Dr. Sara Dolan is the Associate Dean for Professional Development, where she supports graduate student and faculty success. She is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, and she served as the Graduate Program Director for the Clinical Psychology doctoral program (Psy.D.) for 5 years. Her research focuses on neuropsychological factors that impact life functioning in individuals with substance use disorders and trauma. She has received more than $3 million in federal funding for work with military personnel and veterans, mental health service providers, and families of individuals affected by trauma. Dr. Dolan graduated from the University of Iowa with a Ph.D. in psychology. She completed her clinical internship at the Yale University School of Medicine, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship funded by the National institutes for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the Alpert School of Medicine at Brown university. She has been at Baylor since 2007.
BearTracks
All right, so I feel like I’ve asked you this in multiple interviews. But give us a little background on who you are for anyone who’s jumping into bear tracks
for the first time.
Dr. Sara Dolan
I am the Associate Dean for professional development in the Graduate School, which means I get the privilege of helping graduate students be successful. So our goal is for graduate students to enter their programs smoothly, navigate their program smoothly, and then graduate in a timely manner. And I help with all of those stages.
BT
I like that: helping graduate students be successful. It’s a good, concise description. How did you end up in this position? What was your life before this, and what led to this moment?
SD
I went to undergraduate at Indiana University and bounced around majors for a while and settled on psychology, because I liked the kinds of research that you could do in Psychology. I got my PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Iowa, and did my residency and postdoctoral fellowship in the Northeast. I moved to Waco from Providence, Rhode Island. I was at Brown University and decided that I really wanted to be in a faculty position that allowed me to interact with students – especially graduate students, but I also really found that I enjoyed undergraduate students. So our clinical psychology program is really one of the best, if not the best of its kind in the country. And I was so privileged to be part of that faculty and to be their graduate program director for about five years. I had not envisioned myself in an administrative or leadership position. I was just grateful that I had a faculty position. I’m the first person in my family to graduate from college. I was incredibly grateful to be able to the career that I wanted to have, and much more be appointed to a leadership position, and I really enjoyed that position.
I stepped down after five years for a little bit of a break. And during that time, pretty much immediately after I stepped down, I was approached by some folks in the Graduate School to consider applying for an upcoming opening as Associate Dean for Research. The person who preceded me in that position was retiring, but I got to shadow him for a semester. So that was during COVID. For all of our graduate students and junior faculty who entered Baylor online, it was challenging. But the Graduate School is a really welcoming place. As soon as I was able to start getting here in person, people were very, very welcoming and open.
So I was here for a little while, and then the person who preceded me in my current position – that was Dr. Beth Allison Barr – she was given this amazing opportunity to accept an endowed chair position in history because her research career had taken off! She was wildly successful, and Baylor rewarded her richly for that with this endowed chair position. So when her position came open, I was asked to consider stepping into her role. And I think a big part of that was because of my background as a clinical psychologist; I think the folks here knew that I would be able to interact with students who were struggling and be able to come up with some innovative ways of helping our graduate faculty and do some more intentional training of graduate students.
BT
What is your favorite thing about your job?
SD
I honestly did not think that I could like a job as much as I like this one. It’s a lot of freedom, a lot of independence, but with very appropriate support from Dean Lyon and Associate Dean Rios and the staff here. It’s really a chance for someone who has some energy to use that energy for good. I was not prepared for how open faculty and administration are to new ideas, growth, and development. And really just how much attention is being paid to graduate education here at Baylor. It’s such a great time to be in the Graduate School.
BT
Speaking of openness to new ideas, David Winkler, the GSA President, pitched to Dean Lyon the idea of raffling off use of his parking spot for a week during Graduate Student Appreciation Week. So anything is possible!
SD
That is such a great idea. Oh my gosh.
BT
What do you wish more graduate students knew about the Graduate School?
SD
Everybody here has this singular mission of helping our students be successful. Everybody has bought into that mission fully. And everybody who works here wishes we could be even more visible in the lives of our graduate students, so that grad students know they can come here, get whatever help they need, get whatever questions they have answered. Don’t suffer alone in silence. We are here and we get paid to help y’all. Come visit!
BT
Just show up! Okay, what what is your favorite Baylor event, sport, etc.
SD
That’s so easy. The best thing I’ve ever done, probably in my entire life, was attend the 2021 National Championship for the men’s basketball team. I got to go to Indianapolis. It was my first trip since COVID, so it was a little anxiety-provoking, but it was really the the most fun, most spirited thing that I’ve ever done. I’m a huge basketball fan from childhood.
BT
Did you play basketball?
SD
I did not play, I just loved it. I grew up in Chicago in the era of the 1990 Chicago Bulls when they won all those championships. It was our thing as a family. And I went to Indiana University when they were having their heyday of success in men’s basketball. I went to all those games. And I went to Iowa… they weren’t so good at basketball, but I went. And then Ivy League does not take sports seriously at all. So I didn’t go. And when you’re in graduate school or a postdoc, you don’t have time for that kind of stuff. But then, obviously, the job at Baylor was really attractive, of course because of how wonderful everybody is and how supportive people are. But also because they were in a Power Five conference! So I was super excited.
A funny aside, this is a story that astounds people when I tell them: I’m not from Texas. I’m not from the south, but I’m from the Big 10 And the Big 10 sports are such a big deal that you’ve got to get on waitlist to get season tickets. So I got here and the first thing I did when I arrived and got my faculty ID was call athletic department and asked to be put on the waitlist for basketball and football tickets. And the ticket office kept saying to me, “Where do you want to sit?” And I said, “I don’t care; anywhere. I’ll start at the top in the rafters and work my way down.” And they said, “No, you don’t understand. We don’t have a waitlist. Where doo you want to sit?” So I got really good football seats, but I quickly understood why I got such good seats. We were not good in 2007, 2008, 2009. Basketball got very good in 2008. So I only had one season of being confused about why nobody was there. So that was my introduction.
BT
What a novel idea, choosing your own seat! Ha! All right. What’s the resource you wish grad students took better advantage of?
SD
GPS workshops. And now that we’re recording them and putting them online, they’re available for everyone. Even if you think the topic sounds like it’s not what you need, it will be. Just go. Just attend. Just watch. You’re gonna pick up nuggets of wisdom or resources that you didn’t even know you needed.
BT
Are there any recurring pitfalls you see graduate students make that you want to tell everyone: Don’t do this! Everyone does this. Why are you doing this? Let’s not do this.
SD
I think having expectations that are a little bit different from the reality. Especially in doctoral programs. They’re hard. Doctoral education is just hard. And I don’t think anyone intends for it to be so hard, in terms of work/life balance and intellectual challenge and effort and persistence. I don’t think anybody means for it to be that way. It just is. There are going to be times where you get rejected or you get a presentation rejected. Where you get a lower grade on a paper, where you get a draft back from a faculty member that is full of red pen marks. Those are all normal things, but we don’t expect that when we’re coming in, because we’ve been a successful student in undergrad. You got to straight A’s, you aced the GRE, you did all the things right. I get it; all of us were really, really good at school. And then we get here, and it’s just different. We have to spend more time on our research than we’re used to. Classes are less important than they were in undergrad. When you are first starting, class grades are where you get feedback about how you’re doing, so, of course, you want to spend a lot of time on it!
BT
But you haven’t learned yet that – can I say this outloud? Grades in grad school are like Monopoly money. No one’s looking at them when you finally go on the job market. Just work hard, do your best, but take a chill pill.
SD
You’re absolutely right about that. The energy you are spending on classes should go into your research. I was just giving a guest lecture in a graduate class yesterday, and I said, “I wish I had known that graduate school is the best time of your entire career. It’s a time where you get to try new things and take risks really without consequences, as long as you’re taking risks in good faith with a supportive faculty member.” There are no consequences if you fail. In fact, failure is expected. That’s how and where we learn. So I wish people understood doing a lot of classes is not risky – you already know how to do that. But engaging in a new area of research or asking a faculty member if you can participate in their research, those are risky things that have nothing but pay off.
BT
That is such great advice. Okay, give me a fun fact about yourself.
SD
I took opera lessons through high school and college. And I was invited to audition for the music school at my undergrad, which has a very good high quality music school. The punch line here is that I considered it, but then I thought, “I don’t want to be a music major. That’s way too much work.”
BT
So she just became a clinical psychologist instead. You went into administration, which is totally just a walk in the park. Wow, that’s hilarious.
SD
I can’t carry a tune now.
BT
No, no, I don’t believe that. Are you serious?
SD
Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but, I mean, I barely sing in church. When you take lessons for a long time, professional lessons, you build all these muscles and learn to use your body in a way that once you’ve lost it, it’s hard to get it back.
BT
Goodness, this is a whole new aspect of you. I’m going to have to wrap my head around this.
What advice would you give to students? If you could go back to your own graduate student self, what advice would you give?
SD
To be resilient. This is a game of persistence, a game of attrition. And nobody wants for it to be that way, but until we totally change the entire nature of academia that’s how it is.
BT
But I think there’s also a degree to which this is supposed to be hard. It’s not good if suddenly something becomes so easy that you just saturate that area of the market. I think, to a certain degree, graduate studies do need to be a little bit like natural selection so you can figure out whether you can you keep up with the demands of the professions this path leads toward.
SD
This a fair point. I learned something at a conference I went to for deans of graduate schools. It was something that I wish I had known when I was a graduate student, and something that I really need to be more intentional about even now as a professional: find your purpose, because if you have purpose and you maintain your connection to that purpose the bad times are going to be easier to weather.
BT
Final question: who’s your favorite staff member?
SD
Yeah, any good psychologist knows not to answer that question.
BT
It shows you’re a professional!