Carlise R. Bethel, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Johns Hopkins University
Department of Pathology

Greetings and Happy New Year! My name is Dr. Carlise Renee Bethel and I am currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Pathology Department. I work with Dr. Angelo De Marzo, focusing on mouse models of prostate cancer. As for my background and where I’m from, I graduated from Oxon Hill High School in Prince George’s County, Maryland. I attended University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) as a Meyerhoff Scholar and majored in Biology. I received my Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology at UMBC in 2006. My research focused on Nkx3.1, a homeobox gene involved in prostate development and cancer progression. My proudest accomplishments are getting married and having two children during graduate school. Of course, there’s more to me than those last few sentences. I just enjoy summarizing the last 14 years of my life that way!

Like most Ph.D.s, I have loved science from an early age. I got a microscope for Christmas when I was in the 5th grade and I had several chemistry sets. Science fairs were always the best, and I learned early how to work under pressure, almost always working on my project up until the last minute. I’m a procrastinator, but I prefer the excuse that the inspiration and creative visions do not arrive before the time is right. These days, I wonder when I will give my kids their first chemistry set and whether their science teachers in high school will have a Ph.D. I love my kids, and the science of reproduction was never cooler until I became pregnant. It certainly fueled my love of developmental biology! My husband Damien and I have been married 7 years, and we have two brilliant children. Our daughter, Chloe, is a first grader, while our son, Quinn, is in kindergarten. Finishing graduate school was a slightly bigger challenge with kids. Just slightly! And after it was over, I looked at my thesis and told my kids, “You helped Mommy write this.” Even though they won’t understand a word of it until they’re 10 (they are forced to attend weekly seminars in our basement), it was great to share the early parts of the journey with them.

Having a family during my research training has taught me about balance and I’ve never felt I had to choose one over the other. I can do it all, and have fun along the way. I must say, having all of these things on my plate makes every day eventful. Sometimes it’s a bit much, but you have to be flexible. Flexibility is the key. I have to applaud my super-duper husband who is a tremendous help and always so supportive. He never lets me quit and he runs the house when I have to finish experiments, write, or leave for a conference. He’s even sat through several of my presentations. If I need a break or just need to do nothing for a few hours, he understands completely. We continue to hand off duties and switch roles when necessary, and this truly makes everything a team effort. In the midst of it all, we definitely make fun a priority. With a 5- and 6-year old, there’s always something to laugh about and lots of activities to enjoy.

As a postdoc, I’m a little better at the balancing act. You still never know what’s around the corner and you appreciate the weeks or occasional months, when the kids don’t have colds or doctor’s appointments. Now that our children have started school, we have to make time for their homework, as well as ours. We’re the house that never stops studying! They’re used to research papers stacked in the kitchen when I’m writing. I have to say that my busy schedule requires even more productivity and focus in the lab on a daily basis. I have goals and objectives that I try to meet each week. On the days that I can come in early or stay late, I have to utilize my time wisely. With animal research, it requires extra hours to maintain colonies and oversee the general well-being of each animal. Occasionally, I have to come in on the weekends to set things up for the following week. When dealing with transgenic lines, it is necessary to breed and screen large numbers of animals for the desired genotype. This requires time and careful attention to detail. Imagine you may have to trim a newborn’s fingernails (usually, babies do not keep still for this task) or you must tend to a scrape on the knee of a screaming four-year-old. These tasks also require time, focus, and careful attention to detail.

My days have included the full range of these tasks and I’m not sure how I get through some of them without losing a small piece of my sanity. Perhaps it is my approach to the randomness of life. It comes at you fast and you have to be flexible. Assess the situation and keep moving forward. Case in point: Chloe woke up one morning and said her throat hurt. She ate breakfast, drank some juice, and her throat magically felt better. I checked her throat; it looked normal. I dropped them off at school and headed off to work. All morning, I was prepared for a call from the school. No one called. Would I escape some random sore throat sickness? I was performing calculations for a second round of PCR in the early afternoon, and I spoke of how I expected a call, but had heard nothing from the school. Within minutes, I was informed of a message from the school nurse. My daughter had been complaining about her stomach and she had a headache, but it was not an emergency. I’d rather be safe than sorry, so I left the lab. Luckily, I hadn’t started the experiment yet. I called my husband to alert him, and picked up the kids. When my husband got home that evening, Chloe was feeling great (so great that she was roller skating in the kitchen) and I headed back to the lab to set up one of the largest experiments I’ve done in awhile. You only live once.

Over the holidays, the kids were out for a two-week winter vacation. The day after Christmas, we packed up and headed to Disney World in Orlando, Florida for a week. Of course, this requires a master packing list complete with color code for everything actually getting placed in the suitcase (I have the tendency to over-plan and over-pack). Our group included the great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and a few cousins. We spent most of our time at the Magic Kingdom. Chloe got her face painted twice and Quinn enjoyed driving the race cars. It was an awesome trip, and I am working on arranging my stay in the Magic Castle for my birthday. We needed a family vacation, and we came back refreshed for the new year. I suppose the kids were tired of hanging out with us for two weeks. At the end of our trip, they had no problem expressing how excited they were to get back to school over and over again. I must say, it’s nice to be back in a routine of sorts.