Marian Diamond was the author's mentor in college and had a profound impact on her career in neuroscience. Marian demonstrated through her groundbreaking research that the adult brain is capable of changing in response to environmental enrichment. She also achieved great success in her career as a female scientist, raising a family and maintaining a strong research program, serving as a role model that women can thrive in science. The author later realized the importance of Marian as a female mentor, as few women hold faculty positions in neuroscience departments today. Marian provided her with evidence and expectations that women can achieve great things in science.

1. Neuroscience: The Importance of Mentorship by Dr. Wendy A. Suzuky posted in Perreault
Magazine
“The Brain and its Potential”.
I’ll never forget that first day of class. Marian stood in front of her blackboard
like a science rock star; slim, athletic, with a blonde bouffant hairdo that made her look even
taller than she was. Even more memorable was what was sitting on the desk in front of her. It
was a flowered hat box. As she welcomed us to class and started to tell us about the brain,
Marian slowly and dramatically lifted the lid of the hat box, and with her gloved hands she
carefully pulled out a real preserved human brain. She told us that what she was holding in her
hands was the most complex structure known to mankind.
I was mesmerized. Marian described her groundbreaking work, which she began in the late
1950’s. She and her colleagues were trying to find evidence that the adult brain could change in
response to the environment. To investigate this radical idea, they raised rats in what they
called “enriched environments” with lots of toys, space and lots of other rats—it was like the
Disney World of rat cages. Marian Diamond’s research demonstrated that compared to rats
raised in “impoverished” environments with no toys, smaller space and only a few other rats,
the outer covering of the brains of the rats raised in the enriched environments actually grew
and got thicker. This was revolutionary; the prominent belief at the time was that adult brain
could not change at all. Marian’s benchmark finding helped usher in a new era in the study of
what we now call brain “plasticity” – or how the brain changes in response to the
environment.
SCIENCE MENTOR: Marian was not only my science mentor, she was an
extraordinary teacher and role model. But what I have come to realize in the
years since I graduated from college is that one of the biggest lessons I learned
from her didn’t reveal itself until long after I graduated.
The first inkling of this lesson came when I was a graduate student and I started to
hear complaints from fellow female graduate students that there were just not
enough women role models. This was typically followed by comments about how
difficult it was to succeed in science as a woman. I remember thinking, “I don’t’
know what they are talking about—of course women can make it in science!” I
was oblivious to their concerns until years later, when I began applying for faculty
positions myself and realized how few women there were in the departments
I was applying to. It was a depressing realization that while 50% of my graduate
class in Neuroscience was women, on average only 28% of the faculty in
neuroscience departments are women. It was only then that I realized that I had
had the remarkable luxury of having such a prominent female role model in
Marian during my formative college days. I had irrefutable evidence that women
could indeed make it in science and in a spectacular way. In fact, Marian achieved

2. what I like to call the “trifecta” of an academic life. She had a family (4 kids no
less!), a vibrant research program and a remarkable teaching record. To me, she
was not an exception. It was clear that a woman could make an impact in science,
and I expected the same for myself.
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