Embracing physics as a returning student

Over the past year, K. Renee Horton published her first book of poetry, brought science into several Alabama primary schools, took her eighth grader—the youngest of her three children—to the hairdresser in preparation for the prom, was voted chair-elect of the American Physical Society’s forum on graduate student affairs, and served on the organizing committee for the International Conference on Women in Physics that was held in South Africa in April.

All the while, Horton was finishing her doctoral dissertation on self-reacting friction stir welding of dissimilar aluminum alloys. She defended her thesis in April, becoming the first African American to earn a PhD in materials science at the University of Alabama.

In May, Horton told Physics Today‘s Toni Feder about her path as a nontraditional student: How she juggles her many activities, how her lifelong ambition to become an astronaut was dashed, and what it’s like being a minority woman in physics. She also discusses her wish to stay in research and her current job search. Now almost 40, Horton maintains that she wouldn’t have wanted to switch the order of having family and focusing on her career.

PT: Tell me a bit about your background.

HORTON: I graduated out of our gifted program in high school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when I was 16. I did two years of college at Louisiana State University [LSU]. By the time I was 18, I noticed that all the women I was working with were either not married or did not have children. I come from a very family-oriented family—my mother wanted to know how long I would take to go to school, and when she would have grandchildren.

So, I decided to marry the guy I was dating. We had my two sons, and I followed his career. He was in the military, and we spent time in Germany. While we were overseas, I got DA—Department of the Army—training and a photography job. Back in Georgia, I did family photography for Sears for three years. At that time my first husband and I separated, and I moved back to Louisiana with my boys, who were six and four. Then I got a medical assistant certificate. I taught at a vocational school and worked for a podiatrist. Later, after my daughter came, I realized I really needed to go back to school and do what my initial calling was, science.

PT: How did you do it?

HORTON: In 2000, I went back to LSU. In 2002, I graduated with a bachelor’s in electrical engineering. I had had this big dream that I would be an astronaut. But I found out at 18, the first time I went to college, that no, I couldn’t be an astronaut or pilot. I had planned to major in aeronautical engineering and then apply to NASA’s astronaut program, but when I went for my medical exam with the [US] Air Force I was disqualified because of my hearing impairment.

PT: Had you not known you had a hearing impairment?

HORTON: Technically, no. I was actually classified retarded in elementary school. I went through speech therapy for a couple of years, and the therapist recommended I be tested for the gifted program. My hearing loss is ‘cookie cutter,’ where my hearing at high and low frequencies is fine, but I don’t hear well in the speech range.

Anyway, when I went back to school, I got my books and tuition paid through what they call vocational rehabilitation. They also paid daycare. So between financial aid, student loans, and my scholarship from rehab, I went back to school.

PT: Were you able to support yourself and your kids on that?

HORTON: We lived very meagerly. The boys shared a bedroom, my daughter had a bedroom, and my bed was in the living room. We drew out of a hat once a month for our one big activity each month. And only one child did an extracurricular activity each year. That is how we functioned for two and a half years.

We were already poor and used to it, so I decided to continue in school and do my master’s in physics at Southern University [in Baton Rouge]. I did not complete the master’s.

PT: Why not?

HORTON: I came to Alabama one summer for a materials science program, and I met a professor who I ended up working with for a couple of years, who said, ‘You don’t have to have a master’s; you can just get a PhD.’ Before I left the program at the end of the summer, the University of Alabama had got me approved for a fellowship. I went back to finish my master’s first. But I actually got robbed, and my thesis was stolen. I was frustrated, and in December 2004 I moved to Alabama. My life changed completely.

PT: How did your life change?

HORTON: I got involved in international activities with women in physics. One day I was googling, and found something about the International Conference of Women in Physics. I wanted to go.

PT: In 2005, that would have been the second such conference sponsored by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), and held that year in Brazil. What was your next move?

HORTON: I contacted the US organizers; they said the team had already been formed. I pointed out that there were no African Americans on the team. I felt I would be a great representative for them—I was a nontraditional student, very mature. But they said no. So I contacted the conference organizers. I wanted to know if I could bring a minority team from the US. They said yes. The National Society of Black Physicists and my university supported me, and I put together a team of five African American and Hispanic women. Well, then Beverly Hartline [a leader for the US team] called me and said, ‘It looks bad for the US to have two teams.’ So we got together and merged the teams. That was my introduction into politics for women and in the international field.

I went to [South] Korea in 2008 as a US team leader. And in 2010 Beverly Hartline called me and asked if I would be interested in serving on IUPAP’s working group on women in physics. Without knowing what that entailed—helping plan the international conference [held this past April in South Africa]—I said yes.

PT: You have also been involved in outreach.

HORTON: I established a program called MINT Soup [MINT is short for ‘materials for information technology’]. We went out to several schools serving largely African American kids. I would have professors and students give talks and do demonstrations. We also started science clubs at the schools.

PT: How important is outreach to you?

HORTON: On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give it a 9.5. For kids coming from the African American community, if their parents are uneducated, a lot of the time they only know what the media shows them. I want them to know that there are other things than being an athlete or a rapper—those are things that are glorified on television. You can be a brilliant scientist who studies butterflies, if that’s what you want to do. It’s very important to me, especially for little black girls, that they know they have other options. They don’t have to be a nurse.

PT: All this time, you had also been working on your PhD. What was your research topic?

HORTON: NASA paid for six years of my graduate education. After my second summer internship, I went to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and said, ‘I would like to give back to NASA. Is there something you need to be solved?’ The guys in my group said, ‘We think we have a problem you can have.’ I had been working in nanomaterials. The NASA problem was on self-reacting stir welding. It became my dissertation.

PT: Tell me about self-reacting stir welding, what you did, and why it’s important.

HORTON: I went in and investigated the basic microstructure of materials that were welded together by the self-reacting stir welding process. It had been developed by NASA in 1991, but no one had detailed it. I used a three-dimensional image correlation system to look at tensile strength. I looked at strain and material failure. The significance is in knowing how a material will fail. What I showed is that whereas fractures usually occur on the retreating side of the weld, if there is a flaw on the advancing side, then the fracture would occur there. Even with cracks, you can say a machine is operable. My work helps to predict failure.

PT: So how do you manage so many activities in addition to your studies?

HORTON: I have a very strict schedule. And if something is not on the calendar, I don’t do it. My daughter moved in with my mom while I was writing my dissertation, and by then my two older boys had moved out. I got up at 6, had coffee, worked out, showered, and from 8 to 12 worked on my dissertation. After lunch, I kept writing. If I didn’t feel I had got enough done during the week, then I worked half a day on Saturday and then went out for a ride on my motorcycle. On Sunday, I would go to church and then be back at it [the dissertation] by 5 o’clock.

I am finishing revisions to the dissertation and collecting proceedings for IUPAP. IUPAP takes precedence now. On a normal day, I send out thank-yous for any submissions I receive, and I file them directly from my phone. Then I send out reminders [to people who have yet to send in their submissions]. Then I eat lunch. After lunch, I do whatever activity is scheduled for that day—right now that is filling out applications for jobs. From 4:30 to 6:30 I skype with my daughter and help her with homework.

PT: Do you identify more as a black physicist or as a woman physicist?

HORTON: I can walk into a room full of women, and nobody cares that I am a woman, but you know I am African American. If it’s a room full of men, they care that I am a woman. I have learned that if you fight for one, you are fighting for both. And I have found that being a person with a disability is a bigger challenge. Since you can’t see that I am hearing impaired, when I say I need accommodation, I get that look.

PT: What are your plans for the future?

HORTON: I want to stay in research. It could be industry or academia. I have an offer to be a postdoc in South Africa, but if I take that, it would be mostly for the international experience. I have been paid well as a NASA fellow, and it’s kind of hard to take a postdoc that pays less. But I love being a scientist. I love everything to do with it, even the struggles—like getting the degree—they have made me who I am. If I could somehow get into medical research, I would love that. I also have a passion for science policy.