Dr. Meredith Raucher Sisson, PhD in History of Art | Associate Director of the National Scholarship Office at Virginia Commonwealth University

In this episode, we discuss what drew Meredith to study medieval art history and her experience with the interdisciplinarity of the humanities at Johns Hopkins, how a year-long research fellowship in Rome helped her realize she didn’t want to pursue a career in academia, and the ways her current role in higher ed administration satisfies her passion for supporting students to achieve their goals.

Hosted by Brooklyn Arroyo

To connect with Meredith and to learn more about her story, visit her page on the PHutures #100AlumniVoices Project website.

Transcript

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Brooklyn Arroyo

Hello I'm co-host Brooklyn Arroyo and this is 100 Alumni Voices podcast, stories that inspire, where we explore the personal and professional journeys of a diverse group of 100 doctoral alumni from Johns Hopkins University. Today we're joined by Meredith Raucher Sisson, PhD in History of art. Welcome to the PHutures podcast. So, let's start off what brought you to Johns Hopkins and sort of what brought you to your PhD in general.

Meredith Raucher Sisson

Sure. So, when I was an undergraduate, I took an art history class, sort of just because, and really loved it and loved the professor, and so decided to take more classes with her and it tapped into my my love of of history, of culture, of language. So, I studied abroad as an undergraduate in Italy in Rome. So, I was able to really keep my connection to Rome throughout my studies in art history. And my my undergraduate advisor, the same professor said to me, you know, you're really good at this. You should consider Graduate School. And it seemed like a good idea to me, not to my mom. She wanted me to be a lawyer. I didn't want to be a lawyer. So, I went to grad school instead. And and and as I was looking at art history programs, Johns Hopkins had a very strong medieval history program and legacy, long history of of Medieval art at Johns Hopkins. So, it was it was a great fit for what I wanted to study.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Well, that's really interesting to think about because I think oftentimes Hopkins is solely associated with medicine and and sort of the that side of STEM academia. And so, what did you find in in your research of medieval and in the history of art and and and the relationship that was already existing at Hopkins?

Meredith Raucher Sisson

So, when I came to Hopkins, and when I was applying to Johns Hopkins, there were two scholars, my advisor, Herbert Kessler, and another Byzantinist Henry McGuire, who were really holding up sort of the pillars of the medieval art history program, and they both had many students who went on to go and become professors and and do great research and really interesting research that they published and that I enjoyed and was interested in as I was as an undergraduate and researching what program to go into, and it also meant that there was a sizable cohort of medievalists at Hopkins, while I was there, so it was, it was good to, you know, not be the only one, but also that there was a great diversity in what we as a group of medievalists were studying so we could support each other really well. And Hopkins also was it's a small art history program, so there were four women including myself in my cohort coming in. And and you know some cohorts had maybe five was the biggest when I was there and then, you know, there was just one person that was ahead of me. So anywhere in between. It was a small program and it was it was really nice to have a group of people who could could be my my peers and my colleagues and and my friends.

Brooklyn Arroyo

So, within your experience within your PhD, what sort of things did you study and and did you discover anything new to the subject? And I'm sure you did, that you you hadn't known before that really pushed you deeper into studying art history?

Meredith Raucher Sisson

Well, yeah, I mean, that's what you hope for when you when you sign on for a PhD that you're going to discover something new. I took mostly art history classes, you know, spanning across ancient art and Byzantine medieval art, Renaissance art. I didn't really go much further than Renaissance art in my in my graduate studies. I did take some language courses as well, so some classes in in the German department, mostly just language, not not like German literature or history there. I took an Italian, did I take Italian at Hopkins? I don't remember. I definitely took a French class just for fun. Maybe I took an Italian class too. But you know, I got funding from the university multiple times to go do research in Italy and in Germany. So got to use those language skills while I was abroad as well. And yeah, my my research focused on a series of life-size, wood crucifixes from the 13th and 14th centuries that were particularly gory in their rendition of the death of Christ. And so that was a topic that actually was not well studied at all. So, I did get to break new ground there, which was, which was really exciting.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Wow, that is that's really interesting. I think that art history is like just one of those subjects that pretty much anyone can be interested by. You know, I don't think that there's a single person who's, well, that's boring or not at least somewhat intrigued by the history of art. And so, do you feel that within the networks and and you briefly mentioned how it was a small program, but you were able to have a small group of people who were like minded in your interests. And do you feel that within your networks and what they were studying you, you helped each other spark interests and and what were some of the other research projects going on?

Meredith Raucher Sisson

I I I think that that was true both in the department and or in Gilman Hall, among other humanities departments. So, I had friends in in history and in history of science and in classics, Near Eastern Studies. You know my dissertation, and I think this is true of art history in general, it was very interdisciplinary. I think art history is one of those fields that that borrows generously methodologies from other fields and to its benefit. So, you know, I had one chapter of my dissertation that really was a history of science chapter where I was really diving into medieval optics and and so it was beneficial not just to, you know, my mental health and well-being to have friends outside of my department, but also to my research, to have friends in history of science who I could bounce ideas off of. I had another chapter that was really, you know, based in phenomenology and and more philosophical. And so having colleagues in in philosophy and and folks I could bounce ideas with over there was was really helpful. So, I think that, you know, other folks were doing all sorts of different things, you know, both in the the group of medievalists that I was at Hopkins with, you know, some of them were working on really, like, late antique projects in the 4th, 5th centuries. And I was all the way up in, you know, the 14th century. So, you can imagine, like everything in between we well, and and that's not including the folks who actually were doing like ancient Egyptian projects or modern projects from like the 1980s or the 1930s. And so, you know, it was a very diverse group of projects.

Brooklyn Arroyo

So postgraduation, you have your PhD and you're sort of in the realm of what you want to do with your PhD. Did you choose to stay in academia? Did you step away? What sort of work was was it like immediately after your PhD?

Meredith Raucher Sisson

Yeah. So, I'll actually, I'll take us back a little bit before I graduated. So in in 2014, back the 2014/2015 academic year I spent in Rome on a research fellowship, which is amazing for all of the reasons you can imagine spending a year in Rome might be amazing. But I realized that you know I was researching and writing and that's what I was doing in terms of my professional life 90% of the time you know. I did go to see tons of art. I got to see my objects in situ. I got to see you know them in museums in conservation labs. I got to touch them. I mean, it's amazing and I loved it. But I also realized that all of the other things that filled my life back in Baltimore were missing. And I missed them. So, you know, teaching or I was super involved in the alumni club of my undergraduate institution. I really missed that. I decided when I came back to join the National Fellowship program as the first program coordinator, so as a graduate student still I started working with with that office particularly helping students applying for the Fulbright US student program, and I loved it. I just loved it. They they had offered me the job, literally just to help with Fulbright. So, it was supposed to end by the 1st of November. But it was a really good fit and I was I was thriving there, you know, only 19 1/2 hours a week. But you know it was it was I was helping them out a lot as well, and so they ended up being able to get more money to keep me on and the then director of the program, Kelly Berry, who is now running the student success Center, she sort of wheeled and dealed with other parts of academic affairs to get me, you know, experience in other areas of academic and student services and sort of cobbled together more or less a full-time job. And and that gave me a lot of insight into what being a university administrator could be. And so, at that point, I started applying for jobs in Higher Ed, but not in academia, with a particular focus in fellowships and actually also alumni relations. And I was offered one of each at the same time and decided to take the job at Virginia Commonwealth University. I started there as the assistant director of their National Scholarship office, and I should say our national scholarship office because I'm still there now as the associate director, but I I sort of haven't looked back. I I really love the work that I do. I'm I'm much more engaged in holistic student development and and sort of future aspiration building than I am in content knowledge, but I've I've carved out a niche for myself at VCU where I've really been able to develop curriculum and workshops and other opportunities to teach students the fundamental skills that they need to tackle major applications. And and and and a lot of it is teaching how to tell your story. So, thinking about what have you done. What do you want to do? How do you connect the dots between those two things and and put it into words in a way that that sells you to someone who's going to, you know, pick you and. And that's been extremely, extremely rewarding.

Brooklyn Arroyo

I think that as as someone who has really just entered the world of higher academia and higher education, that's a big part of it. It's a lot of selling yourself, quite literally to wherever you would like to go and to whoever you would like to work with. And so what sort of pieces of advice would you share with people who are looking to step into a different space of academia at a different level, and who are currently in that world preparing to sell themselves and they're not really sure how?

Meredith Raucher Sisson

That's, that's actually I think it's two separate questions. One is like how do you tell your story right and the other is how do you navigate choosing what to do? And and I think the first one is, is the easier question It's not an easy thing to do, but it's easier for me to answer. You know, in terms of of selling yourself, it's really about understanding what you want and then understanding what experiences you've had and and what experiences you plan to pursue in order to make yourself excellent for you know that goal, whatever that goal is. It's literally about connecting the dots. You, you heard me say that already. My students hear me say that all the time. It's about connecting the dots and it's always future looking. So, if you're applying for an academic job, it's about convincing the people on the hiring committee that like this institution. Is your right next step that it makes sense for you based on what you've done to prepare yourself, but also based on your goals and and where you're going and that each, you know, hiring committee or funding organization like they have a goal with why they are funding that position. And so, you know, the the magic really happens when you can figure out what their mission and their values and their goals are and how you align and you and your goals align with their goals. As far as the second question of you know, how do I figure out what to do once I graduate? That's a lot harder, and it's a very personal question. And and I think that that it's still about, you know, what is the actual work that you want to do. And and you know if you love research wondering is it is it that you love doing research or that you love your research specifically and and I think that's a really important difference because it's going to point you in different directions. If you just love doing research, you know there are 1,000,000 and 7 places you could really satisfyingly engage in research and it could be in government. It could be at a think tank. It could be at an NGO? It could be, I mean at all sorts of places. If you love your research then you know, obviously the academic track is a is a possibility, but you know there are entire professional fields around all of the things that we study right. The Academy is not the only place where having knowledge of art history would have served me. But for me it was really I loved working with students. It was it was really important to me to be engaging with students, but also, I didn't want to limit myself to just filling their head with art history. As valuable as I think that that is, for me, the content-based knowledge was not as satisfying as giving them the self-awareness and the self-knowledge and helping them to grow their ambitions. You know the best moment of my day is when I meet with a new student and get to tell them, like, oh yes, there is someone who will pay for you to go do something really awesome because you know you are awesome and you're valuable and you have cool ideas. So, like, let's make it happen. And of course, I can't promise anything, but once they once they feel confident that like they are worth whatever fill in the blank opportunity and they go through the process of of figuring out what are they going to write in their essays, what are they going to pursue? You know, even if that particular opportunity doesn't go through, it opens up other doors for them. And so, for me, you know, that was the moment of, like, real satisfaction. So, I think it there's a bit of soul searching that has to happen if you're like, OK, I'm at the end of my PhD and I don't think I want to be an academic. It’s really identifying like what is the work that you want to do?

Brooklyn Arroyo

So, for you, whether that be before you entered your graduate experience or even way before you started your academic journey, does it surprise you that this is sort of the the route that you ended up taking that strayed away from like the core of at history and went more into the mentorship side of academia and and helping with young academics? Does it surprise you that that ended up being the the world that you focused on?

Meredith Raucher Sisson

Yes and no. I mean, if you had told me as a, you know, a 20-year-old, oh, you're going to be a fellowships adviser I would have been like a what? You know, I don't even think that this, that this job existed at my undergraduate institution. And I mean, there wasn't there wasn't an office for it at Hopkins until I was halfway through my my graduate career. So, it's a new field anyway, but you know retrospectively looking back am am I surprised that I'm enjoying this kind of work? Like no, not really. It it is I think part of why I pursued a degree in art history was in part because I liked art history, but more because I really loved what I could do as a professor and art history was an venue for being able to to teach students and engage with students and have that kind of relationship with students. And I just found what was for me a better fit. You know, I I liked my research. I always liked my research, but I didn't love it enough to make you know, becoming an art historian my full-time job.

Brooklyn Arroyo

So, within the the work you're doing now, it is different, but do you ever find yourself and in what ways, coming back to art history and looking into things new discoveries? Is it still something that you're passionate about and and often engage in?

Meredith Raucher Sisson

Yes and no. I think I engage in it in a very different way. I mean a lot of the skills that I built as a graduate student, I use all the time like teaching students and and helping them to develop major research projects. You know, ideation revision, which is, you know to student’s surprise, not the same thing as proofreading. A lot of those skills that I that I built as a as a graduate student I use in my job regularly. Also understanding academia has served me very well when I look to partner with faculty members. But as far as as art history and like art historical content specifically, I think I'm engaging with it much less from a scholarly perspective and much more from a just enthusiast perspective. I still, you know, I was I had an opportunity to travel to Italy again this past summer for a wedding of a of a close family friend who I met while I was studying in Italy and and, you know, went to new sites and old sites to to see the things that I loved and new things that I've wanted to see and I will always do that. That that I will, you know, always enjoy checking out the local museum and and and what's there. But as far as you know like checking out scholarly journals, you know I'm not I'm not reading those anymore.

Brooklyn Arroyo

So, for you career wise and and you may not have one yet, but what would the next phase look like for you?

Meredith Raucher Sisson

That's a great question. And and I mean that because I don't, I don't know the answer to it yet. I mean, I love my job. I love the work I do and so, you know for now, I think it's keep developing myself in this arena. You know, I have found ways to do new things and keep this job interesting and and feeling new. It has the potential to get stale because it's very deadline driven and there's a cycle and it's the it's the same cycle every year. But so far, I have not gotten bored with it, even a little bit. So, you know my, my next steps if I if I change, it will either because a great opportunity presents itself or, you know, because life forces me in a different direction.

Brooklyn Arroyo

And a lot of the work that exists within any branch of academia is very cyclical. So, whether it's academia or not, what advice would you have for somebody who's also in a very deadline driven field and they do enjoy their work, but they are worried that it's going to be too much of that cycle and cycle and cycle. And so knowing if that's the right thing for you before stepping into it and then dealing with that when you are in the field like that.

Meredith Raucher Sisson

Yeah. I mean at the like bare minimum, you know I work with different students each year and there's different projects, different different people and and that gives it some sense of of freshness. But you know I have one other colleague in my office, my direct supervisor who's the director of our office and it's been so great working with him because he's given me a lot of of rope to run with and to to try my ideas and, you know, each year we try something new. We we've been adding to our programs and changing them. And so now we we've run now for several years, we call it our how to apply workshop series and it's it's five 2-hour workshops. We meet once a week with students for five weeks and it's free. Anybody can can join us. And and we really teach those fundamental skills of how to apply and and I don't know if you've if you've read Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, but this was actually one of my peers one of my colleagues in my grad program introduced it to me in Graduate School, and it's sort of been my Bible ever since. It's a really wonderful book about about writing, not writing style, so you know she's not talking about like word usage and grammar so much as how to build a writing habit and and to, you know, invigorate your creativity and reminding you that writing is a craft. Not a gift. And I've I've used a lot of of her approaches of like small assignments and using scaffolding assignment on assignment to really build out for the students all of the things they need to think about in writing a personal statement, and so by the end of five weeks, they have everything they need to write a personal statement. They get the opportunity to do it, to peer review it with each other, and to get feedback from me. And this was something that we my office had never offered before, but we realized we are reaching our capacity as a two-person office. We need to do more group advising and this was what came out of of trying to find solutions for that of how to better leverage our time and here you know we have currently signed up 45 students who are going to go through this this spring and that's 45 students that we don’t need to individually teach how to write or individually teach how to tell their story, right. They they will come to our individual meetings once they come into like the Fulbright application process or the any other awards that we work with, they'll have a draft of a personal statement. They'll know what things need to go into their applications and and so we can meet them at a higher level. And so, you know it's thinking about it's it's continually thinking about like where can we improve, where can we grow, where can we make things better and and throwing spaghetti at the wall, honestly.

Brooklyn Arroyo

And I think you you mentioned how writing especially and specifically was not just a skill that you can have or not have, but truly a craft. And I think that does apply for so many things that are often written off as just you either have it or you don't. You're good at it, or you're not. When you know, things take nurturing and time and practice and. And that's what I find inspiring and and so our final question of all of our interviewees is sort of the grand finale of each interview, and that is what inspires you right now?

Meredith Raucher Sisson

In different places it's different things. I mean, my students inspire me all the time. VCU is a third Pell Grant, a third transfer students. You know it's it's a very, very diverse student body and I work with, I mean, amazing students who a lot of times like don't even know that they're allowed to dream bigger. And once I give them that permission, they just they go off and they've run with it and it's it's incredible. I also am inspired all the time by my two kids. I have two small children who are almost two and almost five and and they are just like magical. They make me totally insane all the time, but they're funny and they're smart and like the world is full of wonder for them. And to be able to see the world through their eyes is is really remarkable and and and special, so they they inspire me every day.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Definitely the the bliss and hopefulness of the little kids have all my little sisters and they're just they have no worries in the entire world and that is definitely inspiring. So, thank you for coming to the PHutures Podcast today. I really enjoyed speaking with you and and your journey and being able to to learn from it. And I think our audience will as well.

Meredith Raucher Sisson

Oh, great. Thank you so much for having me. This was fun.