2005 alum in doctoral program says Notre Dame helped critical-thinking skills and pushed students to go beyond potential.
After finishing her second year at the University of Michigan in 2007, Notre Dame alum Kaitlin (Dye) Dickinson figured she was heading for a long and satisfying career as a medical doctor. In fact, she always referred to her academic track back then as “pre-med.”
However, after two extremely rewarding undergraduate research experiences, she started to think more seriously about going to graduate school rather than med school.
“Instead of applying to medical school as planned, I decided to pursue a Master of Science degree at Texas Tech University’s Health Sciences Center,” said Dickinson, a 2005 graduate of Notre Dame Prep. “This particular program’s curriculum consisted of classes that were similar to those offered in medical school, but they also had a major research component, which required me to join a lab full time during the second year of the program.”
She realized after landing a couple of research positions as a biology major at Michigan, that while she was still very passionate about medicine, the thing that really excited her was trying to find answers to “questions without any answers.” And research seemed the perfect fit for such an interest.
“My first research position in college was at the Kellogg Eye Center in Ann Arbor during my freshman year at U-M, where I researched mechanisms regulating cataract formation due to diabetes,” Dickinson said. “The second position was at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit from my sophomore year until the summer after my senior year. At Henry Ford, I participated in pre-clinical trial testing of novel drugs and devices aimed at treating chronic and acute heart failure.”
So after graduating from Texas Tech in 2011 with her MS in biomedical sciences that also came with a focus on biotechnology, she joined the University of Wisconsin’s Ph.D. program in genetics. She’s currently working her way through a fifth year in the program with plans to graduate in a year.
(Dickinson discusses her current University of Wisconsin thesis research below.)
While certainly a lot of work, Dickinson’s college career thus far, she acknowledges, has been a bit easier for her due to the four years she spent at Notre Dame, which ended with her earning a four-year, full scholarship to U-M.
Notre Dame science teacher Jocelynn Yaroch instilled in Kaitlin Dickinson a great deal of confidence in her own abilities as a budding scientist and helped her to realize a passion for science very early on.
She said the curriculum was not the only thing at Notre Dame from which she benefited.
“I had some really amazing teachers and mentors at NDP as well,” she said. “People who not only taught the material, but who mentored us on how to think critically and to push ourselves to surpass what we thought our potential was. Many of my teachers at NDP took creative approaches to teaching, encouraging me to do much more than just memorize the material that was being taught. I also feel that my peers at NDP fostered an environment of healthy competition. I went to school with so many bright individuals, many who are now achieving amazing things as adults. Being surrounded by such people no doubt helped me push myself even harder to reach my highest potential.”
Teachers, mentors and mom
When asked about specific teachers at Notre Dame who may have had an especially important influence on her, Dickinson does not hesitate.
“I have so many great memories of teachers at NDP; so many that it’s hard to pick just one or two because many of them shaped who I am in different ways,” she said. “However, Mrs. Yaroch, for example, was an incredible AP biology teacher. She always pushed me to my intellectual limits and in doing so instilled me with a great deal of confidence in my own abilities as a budding scientist and helped me to realize my passion for science very early on. That confidence has been critical to my success so far in graduate school.”
Notre Dame athletic director and coach Betty Wroubel also had a profound influence on Dickinson in high school.
“Although history was admittedly not my favorite subject, Mr. Cannon always found ways to make the class engaging and interesting. He always took time during and outside of class to talk to me about anything I was interested in, and encouraged me to think deeply about my views and opinions on many aspects of life. And, although Betty Wroubel technically was my coach (volleyball and softball), I have to say she was one of the most influential teachers I have ever had.
“I specifically remember feeling down after a particularly intense practice,” Dickinson recalled. “I will never forget that Coach Wroubel told me that the day she stops yelling and pushing me is the day she has given up on me, and ‘that’ is when I should feel down. That concept has never left me. In graduate school, you face more criticism and failure than you do praise and success, and this can become very discouraging. But what Ms. Wroubel said to me is always in the back of my mind. When people say I can do better, challenge me or criticize me, I know they are doing it because ultimately they believe in me. The point of graduate school is to be pushed to your limits, and the day my mentors stop pushing me is the day I have to worry.”
“Even though I kind of always knew I would go to college, my mom was always there in the background encouraging me to pursue my education to even greater levels,” she said. “Being at NDP also really planted the idea that college was a given: going to college was what we had spent those four years preparing to do. So I am very lucky that I have an incredibly supportive mother and that from my time at NDP until today, I have been honored that many of my superiors have mentored me and encouraged me to pursue my passions, even when things get really tough.”
Failure helps make a career
Dickinson said the hardest thing about graduate school so far has been the failures. “Graduate school is not for everyone,” she said, “as failure is about 98 percent of our career. We actually live and yearn for that 2-percent success rate to keep us going. I think that my personal confidence in my abilities — and the wherewithal to not take those failures personally — has made me successful in my college career thus far. And a lot of this started at NDP and was fostered by a multitude of excellent teachers and mentors along the way. I am also truly passionate about science — you have to be to wait for that 2-percent chance of success!
Even though there are days when she feels like nothing is working, or her data doesn’t make sense, she “could not imagine a career without science!”
What Dickinson says about her current research project at the University of Wisconsin:
“I am conducting my thesis research using Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies) as a model organism to understand the pathways and brain regions that regulate nighttime sleep. Although they are just pesky bugs to most people, the (relatively) simple brain and genome of the fruit fly allows us to ask very complicated questions because of the vast array of genetic tools that are not available in mammals. I became interested in the regulation of nighttime sleep because many patients with etiologically distinct neurodegenerative diseases (such as Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease) exhibit poor nighttime sleep quality, as does the normal aging population.
“Poor nighttime sleep quality is hypothesized to be an early symptom of neurodegenerative diseases, as it appears much earlier in life than the onset of symptoms used to diagnose these diseases. However, it is not known if difficulties with nighttime sleep are directly contributing to the progression of the disease, or a side effect of the disease, or even potentially causing the ‘classical’ symptoms of the disease and aging process such as memory loss. We call this difficulty sleeping ‘nighttime sleep fragmentation’ because normally a person, or fruit fly, will only wake up a few times, if at all, during the course of nighttime sleep. When sleep is fragmented, the individual is waking up and falling back to sleep frequently over the course of the night, disrupting their normal sleep cycle. I hope that by understanding the genes and molecular pathways that control nighttime sleep, we can gain a better understanding of the role that fragmented nighttime sleep plays in both the normal aging process and the progression of neurodegenerative diseases. Ultimately, it would be incredible to know if the pathway I have identified — or even sleep therapy — might be viable targets for treatment of a wide range of neurodegenerative diseases and age-related memory problems.”
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About Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy
Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy is a private, Catholic, independent, coeducational day school located in Oakland County. The school's upper division enrolls students in grades nine through twelve and has been named one of the nation's best 50 Catholic high schools (Acton Institute) four times since 2005. Notre Dame's middle and lower divisions enroll students in jr. kindergarten through grade eight. All three divisions are International Baccalaureate "World Schools." The Marist Fathers and Brothers sponsor NDPMA's Catholic identity and manages its educational program. Notre Dame is accredited by the National Association of Independent Schools, the Independent Schools Association of the Central States and the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement. For more on Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy, visit the school's home page at www.ndpma.org.