Where are your plans for the future?
In the immediate future I am looking forward to fieldwork in Hungary. I have been fortunate to receive a couple of grants from the Archaeological Institute of America’s Ellen and Charles Steinmetz Endowment Fund for Archaeology and the Rust Family Foundation Archaeology Grant for summer archaeological research. I will spend almost three months in Hungary carrying out test excavations, analyzing ceramics and chipped stone tools, and collecting ceramic samples for stateside compositional analysis at the Field Museum. It will be a busy summer, but it also will be an adventure!

How did your Field Museum Women in Science Fellowship impact you?
The Women in Science Fellowship was instrumental in helping me to complete my dissertation. The support goes beyond financial and addresses a deeper social issue at hand. By having grants dedicated solely for women, it acknowledges the deficit of women in STEM fields and it celebrates and embraces the continual advancement of women in these fields. It was an honor to be selected for this fellowship, and I am grateful to the Women’s Board for providing me the opportunity to be able to pursue my passion for archaeology.

What advice would you give to women interested in pursuing an education or career in STEM fields?
My advice for women interested in pursuing an education or career in STEM fields can be summed up in four simple words, “Assist, Resist, Persist, Repeat!” Assist – When starting out you need to find mentors, friends, and colleagues who will be there to assist you in your endeavors. Surround yourself with people who will help you achieve your goals. Use these people as sounding boards for your ideas and be willing to take the critical feedback that they provide. Resist the nay-sayers. Some people may say you can’t have a career in STEM fields because of (insert ridiculous reason here), but you need to follow your dreams, not theirs. Others can be doubters, but resist the urge to doubt yourself. If need be, repeat Step 1 and surround yourself with those who will assist you. Persist – Even though the days of working and nights of studying can be long, the hours of sleep can be few, and the amount of rejection from granting institutions and publishers can be unfathomable, if you love what you do, it is all worth it. Celebrate the successes, learn from the failures, and always persist! Lastly, and this is probably the most important part of my advice, once you have made advances in your own field REPEAT this advice with other young women interested in STEM fields. Only by paying it forward through mentoring, encouraging, and assisting women will it be possible for us to advance in STEM fields.

What are you most looking forward to in the next year?
There are a lot of unknowns at the moment, so I am simply looking forward to seeing what the future holds. A grant? A tenure-track job? Teaching? Who knows! But whatever comes, I will be ready for it! I am so lucky that I love my field, and when you are passionate about what you do, the unknowns seem like small hurdles.

If you could be any animal in the world, what animal would you be and why?
This is a tough question and a question that I can honestly say no one has ever asked me before. I think if I could be any animal it would be a squirrel. Perhaps an odd choice, but squirrels are fast, agile, and smart animals. They are constantly in motion and work hard to hoard enough food for the winter. They also are fairly resilient and adaptable animals having managed to survive and, in some instances, thrive in areas populated by humans. And having lived as a human prior to this newfound squirrel life, I would have a leg up on all of the other squirrels by remembering to always look both ways before crossing the street.

Danielle Kosanovich & Kacee Kellum
FMWIS Alumni Relations Sub-committee