March is Women’s History Month!

Two  years ago Women’s History Month’s national theme was “Women Inspiring Innovation Through Imagination: Celebrating Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.” The theme honored generations of women who throughout American history have used their intelligence, imagination, sense of wonder, and tenacity to make extraordinary contributions to the STEM fields. At UMBC we honored this theme by partnering with the Center for Women in Technology (CWIT) to feature some of their amazing students participating in technology in the engineering and information technology fields. Three years later, we still find it meaningful and important to continue spotlighting the stories of UMBC’s CWIT women and with the 2015 theme of “Weaving the Stories of Women’s Lives” there’s no better time than now to continue weaving the stories of our campus ITE women into the fabric of women’s history and current day lived experiences. So with that, we are honored to bring you the 3rd Annual CWIT Showcase in honor of Women’s History Month.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Claudette Dupont
Mechanical Engineering
CWIT T-Site Scholar

Meet Claudette!

Describe what sparked your interest STEM and the journey to choosing your major.

After graduating from high school in 2003, I pursued a career in the sport of showing dogs in American Kennel Club dog shows. I was nationally ranked in Junior Handling and placed in big-ticket events including The Westminster Kennel Club show. For over ten years, I worked for some of the most well-known professional dog handlers in the country, but in the summer of 2009 I injured myself and decided I needed a more secure career. Dog showing will always be my hobby, but I wanted to go to community college to get a business degree so I could manage my own dog-boarding kennel.

So how did I go from dog handler to mechanical engineer?

Claudette during her dog show days.

While I was pursuing my Business Administration Degree at Anne Arundel Community College (AACC) I participated in seminars on renewable energy sources. Through these seminars, I met a project engineer from Constellation Energy group, and after listening to his seminar I asked him how he got his job – I thought it was fascinating. He explained that he had a Mechanical engineering degree and a MBA and he encouraged me to switch majors; in the same week I applied for an engineering scholars program for women and minorities at AACC. This program helped me explore engineering and introduced me to UMBC, where I was later accepted into the Center for Women in Technology T-SITE scholars program for transfer students. I have been very fortunate to have met such a great group of scholars and mentors.

Tell us about an internship, research experience or project that you are proud of.

I worked as an engineering assistant and drafter for Siemens Building Technologies in Beltsville Maryland for over 2 years. I recently accepted an internship offer for this summer at Johnson, Miriam and Thompson, a multi-disciplined architectural/engineering employee owned company.

Who are your role models in the engineering or IT field? How have their stories influenced your educational or career goals?

I was inspired by William Kamkwamba when I read his book The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope. He was an impressive boy who built a windmill to power a few electrical appliances in his family’s house in Masitala using blue gum trees, bicycle parts, and materials collected in a local scrapyard. I was inspired because he was someone who had little resources but wanted to learn and make a change in his life for the positive, which brings me to my own personal difficulties – specifically, overcoming learning challenges. I was in special education in grade school and never wanted to go to college because I thought it was unattainable. However, with the help of the Khan Academy from Salman Khan I was able to learn and tackle the math and science needed to succeed in engineering. Salman Khan, who earned three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a MBA from Harvard Business School, has made learning attainable for those who just need a good teacher.

Explain your experience as a woman in a STEM major working with other women in STEM. How have you used each other to support your work and persevere in male-dominated fields?

Unfortunately, women in engineering in the HVAC field are a rarity, and I had to find support from women in the office who were not in STEM positions. Diversity in STEM fields is extremely important and I would like to mentor the next generation of young women in STEM, and I recommend looking for employers that embrace diversity.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

The Center for Women In Technology (CWIT) is dedicated to increasing the representation of women in the creation of technology in the engineering and information technology fields. CWIT efforts begin with nurturing a strong group of Scholars, grow to building community resources for other women in these majors, extend to fostering a healthy gender climate and ITE pedagogy in College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT) departments, and finally expand into outreach efforts to increase interest in technical careers. A successful program for female-friendly engineering and information technology education at UMBC will help make UMBC a destination for women (and men) interested in technical careers and serve as a national model for other universities.

For more information about Women’s History events and happenings, visit the Women’s Center myUMBC group page.

This year's national theme is Weaving the Stories of Women's Lives. "There is a real power in hearing women's stories, both personally and in a larger context. Remembering and recounting tales of our ancestors' talents, scarifies, and commitments inspires today's generations and opens the way to the future."

We invite you to check out UMBC's Women's History Month calendar. Several campus departments, including GWST and Psychology, will be hosting keynotes and lectures related to women's issues and research. For the third year in a row, we'll also be spotlighting students from the CWIT community  as they continue to pave an important path in our history that gives voice and experience to women in the ITE fields. You can follow the spotlights on the Women's Center blog. The Women's Center is also excited to focus our WHM programming around Telling Our Stories.

Follow the Women's Center on facebook, twitter, and our blog for Women's History updates throughout the month.

For a full list of all the campus events, download the calendar here. 

Sign-up to Volunteer for URCAD Monday, April 20 - Thursday, April 23, 2015. Whether you have an hour or a day to give, we can use your help for a variety of tasks.

Please complete the form at the website provided below and direct any questions regarding volunteering to Janet McGlynn at mcglynn@umbc.edu.

I am reclaiming my blackness. It’s been taken, twisted, and transformed into something I no longer recognized. It was deemed less than by the black kids, less than by the white kids, and left me navigating a space with an identity invalid.

My mom and I had a long “discussion” about the term Blackish. This began in reference to the popular TV show, but quickly went down a road that is still painful for me to revisit. In my mom’s opinion, she is black and I am blackish. I understood what she meant. I did not fit the stereotypical “black” mold. In fact, I fit the one she built for me. Predominantly white schools, a two parent household, sports, instruments, pets, private school, a car… the list goes on. These things were and continue to be my normal. Unfortunately, these things simultaneously made me “less than black”. How could that be?

My mom’s lived experiences are different. Her relationship with her dad is virtually nonexistent, she grew up in the inner city, her childhood was a low-income one. Is that what blackness is? Absentee dads? Poverty? The hood?

I’ve been ruminating on these thoughts this Black History Month. I’ve been thinking of my great-grandparents who didn’t establish themselves in a hood, but a neighborhood, with a car and a home they called their own. There were two parents and they worked hard to give their children a taste of middle-class life. They wore furs and diamonds, suits and church hats. They endured overt racism in ways I will never truly understand. Were they blackish too?

I am lost. I am exhausted at the thought of having to prove an identity that was handed to me. It covers every inch of my skin in a fantastic bronze hue. It dictates how strangers react to my face, my resume, my voice, my name. I am black. I am black first. I cannot be anything less.

“What do you say to the white kids when even the black kids say you’re not black enough for them?”

This post is an expansion of my statement in the I’m Not portion of the UMBC Women of Color Coalition’s campaign, “Telling Our Stories” project. For more information about the project and other stories, visit us on Facebook here.

We’re proud to announce that the Women’s Center at UMBC and Women of Color Coalition were recently awarded a $5,000 grant from the American Association of University Women (AAUW). The 2014–15 AAUW Campus Action Project (CAP) grants, sponsored by Pantene’s Shine Strong campaign, fund student led projects that fight stereotypes and biases.In addition to the AAUW CAP grant, we were also awarded a $500 community project grant from BreakingGround to help support this ambitious campaign. 

Our project, called “Telling Our Stories: I’m Not/I Am,” aims to 1) raise awareness and reject stereotypes about women of color, and 2) create space for women of color voices and counternarratives. Following a series of consciousness-raising discussions over the past year, many of our students saw the need to promote visibility and community-building among WoC in order to stand in solidarity against racist and sexist microaggressions. First-year student Jahia Knobloch vividly describes the harmful impact that stereotyping can have on women of color: 

Women of color are blessed with so many gifts: our beauty, compassion, ingenuity and grace are unparalleled. But too often our gifts are ignored, with ruthless stereotypes and myths being built around our existence which casting us into either unthreatening or highly exoticized and eroticized roles.

My first realizations about what it means to be a woman of color came, as so many realizations do, because of discrimination. Around the age of fourteen, I began receiving attention from boys and men. Many of these attentions were flattering; some were offensive and others downright menacing. But some of the most memorable comments I received were from non-POC boys and men. These comments were memorable only in their flabbergasting ignorance about what being attracted to a women of color apparently means in the minds of non-POC boys and men. Some examples: “I’ve never been with a Black girl before,” “You’re so pretty because you’re mixed—you’re lucky you only got the good features of being Black,” “I love your hair, it’s so dark,” and the jaw-dropping “I love the way your dark skin looks against my white skin.” Really dude?

I came to realize that as a woman of color, you are forced by proxy to represent the exotic “other”—a taste of a world in which non-POC men dare not venture into past a certain point. Even with our own races, we can be subjugated to lesser roles because of our status as women. Yet what those who wish to make us less-than do not see is that we can be the strongest of champions: not only for ourselves, but for our people and all those who are oppressed. We are a force to be reckoned with.

For me, dismantling stereotypes is so important because it gives us as WOC a chance to show that there is no “other.” We will not be your African, Asian, Latin, Native American or interracial vacation to the dark continent. We will not be a stop on your experimental college road trip for you to regale your friends about. We will not be a tourist attraction, an item on your bucket list or a milestone. We will only be us: beautiful, intelligent and independent. We will only be as strong as we have been made to be from centuries of oppression. We will continue to carry our status as WOC not as a burden, but as a gift. We will tell our stories. We will be heard.

By launching the project with the “I’m Not” poster campaign, we hope to disrupt the misguided assumption that racialized gender stereotyping is not a problem for our campus community. Click here to see the latest posters from the campaign! 

The second phase of the project consists of creative skill-building workshops which will culminate in a “Telling Our Stories: I Am” showcase. We intend to go beyond challenging the misrepresentation of women of color and actually create a platform dedicated to their authentic self-representation. Women of Color Coalition member-at-large Bree Best explains the importance of storytelling: 

Not only does telling your story tell people who you are but It give a different perspective of how to view things. These stories are needed and you, woman of color, have the pen in your hand ready to write it.

At the end of the showcase, I don’t want the conversation of women of color telling their stories to stay stagnant. I want this to continue because there are many “untold stories” in the woman of color sphere that need to be heard. These need to be heard so that they can help heal the multigenerational hurt that women of color have accrued. I believe if we tell our stories people will understand better how to heal or not hurt us through racial interactions.

The Telling Our Stories showcase will celebrate the creative self-expression of women of color and empower them to reclaim their own narratives. The showcase will be held on Wednesday, April 29th from 6-8pm in the Commons Sports Zone. 

Be sure to like Women of Color Coalition on Facebook and follow us on Tumblr for more news and updates on the Telling Our Stories project!

The 2015 Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Program in Computational Sensing and Medical Robotics at The Johns Hopkins University in the Computer Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology Engineering Research Center (CISST ERC) / Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics (LCSR) is an intensive ten-week program of laboratory research and instruction. In the program, each REU student receives hands-on laboratory research experience under guidance from faculty and graduate student mentors. The students will also receive classes on ethics in research and technical communication. A stipend of $5000 and housing will be provided by the program for the 10-week period.

The application can be accessed using this link:-http://lcsr.jhu.edu/reu/

The deadline to submit applications is March 2, 2015.

**I participated in this program a number of years ago and it was **great**! Nowhere else do you get to play with a millions-of-dollars surgical robot (the Da Vinci - look it up, it's awesome) as a field trip. Or do laparoscopic surgery on a live pig (don't worry, if you're squeamish you don't have to do it. I loved it.) 

If you have more questions feel free to contact me at elianan1@umbc.edu !

~Eliana NessAiver Mozes

Savannah State University’s Bridge to Research in the Marine Sciences REU program is now accepting applications for Summer 2015.  The Bridge program is a “pre-REU” program focused on training freshman and sophomore students in conducting research in the marine sciences. There is a 3-week intensive curriculum of classroom, field, and laboratory work before the student is paired with a research mentor at SSU, Skidaway Institute of Oceanography, Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary, or the UGA-MAREX Aquarium.

Critical points:

-          May 18-July 10, 2015

-          8 week internship with 3 weeks of classroom/field training and then 5 weeks of research with a mentor

-          $4000 stipend

-          Travel, on-campus housing, and food allowance provided

-          Application deadline: March 1, 2015