Advancing Public Health: How Endia Crabtree Paved Her Path in Graduate Education

The Value of Graduate Education: A Stepping Stone for Career Development

In a recent episode of Victors in Grad School, Dr. Christopher Lewis interviewed Endia Crabtree, an accomplished professional with a background in anthropology, public health education, and medical writing. Throughout the discussion, Crabtree emphasized how graduate education enriched her skills and positioned her for career opportunities. Her journey exemplifies how graduate programs provide more than just theoretical knowledge—they shape individuals into problem-solvers and leaders prepared to tackle real-world challenges. For Crabtree, graduate school was not only an academic pursuit but also an avenue to discover and act on her passions, from studying forensic anthropology to addressing public health disparities.

Finding Passion and Purpose

Crabtree’s educational path began with a fascination for forensic anthropology, inspired by her undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan Flint. Eventually, her curiosity shifted toward understanding health outcomes across cultures, sparking a passion for public health. Graduate school became the launching pad for her decision to pursue research and interventions focusing on populations affected by diseases such as cancer and HIV, particularly within underserved communities. For Crabtree, discovering a population-driven focus helped her align her professional goals with deeply personal motivations, such as her family’s experience with cancer.

Leveraging Networking and Professional Organizations

A recurring theme in Crabtree’s journey was the importance of proactively building relationships and engaging with professional organizations. From her undergraduate days to her postdoctoral fellowships, her active involvement in groups like the American Public Health Association and MedTech Women enabled her to network, share knowledge, and collaborate across diverse fields. These connections opened doors to opportunities and exposed her to cross-functional teamwork. Aspiring graduate students can replicate her success by joining such communities, contributing to their efforts, and gaining valuable leadership experience.

The Grad School Toolbox: Collaboration, Accountability, and Adaptability

One of Crabtree’s key takeaways from graduate education was learning to collaborate effectively—a skill she still utilizes daily in her current role as principal clinical product risk scientist at Boston Scientific. Group projects, though sometimes challenging, taught her the importance of accountability, shared goals, and strategic planning. She noted that these experiences prepared her for cross-functional teamwork in global settings.

Advice for Aspiring Graduate Students

Crabtree’s journey underscores the importance of entering graduate school with intention and an openness to pivot. Her advice to students? View classmates as allies, not competitors, and prioritize building supportive relationships. Whether through group projects or networking events, working collaboratively can lead to lasting friendships, resource sharing, and professional growth.

Endia Crabtree’s inspiring journey serves as a testament to the transformative potential of graduate education, emphasizing the value of perseverance, collaboration, and a passion for lifelong learning.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the victors in grad school, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]:
Welcome back to victors in grad school. I'm your host, Doctor. Christopher Lewis, director of graduate programs at the University of Michigan Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, every week, we have a great opportunity to be able to connect and to be able to walk hand in hand together on this journey that you're on to get that graduate degree. Now you could be at the very beginning working to try to figure out, do I really wanna do this? Do I wanna get that graduate degree? Or maybe you're in a program and you're currently in there trying to figure out, okay, what do I need to do next? Or maybe that light at the end of the tunnel is getting closer and you're getting ready to graduate. No matter where you are, there are things that you can do to find success in this journey that you're on, and that's why this podcast exists. Every week, I love being able to talk to you about different resources, different skills, different things that you can do to be able to find success in the journey that you're on.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:12]:
And we do that through introducing you to other people, people that have gone before you, have gone and gotten degrees or are currently in degrees and have had an opportunity to be able to find success for themselves. This week, we got another great guest with us today. Endia Kramtree is well, doctor Endia Kramtree is with us today, and Endia is the principal clinical product risk scientist at Boston Scientific. And I'm really excited to be able to talk to her and to have her share some of her journey with us in Endia. Thanks so much for being here today.

Endia Crabtree [00:01:48]:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited about this. I love you, Evelyn Flynn. It's my first stomping ground.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:56]:
Well, I'm really excited to have you here today and to learn more about this journey that you've been on because you've had a bit of a journey where you've gotten numerous degrees and different steps to where you are today. I wanna start off our conversation by turning the clock back in time. I wanna go back to that undergraduate work that you were doing. I know you got a bachelor of arts in anthropology, but you also had a concentration in medical anthropology. And then at some point in that undergraduate degree, you made a decision to move on and get a master's degree. What made you choose to continue your education and get that graduate degree?

Endia Crabtree [00:02:32]:
1st, I was interested in forensic anthropology, and I initially majored in biology because biology is the foundation of forensic anthropology. You're trying to understand the underlying causes of death or mortality for people whose remains it could have been discovered several months or years ago to centuries ago. And it was just really fascinating to me to learn about a person's life, what they've been through, any health ailments that they may have had. And as you need biology to know how to do that, you need biology, you need chemistry, you need all of these, what they like to call the big life sciences to understand that. And when I first started off as a freshman, actually before I switched over to major in anthropology, I took a biology class. It was organismal biology. 1st class as a freshman, 2005. And I walk in there, and there's over 200 students, which at the University of Michigan Flint campus, I did not expect.

Endia Crabtree [00:03:38]:
And it was a difficult class, but it was a good class. I did learn a lot. But after taking that class and went into my 2nd semester, I took cultural anthropology, and I also took a an archaeology class, and that is actually what introduced me to anthropology itself. So even though I've heard of forensic anthropology, I did not know about the anthropology part about the about anthropology. I just thought of it as, you know, another science. And at that time, in 2005, CSI and all of those programs were huge for that time. That was a big deal. So myself among and other people were really interested in taking that path, but I specifically it was myself and only myself who was doing forensics.

Endia Crabtree [00:04:25]:
So, anyway, to back up a little bit, I switched out of biology and decided to major in anthropology because, a, I connected with the professors immediately. I liked my classmates more. The classes were smaller. And and it which is part of why I went to University of Michigan Flint. I've always loved Michigan. I live and breathe, bleed blue all day, but I needed to do it in a smaller space. It's on a smaller campus. But with that said, at being at University of Michigan Flint versus at Narber, you do have smaller labs.

Endia Crabtree [00:04:57]:
You will have less people to interact with for something as niche as forensic anthropology. So, anyway, to fast forward, I'd say going on to my senior year, I've taken by my senior year, of course, I've taken pretty much every class in my major. I even did archaeology field school at one point, which was really cool, and that actually introduced me to paleontology. And I also love that, but there was something about studying and working with people who are deceased that over time became it was sad and it was dark in the lab. It was a little boring. You know, I just didn't enjoy it as much even though I did love my professor who was doctor Beverly Smith. I learned over time that it just wasn't for me. I was like, well, maybe I I love anthropology, but maybe I should think about how can I contribute to this world by helping people who are alive? And so medical anthropology, my senior year, and it was there that I actually got exposed to public health and exposed to health, health outcomes, wellness, the understanding of what health is, how is it how it's defined, what wellness means from a cross cultural perspective, from perspective outside of the United States, so outside of a permiritricism, outside of US and western thoughts, that really blew my mind.

Endia Crabtree [00:06:19]:
I could not believe that there was a concentration, a profession, a pathway that even exposes you to health and the meaning of that across cultures. And so I took that class. I learned about Eastern medicine. I learned about medicine in pretty much every continent, and it was there that I decided that, public health, this is what I want to do. This is where I need to be. I am passionate about health and helping people. And at the time, University of Michigan Flint offered, MS in health education. And my senior year of undergrad, I actually took the first grad course, which was health behavior theory or something along those lines.

Endia Crabtree [00:07:06]:
It may have a different name by now, but health behavior theory with doctor Shan Parker. And I was given the opportunity to take that course, which is the first course in the program to see how I would do before I was granted full enrollment. It was extremely difficult, but I loved it. I learned so much. That was a huge pivot from the way that I had to think to the way that I had to write. And I went from more of a qualitative thinker to a quantitative thinker, and the rest is history. And it was also there that I learned that I need to pick a population, which for me at the time was HIV and STI among black or African Americans and other minorities. Just trying to understand the impact of that disease from both a knowledge standpoint.

Endia Crabtree [00:07:54]:
So what do people already know about this? What is the understanding of transmission and treatment and the long term effects of that? And I chose that disease ailment at the time because that is what my adviser was working on. And so and so that's why I decided to go into that program. I did the MS in health education or public health education as I like to put it. I like to put the public health in there instead of just leaving it as health education is often confused with gym teacher, which is an honorable pathway and profession, but it is often confused. So saying public health education over just health education was better understood by the public when I talk to people about it.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:34]:
So I know that you completed that degree, You finished that program up. You went. You did some work out in the field. You you did a number of different things over the years. And at some point, between the end of that degree and the late 20 tens, you decided to get another degree, and you decided to start a program toward a doctorate of philosophy, a PhD in public health education. So talk to me about that and why you made the decision that you wanted to go further and go from having that master of science in public health education to then pushing yourself to getting a doctor degree in in public education as well.

Endia Crabtree [00:09:16]:
So I knew pretty early on, honestly, as an undergrad that I would need to pursue as high education as possible. I knew at least my junior year, even before I decided which pathway that I wanted to take, I always knew I need to get a PhD. Anthropology is not a major or at least at the time, and I I wanna make that clear for back in 2005 to 2010. If you major in anthropology, you are majoring in a profession that you do need to get graduate education on. At the time, I knew of no other anthropologist regardless of their chosen pathway, whether it be cultural, forensic, biological anthropology, linguistics, They all went on for a PhD. And even though I did pivot from anthropology to public health, it's the same story. Though public health professionals can stop and often do stop at an Miles per hour, which is totally fine, I knew that I wanted to do research. And if I was gonna be taken seriously as a research, and honestly, as a black woman, I felt that I needed to do it all.

Endia Crabtree [00:10:30]:
Like, I needed to go as far as possible so that not only will I give myself access to several jobs in public health, in the sciences, as a scientist, as a a person who's, you know, taking seriously as a researcher that I would not leave myself any gaps, that that I would not leave any room for denial for a particular position because I don't have that. And wanting to be a scientist slash researcher going to get a PhD, it trains you and exposes you to what that actual environment looks like regardless of the path chosen. When I was in my 2nd year of the MS in public health education program when I realized that I wanted to pivot from HIV to cancer. So I actually have a family history of cancer. My mother had colorectal cancer when I was 13, stage 3, and she was only 42 at the time. So familiar with Chadwick Boseman, she was literally in the same boat as him, but she's still with us today. Believe it or not, she what was that? 20,021,001 when she was diagnosed, but it made a huge impact on me. I didn't just wanna be behind the scenes to find a treatment for cancer.

Endia Crabtree [00:11:49]:
I also wanted to be like I wanted to understand the the who, what, when, where, why. I wanted to understand the cause the cause and effect. What causes this? Why are certain populations more affected than others? Why was my mother diagnosed so early? Was it the job that she worked? Is it the ZIP code that we lived in? I mean, I had these questions. These are my these are the questions that I had. I wanted to understand, and she's not the only person my family affected. I am from Flint, Michigan. I grew up there. My parents worked in GM.

Endia Crabtree [00:12:19]:
My father's a Vietnam vet. A lot of people were inflicted with cancer there. And so, no, this is my life. I never did it for accolades either. I just wanted to have opportunity. But, yes, I pivoted my my second year second and last year of the MS program and pursued a PhD in public health education, but I had a concentration in epidemiology. And I concentrate in epidemiology so that I can, you know, focus on the who, what, when, where, the distribution of the disease, who's affected, why why is a person in ZIP code a, Why are they experiencing later diagnoses in a person in ZIP code b? Is it because of money, socioeconomic status? Is it simply because a person is a person of color, or is it because of where they live and their circumstances and the food that they have access to? So these are real questions that are being asked and are being researched, and I wanted to know not just what causes it, but how does it come back. So I was on the survivorship end of the spectrum.

Endia Crabtree [00:13:20]:
And while I was in school studying this, having all this on my mind, trying to figure it out, I was also a full time employee at FedEx. I am one of the rare few who went school full time and worked full time. I needed to make money, and I also needed to get this degree. And I still finished on time somehow. But because I was working full time, I was not a traditional PhD student, so I was not able to dedicate as much time to research and publishing outside of my dissertation work. So it was actually my 2nd year of my PhD program when I realized I needed to go on and pursue a postdoc. So, postdoctoral fellowship where I did 2 years at the University of sin Cincinnati Cancer Institute, where I had the honor and privilege to working with doctor Beverly Riegle, who started their cancer survivorship clinic. And it was there that I got to work with the team to start a clinic and learn about research from the administrative side.

Endia Crabtree [00:14:22]:
And that was an awesome experience, but because I was learning from the administrative side and still, just like with my PhD, didn't have much opportunity to pursue research full time as a traditional student slash postdoc. I went on and did another 2 years at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. And while I was there, in order to supplement my education and when I was learning, I was taking courses. Like, I did a certificate here, certificate there, and took some courses at Johns Hopkins University. And the courses that I took, which were I took geographic information systems, and I took an environmental health course. I learned that I could actually earn a degree if I took just a few more courses. So I went ahead and pursued the master's of liberal arts. I had no initial plans to do this, but while I was on track, I was like, I might as well.

Endia Crabtree [00:15:15]:
Like, I've been a student so long, and I knew how to do it. So I just went ahead and and pursued that. But I'm really thankful for that because I while I was at Johns Hopkins, I also gained a new a new network, and I was able to work on a social epidemiology project that I was interested in. And I did that from 2017 to 2019. I enjoyed that. And although that was a great opportunity as well as my postdoc, I needed to settle myself back down and sort of come back out of the clouds and say, okay. What am I gonna do with all of this? Now I have a lot. I have more than I ever imagined.

Endia Crabtree [00:15:54]:
I have a certificate in in environmental epidemiology at the Ohio State University. I have this new MLA, the PhD, the MS. I have all of these credentials, but I need to actually pull all of this together and do something with it and well, make a decision about it. I knew that I was gonna do something. I was not gonna do my math with not you know, with nothing to show for it. But when I was a post tech at children's, I was really involved with the office of postdoctoral affairs, and I actually, along with other postdoctoral fellows, created a diversity group in partnership between the University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Children's. And and I got to learn a lot about what people were doing with their pathways where we were all different PhDs from biomedical science to psychology to biomedical informatics. I mean, everyone was doing a little bit of we were really diverse.

Endia Crabtree [00:16:49]:
We were representing all sorts of fields. But, yeah, I was there at Cincinnati Children's Hospital that I learned about what it really meant to be a researcher in an academic space. And over time, I learned that that wasn't for me. As much as I will forever be passionate about cancer research and as much as that means to me, I didn't think it was the right space for me to be in an academic center. So I began to search other opportunities of which I learned about the pathway that I'm in now, which I will get into later, is medical writing. And I learned about that field through a postdoc careers panel. That was a panel event that happened. It was at one of our monthly postdoctoral affairs meetings.

Endia Crabtree [00:17:28]:
So

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:29]:
one of the things that I think that I'm gonna have you explain because we haven't had a lot of people on the show that have done postdocs. So talk to me a little bit about what is a postdoc so that people can understand what that is. And you did a number of different postdocs. So how does someone find these postdocs, and and what type of you know, what's the expectation for someone in these type of roles, etcetera?

Endia Crabtree [00:17:56]:
So a postdoc is someone who is going on to do research in a learning environment who has earned a PhD or a similar doctoral degree, such as like a doctor of public health. And I've even known MD, PhD, so medical doctors who are also pursuing the physician scientist roles. So not only are they a physician, but they're also PIs or principal investigators or leaders in a laboratory. So, for example, a neurosurgeon who is also a neuroscientist, but I pursued a postdoc because a postdoctoral fellowship or post or postdoc for short, I pursued that because of my unique experience as a PhD student who did not have as much research exposure doing active research at a traditional PhD student. So by that, I mean, someone who may be able to publish 2 to 5 articles based on a project that they're working with with their with a professor or their dissertation chair or whatnot. And postdoctoral fellowships can vary. You could be like, if you're pursuing biology, maybe you're a PhD or post doctoral fellow in the biology lab of a National Institute of Health funded professor at University of Michigan Ann Arbor. Not Michigan State, University of Michigan Ann Arbor.

Endia Crabtree [00:19:26]:
I must make that clear. And so it is there that because you already have a PhD, you're not considered like, you're not a traditional student. Like, you're no longer pursuing a degree. You're pursuing a position in the sciences in in a lab, like one day you want to learn how to run your own lab, that is a great place to be because you are leading students who are pursuing a PhD or undergrads or master students. Some of them are teaching just like PhD students, some teach courses. And so those postdoctoral fellowship, I found mine through networking. The professor who was my principal investigator, which is the name for boss for for a postdoc. Like, that's your supervisor no slash supervisor for your postdoc.

Endia Crabtree [00:20:14]:
I met her through a class that I took of hers, which was cancer survivorship rehabilitation. And she and I connected so well, and I set a meeting with her, and I explained with her I explained to her what my situation was, like, that I wasn't a traditional student, that I had this passion for cancer survivorship, but it's such a niche area. She was the only person at the time that I knew that was doing that work, and I knew that I was gonna need something beyond my PhD to be ready for the workforce, whichever pathway that was. And so she and I worked together for the the my remaining years in the PhD program to come up with the grant money to fund that. Postdoctoral fellowships are funded by grants. If they're at a university or a government or a government entity like the CDC, unless you receive 1, like, at a corporation, which I do not know much about or what that looks like, but they they do come in various shapes and sizes, and they can be from 1 year to 7 years, believe it or not, with renewals in between. And the 2 postdocs that I had were each 2 years. So at UC, University of Cincinnati Cancer Institute, it was 2 years.

Endia Crabtree [00:21:28]:
And then at Cincinnati Children's, it was 2 years. And my principal investigator there, I met through my current PI or principal investigator slash supervisor from my u University of Cincinnati Cancer Institute postdoc. And so that's why my postdoc was 4 years. And and I'm thankful for both of them. I'm thankful for both of those PIs, all the professors that I've met along the way. I'll forever be grateful to them for those opportunities because they definitely did prepare me for where I am now.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:21:59]:
So you mentioned that you got a doctor degree from the University of Cincinnati, and there's a lot of different types of programs that are out in the world that you could have probably chosen to look at for public health education. Talk to me about what made you decide that University of Cincinnati was the right program for you.

Endia Crabtree [00:22:18]:
My mother's from Hamilton, Ohio, and actually do have some family here. And I was always familiar with Cincinnati. I had an older cousin who went there, and I was also familiar with some of the professors at in the public health education department or program at UC, and it's also a Research 1 institution similar to the University of Michigan system. And Research 1 institution just simply means high research impact or output university, where they have a lot of research dollars, a lot of labs, state of the art labs and equipment, and it was a big school. And I am a person who's really big on cross collaboration. I've been cross collaborating across departments since I was in undergrad. For example, my cancer survivorship professor at the University of Cincinnati was a PhD in nursing. She has a nursing she is a nurse.

Endia Crabtree [00:23:15]:
She's an RN. She's not a public health professional, but she was doing cancer survivorship. I care more about who was doing the work than what their concentration was, And that's how I ended up with her. That's how I ended up with still I have to have my health education dissertation people. And for at children's, my research supervisor or PI, she was a clinical psychologist. But, anyway, there was a lot of opportunity here in Cincinnati that that mirrored what I experienced in Michigan. And what I actually did mention earlier was that when I was a MS student, a master's in health education student at University of Michigan Flint, I had a great opportunity to be a part of a research project that was in partnership with Ann Arbor. So I actually got to go to Ann Arbor a lot.

Endia Crabtree [00:24:05]:
I half of my work was done in Ann Arbor, and the other half was, my research work was in Ann Arbor. My coursework was in University of Michigan Flint, and it was really cool to be able to be there in their public health department and to sit in their classrooms and be a part of those workshops and to get to know professors there that I work with on on an HIV project. So and that's the beauty of that system of the University of Michigan system is that, hey. I I took classes at University of Michigan Flint. I was able to get the one professor for every 35 student ratio. So I had the small class sizes, but I had the research experience of someone in Ann Arbor. And I was a part of the undergraduate research opportunity program, which is called UROP or u r o p, and I got to present at University of Michigan Dearborn. So so I've been at every single campus just because of one research project that I worked on, and that was really cool.

Endia Crabtree [00:25:05]:
And Cincinnati, it has one other no. There's there are 2 other campuses. I haven't been to the other 2, Clermont and Blue Ash, but the university is huge, and it has a massive hospitals. Again, it reminded me a lot of Ann Arbor, a lot of the University of Michigan system. And so that was also part of what what attracted me in addition to my family being here and the professors that that were here as well.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:25:30]:
Now you did finish your degree. You found success in graduate school, in the master's degrees, in the PhD. And as you entered each and every one of those programs, you go through a transition. And there is a, at every point in your education, you have to learn about that new way that that school educates, the professors educate. You know, there's a lot of pieces that you have to figure out along the way. As you think back to the experiences that you had, as you transitioned into graduate school at all of those different levels, what did you have to do to be able to set yourself up for success as you transitioned in? And what did you have to do to maintain your success throughout that entire graduate school experience?

Endia Crabtree [00:26:15]:
For every level, even where I am today, is be vocal and intentional. I always do my own research before I do everything. I never went into any situation or to any program assuming that, okay, I'm gonna get this degree, and I'm gonna have a job waiting for me. That is just not reality. I am a person who will talk to anyone. And if I want to know something, I just reach out to people. I got comfortable with doing that because of my involvement. I have been involved with several professional societies ever since I've been in undergrad.

Endia Crabtree [00:26:49]:
I started off in the American Anthropology Association. I joined a committee there, And then next, I joined the American Public Health Association. I joined the Society of Public Health Education. I was inducted to Eta Sigma Gamma Health Education Honor Society. I mean, the Anthropology Honor Society, Lambda Alpha. And my involvement with professional societies has been in alignment with what I am doing or where I am at that time. Although I'm no longer a member of the American Public Health Association, I'm still a supporter of it because they do a ton of work for the overall public health of not just the US, but globally. But I've, you know, with each step, I've I've joined the American I mean, sorry, the National Postdoctoral Association, MedTech Women, which I am a woman in MedTech now.

Endia Crabtree [00:27:37]:
So I joined MedTech Women. And with each organization I involve, I don't just join to be a member. I join committees. And in those committees, I meet people, and the people that I meet are doing things that may or may not be aligned with what I'm doing, but I do learn a lot from them. And I've mentored and was a mentee and vice versa. I do both. I have a mentor and I'm a mentee, and it's all about learning and just being open to learning and not afraid to pivot or to do something different. Your dream job may not be the title that you even like, what I my title now, I would've I've never heard of until I got this position, but the job description had it all.

Endia Crabtree [00:28:19]:
And I highly recommend researching beyond what you know. Get out of your comfort zone. Do talk to people. Do get involved. Joining organizations also is not cheap, so be very intentional about which ones you join and when. But it's also, you know, a two way street. Don't just be a part of something just to be a part of or just to throw it on your resume. What did you contribute? What did you give back? You know, what was your service? Did you publish with people? Did you help collect some research data? Did you do anything to improve the organization? You learn leadership skills, and what you learn, you give back.

Endia Crabtree [00:28:57]:
I'm really big on that, especially someone being someone from Flint, Michigan. I always give Flint a shout out. I I went to Flint Community Schools. I went to Flint Southwestern Academy, which is now Flint Southwestern Classical Academy. It has so many names with the schools. None of this was ever for me, and and I am a resource too. Just FYI, please get my email and LinkedIn. But, yeah, just just be open and willing because pivoting was the best thing I've ever done and continue to do.

Endia Crabtree [00:29:28]:
I have been in my current field now for 5 years in the medical technology industry. I do actually use what I learned in school, what I learned in the committees. I do apply leadership aptitude, emotional intelligence. I have over a decade of experience in diversity, equity, and inclusion work. I gained all that just from being in, like, serving in committees in professional societies. And I met a lot of people along the way, and it's okay to do that. It's okay to talk to someone who, you know, if you're going into public health, it's okay to talk to a physician or a nurse or a psychologist, which is are all things I did. And I learned a lot from all those different people, even people who weren't doing cancer research or HIV research.

Endia Crabtree [00:30:12]:
It didn't matter to me. You can learn from anyone, but do your best not to lose focus, but also know that opportunities are all around you. But you have to take the leap to know.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:30:21]:
Now one of the things that I would have an interest in hearing more from you on is that you've got now a few different degrees. You've got the public health education at both the master's and doctorate level. You did a master, liberal studies as well, and you have your bachelor's degree in anthropology. So you have a a a wide array of different education under your belt, plus the postdocs that we are also already talked about. So as you've completed these degrees and now you're in your professional career and you look back at this graduate education that you've had, how has it prepared you to do the work that you do on a daily basis?

Endia Crabtree [00:31:01]:
Well, the programs that I was a part of, each and every one of them instilled in us the importance of accountability. So I do hold myself accountable. I hold myself responsible, but I also know and have learned in those programs that I can ask questions. I ask questions in front of people in the classroom. I ask questions outside of the classroom. Believe it or not, those group projects that you probably hate in school right now do actually matter, and you actually will be working with other people. I work cross functionally right now with a lot of people. I work in groups every day.

Endia Crabtree [00:31:46]:
Those groups can change. I work with a lot of different people, not just from the US, but also across the globe. And those group projects that I used to hate and wonder why, wonder why I was doing that, I look back at that and I'm like, okay. So not only was I put in a position to learn how to work with other people, but also how to plan and strategize, set goals, set timelines. And and, yeah, like, of all things that I've learned outside of being accountable, taking responsibility, but also learning how to work with people, I at no point working a silo, and I so appreciate all of those group projects. That is all grad one thing I can remember about grad school is that is most of what it was outside of the tests and the papers is group project this, group project that. Every assignment was a project with some people. And I'm like, okay.

Endia Crabtree [00:32:44]:
Thank god I did that because that might have been a lot harder today. And that continued on through post doc too. That was you know, that that continued on. It is my life now, and I'm thankful for that. So definitely group work.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:32:58]:
Now you've given a lot of piece of advice today, things that you've learned along the way. As you think about other individuals that are thinking about graduate school, what's one piece of advice you'd wanna give to all students that would help them find success sooner?

Endia Crabtree [00:33:13]:
Understand that your class mates are your allies, not your competition. We get through grad school a lot smoother when we work together. And by working together, I do not mean what did that test look like, not your grades, not how am I gonna get through this task. It's how am I gonna get through with these people, with my cohort? What can we do to uplift each other? Uplift your classmates. Your professor is your resource. Don't be afraid to ask them questions. You may come across upperclassmen, which isn't really a thing in grad school, but someone who's in their 2nd year or something. Talk to that person.

Endia Crabtree [00:33:54]:
Ask them how they got through their 1st year. I'm just a huge proponent of reaching out to people. And I'm also introverted, believe it or not. I get tired. I get exhausted. You can do that as an intro. You do not have to be an extrovert to talk to to talk to people. We all have our different ways of doing so.

Endia Crabtree [00:34:14]:
For me, I wasn't always outspoken in class. I became that out over time, but initially, I would just shoot an email or, you know, if I become friends with someone, send a text or there were various ways to do that. It doesn't you don't have to be there's no one way to do it, but just know that, again, I can't stress enough that your classmates are not your competition, like, you are each other's allies, and please take advantage of that. You make lifetime friends. Actually, my maid of honor was my was one of my, PhD classmates. He became my lifetime best friend. You never know.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:34:48]:
Well, Endia, I just wanna say thank you. Thank you for sharing your story today, for opening our eyes to the different types of opportunities that may exist post PhD or beyond to be able to continue that education and make the world a better place. And I truly wish you all the best.

Endia Crabtree [00:35:06]:
Thank you.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:35:07]:
The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of masters and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].