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.