casual orchestra without the fluff” is absolutely true.
KC: You mentioned that you were on the Board for four years – did you have the same role for all four years?
JB: No, I started off as program director and then my last two years I was the librarian. The reason I chose librarian is that there were only two crazy periods per semester: just before the semester began, when I had to photocopy all of the music, and then right at the end, when I had to sort everything. Being able to localize that time commitment was a great thing for me. With program director, the time commitment was spread over the course of the semester. Plus, I finally got tired of telling the directors, “I need your bio yesterday!”
KC: Tell me about your experience with Pops, and share some favorite memories!
JB: Grad school is HARD. You need some time away to reset, and that’s what Pops was for me. It was a little bit of time that I reserved every week in which I could relax, be me, and do something enjoyable, regardless of what else was going on. In general, Pops helped me to be a better student.
Some of my favorite memories are from being on the Board, like having Lightsaber duels before meetings. We did the first Pops progressive party while I was there, and that was a whole lot of fun. And then there was always this excitement around concert day! I was often principal oboe, so I would often deal with, “Are we about to tune yet? Okay, no… we’re not tuning yet because we have a line out the door around the block of people waiting to get into the theater.” We also started doing the videos while I was there. One of our first videos was shot, at least in part, in my apartment! The board breakfast before the concert was always such a great way to start concert day! And finally, I carpooled with Erin Platte and Alex Sutton a lot, and we always sang “Wicked” together in the car.
KC: What did your research entail as part of your Ph.D. program?
JB: My research interests are very small; I look at nanometer-scale surfaces. When you’re making a device and scaling it down smaller and smaller, each layer in your device has a job that you need it to do. You want each of those layers to be distinct and separate from the other layers; the smaller the device, the more important boundaries become.
In my research, I was looking at what happens when you deposit one material on top of another. How do these atoms rearrange on the surface? What does the surface structure look like, and how can we use the surface to either make shapes and structures that we want or use the surface to keep that interface (boundary) very sharp? I've moved now from semiconductors to magnetic structures, and I'm currently researching semiconductor polymers.
One of the advantages of being at CSU is that there’s a nice balance between research and teaching. At some universities, the only thing that matters for your tenure is research, research, research. A lot of what I teach is introductory physics for health sciences majors or engineers. I also taught a graduate solid states physics class last spring, and I typically teach an upper-level mechanics class. At some point I want to teach the quantum mechanics class. It’s a lot of fun! There are some people who get tired of teaching introductory classes, but I like them because I learn something new every time. Students look at the material in such different ways, so I have to think about how I can help them through difficult ideas and difficult concepts.
KC: Where do you think is the overlap between music and science?
JB: When I was in undergrad, I worked with Sandia National Labs. Every time I mentioned to people that I was also majoring in music, I always got the, “Ohhh, I played such and such instrument when I was younger!” It’s amazing the number of closet musicians you have in the scientific community. One of the main ways that people succeed in science is to possess the creativity to look at problems and come up with solutions. There are a lot of arts in the sciences and a lot of sciences in the arts.
I took an acoustics class in Michigan’s Mechanical Engineering department back-to-back with a transmission electron microscopy class. The idea with an electron is that it acts as both a wave and a particle, but the way that electron microscopy works is that you’re thinking about electrons as waves. I was solving plane wave equations in both my acoustics class and my microscopy class! It doesn’t matter where you are, there’s a lot of overlap in places that we don’t necessarily think as having overlap.
KC: What advice would you give to current students interested in pursuing a similar career path?
JB: For anyone who goes to get a Ph.D., make sure you find a life outside of your research. For people interested in going into science in general, just keep at it! Keep at the problem-solving, and make sure that you learn how to work in a group, because science isn’t solitary. So much of what we do in science nowadays is interdisciplinary. You have to be able to work with a team, and not everyone realizes that going into the sciences. I think that’s an important skillset that you learn in something like an orchestra. How do you work with a team, and how do you hold yourself and your teammates accountable? When you’re actually preparing your resume for jobs, make sure you think not only about your specific lab skills, but also about things like communication. That’s true across the board, not just for scientists and not just for people going to graduate school.
KC: What does the Pops mean to you personally?
JB: For me, music provides balance. Having that balance and that ability to get out of my research helped me to be a more well-rounded and happier person. Pops helped me remember that, yeah, there’s a life outside of the research lab. Some of my really good friends now are people from Pops. Pops is what all orchestras COULD be.
JESSICA'S FAVORITES
MOVIE OF ALL TIME: Princess Bride
BINGEABLE TV SHOW: Star Trek
RESTAURANT IN A2 AND CLEVELAND: Zingerman's in A2, Trentina in Cleveland
RECENT TRIP: Visiting my grandmother for her 90th birthday because watching her and my son together is so much fun!!
PLACE TO VISIT: Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque
PLACE YOU WOULD TAKE A FRIEND VISITING CLEVELAND: I love the tow-path train for just outdoors walking, or Blossom to see the orchestra if it’s summer time
GLASS OF WINE: Yes? I really like Carmenere wine which is from Chile and not as well known as some other wines
POPS PIECE: Firebird
PERSON YOU'D LIKE TO HAVE DINNER WITH: My one year old son
8/1/18