A chat with Susanne Tranguch, MBA, PhD, Associate Dean of Research Training and Communications at NYU

Written and Interviewed By: Tenny Mudianto

Chatting with Susanne Tranguch, MBA, PhD, Associate Dean of Research Training & Communications at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Dr. Tranguch spent time as an academic editor of several review journals including Trends in Neuroscience, Trends in Immunology, and Trends in Molecular Medicine before finding her way into academic leadership. Here she discusses her career path, challenges she faces, and her advice for students. Interviewed by Tenny Mudianto, a third year graduate student in the lab of Amanda Lund at NYU.

For scientists and trainees outside of the NYU Langone community, do you mind telling us about your current roles and responsibilities as an associate dean at NYU Grossman School of Medicine?

I have two roles as an associate dean. In the first role, I work with Dr. Naoko Tanese (the Associate Dean for Biomedical Sciences and the Director of the Vilcek Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences) to oversee the graduate programs (including the PhD, MD/PhD, and master’s program) at the Vilcek Institute. In my role there, I mostly work in operations, student admissions, recruitment, alumni engagement, and work with Dr. Tanese on various initiatives. In my other role, I am responsible for research communications within the Office of Science and Research. My team and I are responsible for managing communications to and about our research community, such as our internal and external websites, maintaining all our listservs, developing newsletters and content for the websites, and overseeing our research training team.

Would you mind telling us also about your career journey that led you to your current position?

I received my PhD at Vanderbilt University in Nashville in 2008. As the only native English speaker in my entire division, I did a lot of editing for papers that came out from the lab. Not only editing the writing and grammar, but also editing the content and figures of the paper to tell the story in an ideal way. That’s how I started to like editing. While finishing my PhD, I had debated whether to do a post-doc or not. My PI was moving to Cincinnati at that time, so I decided to do a post-doc in the same lab for a little while and began helping the lab move, but in the meantime applied for editing positions. I got an interview invite for an editor position at Cell Press in Boston. When I interviewed, they told me that they just acquired the Trends journals, which were reviews journals, and were looking for someone to replace the academic editor of one of them. That position was very appealing to me because I would be in charge of an entire journal, responsible for branding and giving it a new look and revamping the editorial board. During my PhD, I did a lot of different projects. I focused on progesterone signaling in pregnancy, but I was also involved in ovarian and endometrial cancer projects. Typically, post-doc experience is required for editorial positions, but because of the different experiences in my PhD, I think they felt like my breath of knowledge was enough and offered me the position. Looking back, that seems to be a theme of my work - I really like building things.

As an editor of a reviews journal, you have to come up with the content, look at what primary articles are coming out, and choose areas that would be good to review. As time passed in this role and without doing benchwork, I started to feel like I was not in the mix anymore, and after a few years, I felt that coming up with reviews topics wasn’t as fulfilling as a career. One of the things I liked doing as an editor was lab visits, where we would visit different institutions and talk to PIs to see what they were working on. While visiting their labs, a lot of them would say that they would like to have an editor in house to look over their papers and grants. At that time, I was dating my now-husband who was finishing his residency in NYC. I wanted to move to NYC and I thought, maybe I could set up an editing service at a university for faculty. So, I pitched the idea to the people at NYU Langone, and was hired as a grants editor in 2011.

As a grants editor, I also began focusing on developing research mission programs to help meet any needs of the faculty. I also decided to get my part-time MBA at Stern. During my MBA, I concentrated in economics and leadership & change management. As a graduate student or even an editor, I never paid attention to profit margin, revenues, or operations that much. However, after getting an MBA and working at a larger institution, I became interested in operations. Around the same time, as Dr. Tanese took over as the dean of the graduate school and director of the Vilcek Institute, there was a position under her to help manage the staff and oversee the academic programs. With Dr. Tanese’s and Dr. Bar-Sagi’s support, I started working with Dr. Tanese and eventually got promoted to a faculty position as an assistant dean. More recently, I became the associate dean for research training and communications, which is my current role.

Were there any challenges in your job as an editor or associate dean and how did you overcome them?

When I was an editor, the amount of reading was definitely a challenge. Not only reading the submissions that needed content editing, but also the need to keep up with reading scientific literature for my own knowledge. Networking was also a challenge for me. As an editor, you have to be able to walk into a group of people and join their conversations, introduce yourself to scientists, etc. With my personality being somewhat introverted, this was a challenge. I would just do it, since it was a requirement by trying to be more confident and not let my worry show or bother me. In my current position as an associate dean, managing my time between the different roles I have at work as well as between my work and personal time has been quite a challenge. I have two children who are still very young, and even though they are in daycare, when I am at work, I feel guilty that I am not with them, and when I am home with them, I feel like I should be working more. One thing that has helped me is that I started running again. Running gives me alone time to think about work or personal life and is often when I think of new ideas for work or plan things out for my family. I am also thankful that I have had supportive bosses here, which makes my job much more enjoyable. They always let me try new ideas and launch new initiatives. I enjoy being creative, and the people I work with at NYU Langone have been very supportive of that.

What skills and personal attributes do you think are important for your success in becoming an editor and now associate dean?

I am a very hard worker. I have been very diligent, focused, and always wanted to do a good job. Attention to detail, taking responsibility, and pride in your work are the things that I value. What I try to do now as a manager is to make people feel ownership of their work. One of the ways that I learned from Dr. Tanese is to always say “thank you” to my staff and give recognition. For example, if my staff do something good, I let my bosses know. Also, I think it is important to find people who can help and support you. People who can not only be your friends but who also push you when needed.

Another thing that I learned is that if you want a promotion or a raise or more responsibility, you have to ask for it. I am a little bit more reserved personality-wise, and it is very difficult for me, but because I really pushed for it, that’s when I became an assistant dean. You are your greatest advocate, so learning how to ask for what you need and making your case is an important piece.

Do you have advice for current graduate students who are still deciding on which career path to pursue after completing their PhD in biology?

I always tell people to find what they like to do and keep doing more of that because one, you’ll be good at it, and two, you’ll like it, and it will eventually lead you somewhere. When I look back at my career, that’s what I was doing without knowing it. I started my job as an editor because I like editing, and I took the opportunity at the Vilcek Institute because it was appealing to me to see and organize how the graduate program runs. Another thing is that I never really thought about what I wanted to do in the next 5 years-it is overwhelming to think so far in advance. I have mini-goals and projects that I want to do this time or next year, but I think it is very difficult to think about what you want to do long-term. Things just sort of happened that way for me. I chose my master’s program because I like science, but I chose the PI I wanted to work with because she works with animals. That’s really not a good reason to pick a master’s program lab, but that was something that I felt so strongly about- that I wanted to work with animals. There is no prescription on what to do with your life. So, be honest with yourself, trust your gut, and make decisions that make you happy every day. I tell that to my staff all the time. There are some things in your job that you are not going to like doing, but if they really dislike doing something in their role, I’ll find someone else to do it, or I’ll do it myself. Because in the end, they are not going to do a good job if they don’t enjoy what they are doing. It’s hard to work on something that you are not passionate about. You have only one shot in this life, so you just have to go for it.