Dr. Scott McClure, PhD in Epidemiology | Assistant Professor of Public Health at Shenandoah University

In this episode, we discuss how an interest in food and a career as a product development food scientist unexpectedly led Scott to pursue a PhD in nutritional epidemiology, how he combines his different interests and experiences in his current research, teaching, and collaborative work on food insecurity, and his take on the importance of picking achievable goals, always trying to do more than zero, and maintaining a healthy work/life balance.

Hosted by Lois Dankwa

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

Transcript

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Lois Dankwa

Hi. I'm co-host Lois Dankwa and this is the 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 Scott McClure, PhD in epidemiology and current assistant professor of public health at Shenandoah University. Hi, Scott.

Scott McClure

Hi, how are you?

Lois Dankwa

I’m good. How are you doing today?

Scott McClure

Good. Well, it's finally starting to warm up, which is nice.

Lois Dankwa

I'm excited to have you join and learn a little about your experience and I think I first want to start by hearing about what made you want to pursue a PhD in epidemiology and just learn more about your graduate work at Hopkins in general.

Scott McClure

I mean, I kind of joke if you asked me 10 years ago, the two things I'd be absolutely sure of are not living in Winchester, where I was born, and not being in academia, which I am. So, it's not been a direct path, but kind of the the through line to all of it has been my interest in food. I remember in high school, like up through high school, I knew for certain I wanted to be a chef until kind of the the college brochures started coming and I saw the one for the the cooking CIA and it was all cooking. And I really liked math and science, so I literally just googled food, math, and science and this thing called food science came up. And so, I looked up the good programs for food science and found Cornell, went there, and it kind of fit really well. It was really exciting and I really enjoyed it and was certain I was going to do it forever until about maybe a year and a half into my time at Craft and I started kind of feeling like this is a lot of fun. The products we're making taste good, they're reasonably healthy, but we are spending a lot of time sort of amping up the health claims. And so, I was trying to think what I wanted to do differently and the sort of easiest answer was go join the Peace Corps. So, I went and joined the Peace Corps to go kind of far to the other direction as far as as far away from a nonprofit or from a for profit company as you can really get. And again, that was a really great experience. I'm really glad I did it, but it was definitely not what I saw myself doing for my career forever. And then came back worked for a different food company, but this one was a grower-owned cooperative, Blue Diamond Almonds out in Sacramento. And I thought like, well here it's a smaller company like we're directly helping the people growing these almonds. So, sort of the mission aligned a little better. But at the end of the day, some of my crowning achievements were figuring out how to get more sugar to stick to almonds, and so it still kind of gave me that feeling. And while I was there, I met my now wife, who had a master’s in public health, and I had just never thought about public health as a thing that would fit. It seemed like such a radically different move than what I had been doing, but then I finally started looking into it, and there's a thing like nutritional epidemiology just seemed like. Oh, you can still work with food, but also do public health. And so then again looked for the good programs and Johns Hopkins was right up high on the list and so, we sort of moved everything to to Hopkins and I started working with the the Welch Center over there, and throughout the whole time I kind of I didn't know what I was going to do with this, but it was such a like the way of thinking made so much sense to me. I just assumed by the end of the program I would figure it out. And I did my dissertation on sort of dietary phosphorus and blood pressure, which taught me a lot of valuable skills. I think it was meaningful research. It's not my life’s passion, but it succeeded in getting me my degree and making a lot of contacts and doing a lot of good work while I was there. And then probably a month or two before I would have started looking for a job this opening at Shenandoah to teach public health in the town near where my family was opened up at exactly the right time and was just sort of a perfect fit from there.

Lois Dankwa

It's so great to hear kind of how all the pieces fell together for your story and it's it's I loved hearing how you kind of noticed your initial interest and then you did a good job of then kind of diving in and going, OK, I'm interested in food. Oh, food and science and math. Let's Google and search and however, find all of the ways that those pair together and then a similar thing happened when you realized ohh I could apply that to my desire to have an impact. And I'm curious and all of that led you to PhD in epidemiology. And I'm curious how that also then informed how you conducted your dissertation and kind of even though you weren't entirely sure what direction you wanted to go in, something stuck out to you about what made kind of the position at Shenandoah makes sense, I guess. So, I'd love to hear more about all of those pieces.

Scott McClure

And kind of within my doctoral cohort, I definitely had the reputation of the work-life balance advocate and with that like I really made a point that the point of the dissertation was for me to learn skills and then to take them and go do something else rather than being kind of the start of my research that I would do for the next 20 years. My whole dissertation came out of just a class I took I think my first semester at Hopkins, just an elective course on kidney disease epidemiology, and we were having a talk about the phosphorus content of soda and phosphorus is sort of a relatively benign nutrient if your kidneys work well and kind of deadly, deadly poison if they don't, and so people with kidney disease are told not to drink dark colas, because phosphoric acid is what gives it the tang, and I just asked but is there actually like is it contributing a lot of dietary phosphorus to their diet? And no one had the answer to that. So, my first paper was literally just describing the dietary sources of phosphorus using NHANES, which is this amazing data set. But you could download it on your computer right now. And do the same paper I did. Like it's not like it's completely publicly available and so from there I was able to make my dissertation cover a lot of different bases, so I was able to do some of that descriptive research just with publicly available data. I was able to do a systematic review, which was a really great sort of learning experience for me. I was able to do a secondary analysis of a randomized trial. And then actually get some frozen samples reanalyzed from a different trial. So, it's sort of every part, just used a little bit different skill set that again, I wasn't sure which of those would be the most useful, but it sort of getting my hands on as many things as I can while I was there.

Lois Dankwa

It's cool to hear how your approach was primarily to gain skills and gain skills that would kind of help build you towards your next moment as opposed to, I guess, saying build you towards your next moment isn't necessarily the direction I wanted to go with that because someone wanting to make their research base that is also building skills towards their next moment. But I think my real question is what kind of how do you see the skills that you gained from being a doctorate student or candidate informing kind of the work that you're doing now?

Scott McClure

Yeah, I mean one, I teach an undergraduate public health methods course where we pretty much entirely do descriptive research using NHANES because it's sort of well, once you have the code written, it's really writing an interesting question and then the rest can be sort of knocked out pretty quickly for a semester undergrad course, so the most Direct Line would be that. But another thing where not connected to my dissertation, but later in my time in Hopkins, I got involved with sort of took some classes and then TA’d for those classes later on in the Center for a Livable Future, which sort of exposed me to this idea of food systems, which kind of blew my mind because it's just like ohh, this is what I've been looking for cause it's kind of the language to tie together what the food industry is doing with what the nutritional epidemiologists are doing with what the food banks are doing and all of that kind of together. And now the the research I do at Shenandoah focuses on food insecurity work, and so we've been collaborating with the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, which covers Winchester, doing surveys of all the food pantries in Winchester City and as part of a bigger collaboration the Barzinji Institute at Shenandoah. We're collaborating with Yarmouk University in Jordan, where they're doing similar surveys of food insecurity in sort of food insecure Jordanian communities, but also the refugee camps in Irbid and so now we're collaborating together to try and understand food insecurity, what's similar, what's different, and get some papers out of that. But my sort of now that I've found is like, oh, food insecurity work kind of connects perfectly with all of my interests and the way I've been able to get into it is my ability to do that descriptive data analysis to sort of help the the food bank with the data they have, but the time they don't and I don't think I would have been able to just jump right in and start working with that if I hadn't touched all those things while I was at Hopkins.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, I have so many, so many different questions I could ask. One of them I'm curious about perhaps selfishly just like ohh, how do you help the food food banks with their data? But I think I'm also interested in hearing about kind of the what, well, so I do want to hear about that, but I also want to hear about what kind of is both challenging and exciting about the work that you do, because it seems like you're interacting with a lot of different groups of people.

Scott McClure

Yeah. I mean, the single biggest challenge with my research is that it's sort of with my role at Shenandoah in theory, it should be taking about half a day a week is the percent because I'm 80% teaching, 10% scholarship, 10% service. But the work around I've done is well, research is service. So now I can combine that 20% and then incorporating it into my courses. So, I now teach a food systems course and I teach a community nutrition course and I so then I can use the students taking that course to help me with my research. And so now I can sort of spread out through all of the different parts and one of the amazing things about Shenandoah is they definitely have a lot of sticks in a lot of fires and once they sniff out ohh this person's interested then opportunities just kind of come. So, this the whole Barzinji Institute Zero Hunger project that we're doing literally came out from me going to a poetry reading and the an assistant Provost was next to me like, oh, hey, you're in food, right? Would you like to get involved in this project? And so, I just got back from a 10-day trip to Jordan where we, like sort of while an amazing trip it’s the best part was the meetings with the their team and sort of all the ideas we now have. And now we have meetings scheduled for tomorrow to start working on our manuscripts together. And so, tying that in with my sort of work life balance like always kind of say no first and see what ideas come keep coming back. And I think it is I've definitely reached a point where I am focusing more and more on how to tie threads together because there's just no more extra time to add a completely unrelated thing, but I've always been pretty good at that.

Lois Dankwa

That's that's really good advice and I'd love to dig more into that, that always saying no first because I could see certain people instantly feeling panicked by but what if I say no and I do want this opportunity and it never comes back? Like how have you had have gained the skills or gained the comfort to be OK with saying no regardless of whether or not something comes back?

Scott McClure

And part of my answer is a cheat in that I don't actually say no, but you can, yes and something into kind of a no where you you yes and with, yeah, that sounds like a really great idea and I'm really interested to hearing more. Could you do XYZ? And then the opportunities where the person can't reply back with those sort of follow-ups are good indication of maybe not ready for the help you can provide. That was one my time in the food industry helped me with that a lot where I learned not to start a project for a week or two after it was given to me because I noticed a lot of projects would get canceled about two weeks in. And so, knowing I would be able to hit the deadline they told me with waiting two weeks probably saved me from starting 10 different projects because within that window meetings I was not involved with killed the thing, and so that similar idea of don't drop everything to work on a new opportunity, but like always be kind of slowly pushing on various things, and there's actually a poster in the break room in one of the buildings in Shenandoah that's just, there are no academic emergencies. Like the work we're doing is important, but it is not actually that often super time critical there. Very few things that a week of waiting isn't a good thing and just I feel like there's very much a sense of urgency that doesn't need to be there in probably most things academic or not, but especially the academic kind of tighter schedule of like there's semesters, there's terms, there's this flow, this constant sort of ongoing cycle builds up this sort of antsy energy, where if you just I Mean always be working on something, but you don't need to sort of worry too much if you're if you're actually doing the work.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's important to recognize your bandwidth and then also know that right everything doesn't need to be dropped to then jump to the next thing, because that panic is not really a good way to grow and develop your skills and things like that.

Scott McClure

And while I was at Hopkins, we got sort of a bunch of us in our cohort, got really hooked on these writing accountability groups that they're sort of training more targeted at some of the MD's who are having trouble finding time to write. And just the idea of those is not well, how can we find that extra hour in addition to everything you're doing, but more, you don't need the hour, you just need like 10 minutes, a lot of 10 minutes, but if you can start finding time that you could use during work hours then as long as you're always doing more than zero, it adds up over a period of time, and I think that idea has helped me get a lot done without working 80 hours a week, which I've seen my peers fall into sometimes and challenging.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, I that's such a good kind of nugget to carry with, I guess all of us. I'm curious if you've received any other really great advice that really has throughout your career just helped to guide you in terms of just how you have been able to exist professionally.

Scott McClure

I mean, one thing I point to is really a credit to Craft foods when I worked for them. So, they would offer, I mean, I think it was like 20 paid time off days that you could use and they didn't bank so they would expire at the end of the year and managers got in trouble if their employees had unused PTO days. So, it's not just that like, oh, we give them to you, but don't use them. It's like there was this corporate like push to say like no. The evidence shows vacations are good for like efficiency. Make sure your people take this time off. And that idea, I think really stuck with me then in some some jobs where that was not the the idea, but I still said like I'm I'm not going to show up early and leave late, just cause the boss is still there. Like I'm going to do the work that I've been assigned and I'm going to find ways to be more efficient. And do things better and smarter. But I'm not going to perform just sort of working longer is working better and I don't think that's ever hurt me. I think it's only helped me. When I look at my time at Hopkins sort of I got met so we moved with my at the time fiancée and sort of over the course of my my time at Hopkins, we bought a house, got married, had a kid, had another kid, sold our house, and I was able to graduate, I think early if not on time. I think my graduation was sort of the the on time, but I was done about a semester early, so it's like it was doable and I wasn't burning the midnight oil. It was just one, picking achievable goals and two, kind of always try to be doing more than zero. 

Lois Dankwa

Right, right.

Scott McClure

Being fortunate, I wasn't trying to sort of get a tenure track position at like Hopkins. Like that would have needed a little little harder work, but I think the it all matched pretty well with the type of work I enjoy doing.

Lois Dankwa

Right. It's about kind of pinpointing what was most important to you in that moment. So, we've talked a lot about work life balance and I'm remembering that you said, like you were a chef and you learned chef skills. And I'm interested in the the life balance part if you have any fun, favorite things that you like to cook or that helped in your work life balance, favorite kind of treats you would make.

Scott McClure

Well, and that's like, so I love to cook, but I've never really taken any cooking school. Like the cooking school portfolio, I was like, OK no. But interestingly, in my my master’s was in sensory evaluation of food in the Food science department. But a lot of people sort of in my cohort had come from culinary school and had come into food science. And so, I was able to pick up a lot of skills cooking with them as just sort of that's the the hobbies we would do and pretty much everywhere I've been like making notes of OK, I need to try and cook that when I get home and so after coming home from Jordan, been making a lot of herb salads like tabbouleh and for touché and lots of hummus and some cookies for, for my friends who celebrate Ramadan and all that good stuff, but also just making sure I have the time to spend 30 to 60 minutes cooking for my family every night like that’s sort of not a, not a thing I've made negotiable. And if you don't give up time, people can't take it. But if you do, they will.

Lois Dankwa

And I guess bringing recipes is a good example of bringing work home with you. Maybe one very good example of that.

Scott McClure

Yeah, I get fewer free almonds than when I worked for Blue Diamond but.

Lois Dankwa

Unfortunately, but I guess you can just buy them now. So, I have one more question for you and I'm curious what inspires you right now?

Scott McClure

I mean, I think the thing that inspires me now sort of a good, good stories that exemplifies that is when we were in Jordan, we met with their survey team, who was primarily students or sort of former students who actually went out and interviewed people experiencing just incredible food insecurity and talking to them about how that experience of collecting surveys impacted their view on research and just hearing like not every person, but a lot of really smart, talented people saying participating in that kind of research made them want to do that with their lives. And I think I keep trying to push my own expertise. But right now, my main role is a teacher is sort of sort of formally and as a mentor. And so, seeing that the work I'm doing well, important sort of the face validity of it. But just this idea of getting students involved in this work is creating the next round of people who are going to be applying to Hopkins instead of applying to an MBA. No shade against an MBA, but like they're not going to be trying to figure out the best profit margin on a a bag of chips. They're going to be trying to figure out the best way to improve the health of the population and seeing that, which is something I would like tell myself like, oh, part of what I'm doing is is this. But actually seeing it and has been one of the most exciting things sort of at this point in my career.

Lois Dankwa

Oh, that's great to right being influential in for the the future, I guess the future of what you're doing, which I agree that's completely inspiring. Scott, it's been so wonderful to chat with you today and hear a little about your perspective and the things that have gotten you to this moment. Thank you so much.

Scott McClure

Thank you.