Episode 10: The Model Minority Academic with Dr. Kay Tye Artwork

Brain Matter Chatter (BMC)

Welcome to Brain Matter Chatter (BMC), the #AcademicMentalHealth podcast. Our mission is to raise awareness about issues surrounding mental health in Academia. As graduate students, at various stages, studying neuroscience, our hosts bring a unique experiential and scientific perspective to discussions on mental health and illness. To provide a holistic picture of mental health in academia, we aim to bring a diverse set of guests to BMC. Some of our episodes will serve to highlight the experiences of current graduate students. Others will invoke perspectives from our very own faculty advisors, mental health experts, and special guests who will add professional insights to the discussions. Conversations surrounding mental health can be difficult. With this podcast, we hope to make the conversations easier and more accessible. A podcast platform is personal, on-demand, and varies in degree of engagement; listeners can choose when and where they listen, suggest topics that they want to hear discussed, and even appear on episodes as guests. One episode at a time, we hope to begin planting the seeds for change. There isn’t a single, simple solution to the on-going state of mental health in academia. Cultivating a platform for open conversations about #AcademicMentalHealth is the first step.

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Brain Matter Chatter (BMC)

Episode 10: The Model Minority Academic with Dr. Kay Tye

December 14, 2021 • Ruby, Olivia, Julia, Niveen & Hayley - A SONGS (society of neuroscience graduate students) Production • Season 1 • Episode 10

TW: sexual harassment, power dynamics, trauma

There is an old joke amongst Eastern Asian immigrants: If we bring home a test score of 99, our dads will ask: where’s the other point? Due to various myths, stereotypes, and barriers, including the model minority myth and the bamboo ceiling, navigating the academic world, especially in STEM, with an Eastern Asian identity can sometimes feel complicated.

In this episode, Dr. Kay Tye (@kaymtye), a neuroscientist and professor at UC San Diego, joins Kyla Lee (@kylaaalee) and Olivia Ghosh-Swaby (@ogoshhsw) in a conversation discussing the unique experience of being Eastern Asian in academia.

Dr. Tye and Kyla talk about the stereotypes that apply to them as people of Asian descent, from their perceived personalities to their expected aptitudes in STEM fields, and share how they navigated (and still do!) the complicated paradoxical melting pot that is their identities, straddling the line between belonging and “forever foreigner.”