 Kathleen Kirsch
Member of Technical Staff
Lucent Technologies
Murray Hill, NJ
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 B.S. -
Electrical Engineering, MIT
M.S. -
Electrical Engineering, MIT
Ph.D. -
Electrical Engineering, MIT |
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Member of the
technical staff, doing research on integrated circuit and device
technology and working closely with other electrical engineers,
material scientists, chemists, and physicists. |
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"There is absolutely
no question that in my field, integrated circuits and silicon
technology, you do need a Ph.D." |
 
"I guess the environment here is extremely team oriented and I think a lot
of that's because we do the integrated circuit work which, by nature,
requires teams. It's not just something a person would do by themselves.
There's the saying, I stand on the shoulders of giants and that's really
what you have to do in integrated circuit processing. It just takes so
many things to have to work together to have anything work."
"If you really want to go to graduate school, you do it because you want
to go. And, if you just convince yourself, `Well, I'm going to get my
Ph.D. so I can make lots of money,' that's just a terrible reason, and
you're probably not going to get through because it's a lot of work. It's
really a lot of work. And you have to be really committed to it
personally. But if you are committed to it personally, you don't have to
have any other reason. You don't have to explain to someone why you are
doing it. If it's something that you truly want to do."
Kathleen Kirsch of Lucent Technologies is often asked what it is like to
be a woman in engineering. For her, gender has never been a problem. "I
didn't ever find that I was being penalized in any way for being a woman
or treated differently, so it was a really friendly environment for me [at
MIT], and Lucent is the same way. There are a fair number of women who
work around here, so you don't feel isolated." She realizes that her
experience is not universal for female engineers and recommends that women
examine the employer they are considering to see how many women work there
and if it is really receptive to diversity.
Education has played a more significant role than gender in determining
the nature of the work Kirsch does. She works in research and development
and says, "There is absolutely no question that in my field, integrated
circuits and silicon technology, you do need a Ph.D. It's a huge field. If
you want to work in manufacturing, a Master's degree is sufficient
possibly a Bachelor's degree. But it's a very challenging field to work in
a lab. In a clean room, you really need to know a lot about a lot of
different disciplines." Furthermore, a Ph.D. "makes people a lot more
attractive to the companies."
But how does one decide whether to go to graduate school or not? "If you
really want to go to graduate school, you do it because you want to go.
And, if you just convince yourself, `Well, I'm going to get my Ph.D. so I
can make lots of money,' that's just a terrible reason, and you're
probably not going to get through because it's a lot of work. It's really
a lot of work. And you have to be really committed to it personally. But
if you are committed to it personally, you don't have to have any other
reason. You don't have to explain to someone why you are doing it. If it's
something that you truly want to do."
Kirsch strongly recommends, if at all possible, that engineers concentrate
on their studies and get the "whole campus experience" rather than trying
to get a Ph.D. while working. She discovered that some of the most
valuable aspects of graduate school were not the ones she had expected.
"You don't imagine how important [your fellow students] will be. They're
going through school at the same time as you but you learn so much from
them, and the interactions between you and the other students are really
one of the greatest parts of going to school. You learn together and you
kind of bring each other up as you're learning, and then you leave and it
turns out these people turn into your colleagues." Those strong,
supportive, intellectual relationships have no substitute.
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