Michelle Seitz

I am halfway through a PhD in Materials Science at Northwestern University and I consider the literature courses I took at MIT to have been integral to my education as a scientist.  In graduate school a certain level of technological savvy is assumed, but the ability to tell a clear, concise, and compelling research story sets one apart.  At every school I visited, professors wanted to talk about my literature minor and my junior year studying at Cambridge University.  One professor offered me a spot in her lab based on my minor because she wanted students who could write grants and give compelling presentations.  The literature department wrestled with Cambridge University’s 800 year old bureaucracy so I could sit a literature paper and worked with me to fashion a minor out of courses taken at MIT, Cambridge, and Harvard.  I feel my literature minor was the perfect counter-point to my engineering degree and allowed me to leave MIT a happier, more rounded person.