UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #863
CZAJKOWSKI, CYNTHIA

CZAJKOWSKI, CYNTHIA  (1957-)
Professor of Physiology, UW School of Medicine and Public Health
At UW: 1994-

Interviewed: 	2007	
Interviewer: 	Sandy Pfahler
Length:	1 hour, 38 minutes

Abstract: Childhood and early education in New York City; family background; undergraduate study at New York University; Ph.D. training at State University of New York; postdoctoral position at Columbia; hiring by UW; research on GABA-A receptors and other areas; grant funding; teaching and mentoring graduate students;  culture for women in science at UW; service on campus and national committees; professional organizations and conferences; awards and honors; family and personal life.
							
First Interview Session (May 2, 2007): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:00:31	[Begin Tape 1/Side 1] Czajkowski was born in New York City in 1957.  She has two older sisters.  She attended catholic elementary schools.  She talks about her teachers in elementary school and her early interest in science. She talks about her parents and their encouragement of her to pursue an education. Her parents are first generation immigrants from Poland.  

00:05:04	CC attended an all-girls Catholic high school.  She talks about her high school education, which she believes was very good.  She talks about the experience of going to a same-sex school.  She was in Math Club and enjoyed science and math classes.  She was class valedictorian.

00:07:50	CC explains how she decided to attend New York University.  She won scholarships that helped pay for college.  She lived at home and commuted to school.

00:11:02	Czajkowski started taking pre-medicine courses at NYU as a biology and anthropology double major.  She talks about the transition from the girl’s high school to NYU.  She had an opportunity to start doing neuroscience research during her undergraduate years.  She talks about her research related to neuro-muscular junctions.

00:14:16	CC explains why she decided not to go on to medical school.  She talks about her mentor at NYU and her decision to apply for graduate school.  She was also teaching in a chemistry lab at an area high school at the time.

00:16:59	She went to Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, where she planned to continue her research in muscle proteins.  She talks about her laboratory research and interest in proteins.

00:19:15	CC talks about her graduate school experience.  She was able to conduct significant research and publish many papers.  She talks about the beginning of molecular biology and cloning research at the time.

00:21:22	She took a postdoctoral position at Columbia University.  She talks about how the postdoc experience helped shape her career.  She talks about different philosophies of postdoc training.

00:26:37	CC stayed at the lab as a postdoc and then as a scientist for several years.  She went through a divorce during her fourth year in this lab. She explains how being a scientist in a lab is different than being in an academic department.  She talks about her enjoyment of teaching and her desire to lead her own research lab.

00:31:08	She talks about applying for jobs as an assistant professor.  She had many interviews.  She talks about how she decided which job to take.  She liked that the UW felt very open and that the medical campus was connected to the rest of campus.

00:37:06	She talks about negotiating for her start up package and the support she got from the department when she came to campus.

00:40:24	CC talks about the collaborative nature of the department.  She turned down a job offer from Vanderbilt University.

00:42:33	She talks about the process of going through tenure.  Pressure to publish and obtain grants.  She talks about the focus of research for the tenure process.  She feels she received very good faculty mentoring and department support.  She said women in general have more trouble with time because they are asked to be on more committees, but her experience was that her time was well-protected. She talks about the help she got as a member of a group of female assistant professors who were new to UW at the same time. [End side 1; begin side 2] Czajkowski continues to talk about the help she got from the group of female professors regarding the tenure process.

00:47:16	CC talks about the funding for her research.  She has won many grants during her career.  She department helps identify funding sources.  Grant writing.  She is currently trying to put together a research project with Sepracor, a pharmaceutical company that makes Lunesta.

00:51:27	She talks about her research on GABA-A receptors.  She discusses how sleep aid drugs target these receptors in the brain to calm a person. So she studies how these medications bind with the GABA-A receptors.

00:57:41	She continues discussing research on the function of the GABA-A receptor. She explains a chemical “bridging” at the protein-receptor interface.  She describes research on the way that mutations affect the protein-receptor interaction and the relationship to epilepsy.

01:01:50	Czajkowski discusses other recent advances in her field.  She says that human genome mapping is really pushing the field to the next level.  She points out that scientists still have little idea of how the brain actually works.

01:07:38	She outlines her teaching activities at UW.  She mostly directs a graduate level course on cell molecular neuroscience.   She also teaches a course in the Department of Pharmacology and sessions in the first year physiology class in the School of Medicine.  She also oversees some undergraduate senior thesis projects.
											
01:09:51	She talks about training graduate students and postdocs.  Teaching writing skills to graduate students is hard for her.

01:14:39	CC discusses the differences between training graduate students and postdocs.

01:16:01	She outlines some of her activities on campus committees.  Graduate Research Committee and decisions about funding grant applications.  She talks about serving on national committees, including work with the National Institutes of Health.  Faculty search committees.  Medical Education Research Council.  Other positions.

01:21:38	Czajkowski talks about the climate for women scientists in the medical school.  She feels that there are significant problems in some places on campus, but not really in her department.  She talks about the problem of recruiting female scientists. Part of this is decreasing funding for research and the difficulty of making a career in science.  

01:27:06	CC lists some of the professional organizations that she belongs to.  She attends academic and research conferences.  She feels that these organizations are important to scientists’ careers.  

01:29:26	She lists several awards and honors that she has won.  

01:30:55	CC talks about her family and her personal life.  She has a young daughter.  She talks about the problem of balancing work and family. [End tape 1; begin tape 2] Cynthia Czajkowski continues to talk about the difficulty of balancing family and work.  She believes that having a child during the tenure process would be very difficult.  

01:36:37	She talks about her parents and sisters.

01:38:30	End of First Interview Session

End of Interview #863