Cultivating a Culture of BELONGlNG
When Brad Conrad was four years old, his mom walked into the living room to see him, screwdriver in hand, trying to reassemble their VCR.
He’d inserted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then taken the machine apart to get it out. “I loved knowing why things worked,” he says. Growing up, the only scientists and engineers in Conrad’s life were Mr. Wizard and Bill Nye the Science Guy. But the TV personalities made a big impact, enabling Conrad to imagine a future in STEM.
High school chemistry inspired countless questions: Why are orbitals this way? Why do electrons move around? Why does this pH do that? Conrad loved the subject, but the chemistry teacher kept sending him over to the physics teacher for answers. “And eventually,” he says, “I just stayed in the physics room.”
With a physics bachelor’s degree in mind, Conrad began exploring colleges on his own. Higher education wasn’t on his parents’ radar, and his high school didn’t offer much support. The guidance counselor told Conrad he wasn’t smart enough to become an engineer and suggested he drive trucks. Fueled by determination, Conrad went on a week-long, solo road trip, visiting colleges in several states. He eventually settled on Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).
“I had no clue how I was going to pay for it,” he says, “but I had my heart set on going and becoming a scientist and making the world a better place.”
College offered a chance to explore the world in a way that wasn’t possible in small-town Pennsylvania, he says. He
embraced that, but the coursework was difficult and the dreary Upstate New York weather was challenging. During one break from classes, Conrad was on the verge of transferring to another school when his phone rang. His SPS Advisor, John Anderson, wanted to know if Conrad would plan a social event and field trip for the return to campus.
“That call from John made me feel like I had a home,” he says. “That people would miss me if I wasn’t there, and that I belonged somewhere.” He stayed. And that experience has stayed with him.
After RIT, Conrad earned a physics PhD at the University of Maryland. Graduate school “was one of the best times of my whole life,” he says. Then came a National Research Council fellowship position at NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and about a year later, a faculty position at Appalachian State University in North Carolina.
Although he knew little about the school when he applied, Conrad fell in love with Appalachian State while visiting. He spent six years immersed in the physics department there, teaching, doing research with students, co-mentoring the SPS chapter, and building community. He revived a long-dormant science of sound course for nonmajors that flourished as a two-semester sequence, regularly maxing out enrollment at 72 students. And then, the same week he was awarded tenure, he received a job offer he couldn’t pass up: director of SPS and Sigma Pi Sigma, the physics and astronomy honor society.
During his eight years as director, Conrad poured his energy into encouraging, inspiring, and advocating for physics and
astronomy students and departments across the country—and beyond. He built new programs, fostered new partnerships,
secured new student support and opportunities, mentored countless student leaders, and centered the student voice within the broader physics community. Through it all, his message to students was simple: You belong. You matter.
Today, Conrad is the inaugural workforce development manager in NIST’s Office of Advanced Manufacturing. In that role, he helps the advanced manufacturing industry identify the skills it needs in employees and works with partners to help students and job seekers develop them. In a nutshell, “I help people get the skills they need to get really awesome jobs in
STEM,” he says.
For his exemplary level of commitment and service to SPS and Sigma Pi Sigma, the SPS Council surprised Conrad with a rare Worth Seagondollar Award in June.
ABOUT WORTH SEAGONDOLLAR
L. Worth Seagondollar spent 40 years as a physics professor and advisor of Sigma Pi Sigma, the physics and astronomy honor society, first at the University of Kansas and then at North Carolina State University. In the 1960s, he was instrumental in creating the Society of Physics Students. The Worth Seagondollar Service Award was established in his honor in 1996, and he was the first recipient.
