Kim's Corner: An Excerpt from Dr. Scott’s Remarks during CGEST’s 5 Year Celebration

I would like to welcome all of you to our event, and I hope you will enjoy being a part of it. Before we proceed, however, I want to acknowledge with respect, that ASU sits on the ancestral homelands of those Indigenous Nations that have inhabited this land for centuries, including the Akimel O’odham (Pima), Tohono O'odham, and Pee Posh (Maricopa) peoples. If you would, let’s take a moment of silence to individually recognize the Nations. Thank you.

The past five years have consisted of many peaks and valleys for CGEST. Some of the highlights include that CGEST has:

• Hosted six postdoctoral fellows from diverse disciplines including philosophy of science, engineering, astrophysics, and learning sciences

• Established and implemented programs across two continents, a U.S. commonwealth and multiple states from Hawai’i, Alaska and Pennsylvania, to name a few

• Established and hired our first Assistant Research Professor, Dr. Tara Nkrumah

• Identified and hired the center’s first Director, Sandy Martinez

• Continued to manage over 16 grant projects

• Provided professional development to over 50 teachers working in rural Arizona, urban Phoenix districts, and all-girls “primary schools” in Ireland

These achievements, and this is a short list, are the result of everyone in this room and on Zoom. I stand here today, after five years, grateful for your believing in me and my vision. It bears repeating, I have never been interested in developing or researching programs that aim to populate a flawed system with more black and brown female bodies. That is the current STEM system. If I were to assume that approach it would be as if our work aimed to teach the chickens how to guide the foxes. No. My vision has been, and continues to be, focused on providing our daughters sustained resources and opportunities to create a new system that furthers their communities, and on showing our sons how to be authentic allies. I am thankful for all of you who allowed me to build CGEST toward those ends.

A little more than five years ago, I made a choice. Indeed, I made several choices that propelled me on this journey.

For me, I’m trying to rise above who I was yesterday and to do that with love. And since love is a choice, this auspicious occasion causes me to reflect about my love affair with CGEST. Consequently, I am reminded of bell hooks’ astute description of the interactive nature of love. She says:

When was that moment for me? It was that moment when I chose to build an unprecedented research unit at ASU that would challenge dominant thinking about girls and women of color being deficient vessels that can only succeed through oppressive structures. It was that moment when I collaborated with individuals like Dr. Gabriel Escontrias (who served as the center’s first managing director and is here today from Washington, D.C.) to move toward establishing a structure positioning our daughters to recognize and innovatively craft ways toward their own and their children’s freedom. It was that moment when I called out to my colleagues around the country, like Drs. Kevin Clark, Allison Scott, Nicol Turner Lee, Mia Ong, Evelynn Hammonds, to name a few, and asked if I as a Black woman sociologist of education should dare to act and build an interdisciplinary STEM-focused center. That moment for me to found CGEST consisted of several moments, countless interactions, and practices predating 2015, the year of our official start.

As you will hear from today’s presenters, more work needs to be done. I am confident that together with research, capacity building efforts, and advocacy we can effectively transform the systems and create equity focused ecologies. In other words, we will continue to work ourselves into new jobs, new foci!

In closing, I value you all who are sharing this day with me. I have always tried my level best to lead from behind and cultivate a dynamic organization that manifests my mantra: To comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. Through it all, new friendships formed, intellectual assets identified, and disruptive processes implemented. Thank you for being a part of this impactful work, and I am honored to collaborate with you on the next five years.

Written by:

Dr. Kimberly Scott

Founder & Executive Director

Center for Gender Equity in Science and Technology

Arizona State University