Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 3 No. 1 Spring 2018 | Page 35

thinking to solve engineering problems and we made a good team,” Acar said. “Choosing an advisor is the most important decision for your PhD and this is true for all students. The advisor should be understanding if you’re coming from a different background with different experiences, and you need time to get used to a new environment. I was lucky in that sense since Veera was very supportive. Everyone who is accepted to a PhD program has amazing capabilities but needs some time and encouragement to be able to show their capacity. Being an advisor shouldn’t be like managing a compa- ny, it should be approached in a more humane way. An advisor should understand all these and be careful about what they are saying, doing, and suggesting. The advisor should be sup- portive, and should always acknowledge the student’s accomplishments. Maybe this is more important for women candidates, because I think they suffer the most from both conscious and unconscious biases.” Since earning her PhD in 2017 and arriving at Virginia Tech, Acar has paid close attention to her students and sees some important cultural differences between female students in Turkey and the United States. “Encouragement is very important,” she said. “Because we believed in female students’ capacity in Turkey, women were more confident to pursue their ideas. Here I see conditions make some women hesitate to go ahead. I believe everyone has some amazing capability, and everyone has the ability to think of something that others cannot even dream of. This is so important and women need to believe this and believe in themselves. “Unfortunately there will be a lot of issues, biases –and it’s not realistic to say that they shouldn’t care. But they should be confident and believe that they can accomplish great things – because they can really do. Believe in yourself. Every day, in every stage of life, there are things that are going on in a way that I wouldn’t prefer experiencing as a woman researcher – but this doesn’t demoralize me because I know I can accomplish more. And our female students need to know this. De- spite all the difficulties they have to encounter, they can always accomplish more.” MOMENTUM SPRING 2018 PAGE 35 Acar, after a successful PhD dissertation defense at the University of Michigan, 2017.