Cultivating a Fascination for a Future in STEM: Encouraging Women & Diversity

On June 19th, Dr. Kimberly Scott and Matthew Ruf of the CGEST team attended the “Cultivating a Fascination for a Future in STEM: Encouraging Women & Diversity” conference at the Arizona Science Center. Hosted by Google Cloud, the conference featured an incredible group of woman speakers who shared how they overcame various forms of adversity to become leaders within their respective STEM fields. Not only did these remarkable women share their experiences (the good, bad, and the ugly) within their industry, but they also offered an inclusive variety of advice to the jam-packed audience on how to become successful within the STEM fields.

Furthermore, these speakers provided the CGEST team with valuable insight on how to improve the CompuPower program, such as ways to encourage our students to enter the various STEM fields and examples of how to find success in an industry where the odds are stacked against students of color. Lastly, The CGEST team was also fortunate enough to be able to meet a variety of possible Industry Mentors for the CompuPower program from esteemed technology leaders such as General Motors, Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, and Stanley Consultants. It was truly a remarkable conference!

[This is a reflection interview with Dr. Kimberly Scott about her recollections and experience of the event]

Would you please give some background on what this event was?

This was an invitation-only, Google sponsored event held at the Arizona Science Center in a Maker Space called “Create.” About 50 people attended, mostly educators, who were the target audience, and the speakers at the event - keynotes and panelists - mostly represented science and technology industries and discussed issues like microaggressions and hostile work environments.

What was something notable about this event?

There was a panel, which was mostly made up of women of color, which talked about obstacles they faced and how they overcame them. I observed that there were four speakers - the first of whom was an African American woman who talked about how fellow students in college treated her terribly. She explained how she overcame the problem with lots of support from her community. The second speaker was a white woman who talked about changing jobs. Third was another African American woman who said that she didn’t experience the types of microaggressions the first had. And fourth was another African American woman who had many white mentors who supported her and helped her develop an ability to network.

The composition of this panel showed that the experiences of women of color are not monolithic and that intersectional analysis is very important for helping us to examine the construction of power in these settings. These individuals all discussed how they overcame obstacles; many narratives focused on personal grit, but they also acknowledged the constraints around them (which can be revealed through intersectional analysis).

Were there any interesting opportunities for future collaboration that emerged at this event?

Some good questions and topics emerged from this event, such as:

• How do we as women who ascend to leadership roles create inclusive, safe spaces

• How can we create safe spaces?

• How do we balance the conflicts between personal and professional obligations?

• How can we effectively engage allies? As a provocation, there were some attentive and receptive men in the audience who seemed interested in learning.

There were also some promising opportunities for future collaboration, such as:

• There are a host of makerspaces in the Valley, but there isn’t a hub that tracks the locations of them (yet).

• Google’s diversity report has been released, but (according to a Native American engineer in attendance) there hasn’t been much movement.

Tell us more about the Makerspace activity that you were a part of.

This was a participatory activity based around making tech culturally responsive. We each got a set of parts to make into a robot, and the artistic design could be somewhat customized based on how we built it. I wasn’t sure what the connection was to the larger theme of diversity though, and the activity was a bit frustrating to do on my own. I noticed that no one interacted or collaborated on their projects, so I felt pressured to work on my robot alone as well. Perhaps this could be a better way to frame this type of activity in the future - to emphasize the importance of asking for help from mentors and collaboration in tech by showing how much more fun it can be when we’re interacting as we’re making. That would better connect an activity like this to the larger theme of the event as well.

Do you have any last thoughts on this event?

Google tends to have these type of events throughout the country, and they are a great opportunity for creative dialogue. However, given that the numbers on Google’s diversity report have not changed, it is unclear if the events are doing any good. I would like to see further action, perhaps in policy, to make more results and lasting change.

Featured image courtesy of #WOCinTech Chat wocintechchat.com