WHEELING,
W.V. (Aug. 28, 2019) — Graduate school isn’t just
about earning a degree. It’s about a shared experience, a community of scholars
sharing little moments of connection across cultures. And that means learning
to grow and thrive as a diverse team.
That was the message at the 2019 PITT
STRIVE retreat, which took place at Oglebay Resort and Conference Center on
Aug. 8 and 9. The fourth annual retreat brought together Swanson School of
Engineering faculty mentors and PhD mentees from the PITT STRIVE program, which strives for excellence in academic and faculty
engagement cultures that promote the success, transition, representation,
innovation, vision, and education of URM PhD students. The program
supports underrepresented students as they transition into doctoral engineering
programs at the Swanson School, and fosters an inclusive environment that
supports their retention and graduation by strong graduate students and faculty
community building activities.
“PITT STRIVE’s annual retreat gives our
fellows and scholars the opportunity to cultivate relationships that will carry
them forward into their professional and academic pursuits,” says Sylvanus
Wosu, PhD, associate dean for diversity affairs. “A culture of inclusivity is
invaluable in academia, and we all have a vital role to play in building it.”
The retreat’s goal was clear from the first session. Michael Eatman, a
diversity professional who helps organizations develop cultural competence and
inclusive learning and working environments, led sessions designed to break
down barriers and foster discussion about what inclusivity and diversity truly
mean.
What We
Do Not See
Eatman asked the group to find one individual
that they do not work with on a regular basis for an exercise called “What We
Do Not See.” In this team-building activity, partners looked at one another for
two minutes without speaking and took note of the observations and assumptions
they made about their partner.
“Part of the work building community is being
able to honestly share with those we are in community with,” Eatman noted.
“Getting to the heart of community is moving through the use of our
observations and assumptions as the only reality. Some of our work may be to
create communities that allow room to discover who is beneath the facade we
learn to put on for survival in institutions.”
Some of the participants found this activity
to be the most meaningful at the retreat.
“I found this activity so significant because
not only did I get to learn about another person, but I also gained a new tool
to use in order to confront my own biases that I may have about people from now
on,” said Isaiah Spencer-Williams, a civil engineering alumnus and rising
graduate student. “As a community builder, I think building relationships and
getting comfortable enough with people to have real conversations is a
quintessential skill that a lot of people aren’t willing to invest into.”
Eatman likened the dichotomy between diversity
and inclusion to an hourglass, with “diversity” at the top and “inclusion”
underneath. The bottleneck prohibiting the free flow of sand from one to the
other was marked “share, respect, appreciate.” In order to navigate intercultural
perspectives, he explained, we must pursue a shared goal, respect one another’s
identity and appreciate cultural differences.
“We have to be able to talk openly about
diversity,” said Eatman. “We need to be soft on people, but hard on barriers to
inclusion.”
Building
Communities and Ecosystems, Not Silos
James R. Martin II, PhD, U.S. Steel Dean of
Engineering, also discussed building community, specifically how participants
can work together as a team to pioneer a new educational paradigm. He discussed
how higher education is being disrupted and how as a greater community, we need
to determine what we value in education.
“We are all a part of the same community to
help solve these challenges,” he said. “Universities are supposed to be
platforms of upward social mobility. By not investing in higher education, we
are undervaluing the creation of new knowledge.”
In order to thrive, he said, higher education
must value diversity: “Diversity is critical because you need the gathered
perspective that not one person has,” he said. “We must build communities and
ecosystems in higher education, not silos.”
“The dean’s presence made a positive impact on
the participants,” says Wosu “Some participants felt the dean’s presence and
his remarks on diversity and inclusion were some of the highlights of the
event.”
Breaking
Barriers
Medeva Ghee, PhD, executive director of the
Leadership Alliance and an assistant professor of behavioral and social
sciences at Brown University, delivered the keynote address this year. Her
talk, entitled “The Leadership Alliance: Removing Barriers to Accelerate the
Diversification of the Research Workforce,” discussed the lack of diversity in
academia and research communities, and the importance of addressing this
concern.
The Leadership Alliance, a national consortium
of 35 institutions of higher education, provides programming to develop
underrepresented students into thought leaders in academia and industry.
Programs like this one, she explained, remove barriers that prevent
underrepresented students from pursuing careers in academia and in research, such
as workshops on how to market oneself for research careers, training activities
for faculty to learn to recruit and retain diverse talent, and grant writing
coaching groups to provide opportunity for junior faculty from minority-serving
institutions to develop proposals to fund research.
“These barriers are not new and have existed
for decades,” said Sossena Wood, BSEE ‘11 PhD BioE ‘18, Presidential
Postdoctoral Fellow in Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon
University. “It becomes very discouraging
at times but supportive networks like the Leadership Alliance allow us to have
a community that is equally invested in our success. As much as programs like the Leadership
Alliance support the development of URM graduate students for post-graduate careers
in academia and research, continual work and partnership must evolve to reform
the environments in which we choose to work.”
Ghee also led a workshop titled “Faculty as
Change Agents: You Got This!” The workshop provided a toolkit that can promote institutional
change in diversity and inclusion. Building a culture of change starts with
collaboration, an ecosystem informed by a university-wide strategic plan and
evidence-based programs.
“My biggest takeaway from the retreat was that
in order to continue to build an inclusive and integrated community in the
Swanson School of Engineering, efforts like this need to be supported and
mobilized,” says Spencer-Williams. “The dean often talks about being the
pioneers of a new educational system, and I think having conversations
surrounding not only inclusivity, but also realistic integration can help make
that transition.”
After Ghee’s keynote address, Eatman
reconvened with the group to help them gather their thoughts and discuss their
response to the topics that were addressed throughout the day. The group then
recognized four former PITT STRIVE fellows with the Pacesetter Award: Brandon
Jennings, MSCoE ‘16, PhD ECE ‘19; Harold Rickenbacker, PhD CEE ‘19; Florencio
Serrano Castillo, PhD ChemE ‘19; and Dr. Wood. The award honors them for
serving as a role model in the PITT STRIVE community and for their commitment
to the success of underrepresented minority graduate students in the Swanson
School.
This year’s PITT STRIVE retreat enacted the
“Five I’s of Inclusive Excellence” during its two-day run. The community got a
chance to come together and solidify its identity. Attendees interacted with
one another, asking tough questions and learning about one another’s
experiences. The speakers revealed ways to get involved in creating a more
inclusive culture and have a real impact on the environment at Pitt.
###
Brandon
Jennings, PhD
Jennings, a senior system engineer for Raytheon in
Tucson, Ariz., was the first PITT STRIVE Fellow to graduate from the program.
He participated in numerous programs encouraging diversity in STEM, teaching
robotics for three years for the INVESTING NOW program at Pitt. Jennings
published six papers and won several awards during his time at Swanson,
including K. Leroy Irvis Fellowship, the AGEP/PITT-STRIVE Fellowship and Chuck
Cooper Foundation Scholarship.
Harold
Rickenbacker, PhD
Rickenbacker enrolled in the Pre-PhD Program offered
by the Office of Diversity at Swanson in 2014. During his time at Swanson, he
was awarded the Senior Vice Chancellor for Engagement’s Partnerships of
Distinction Award in 2019, the National Science Foundation Emerging Frontiers
in Research and Innovation Scholar Grant Supplement Award in 2018, the Climate
& Urban Systems Partnership: Research Grant in 2017, the Mascaro Center for
Innovation Grant Award in 2016, and the Heinz Endowments Next Oxygen-eration
Grant Award in 2015. He published six papers, two of which list him as first
author.
Florencio
Serrano Castillo, PhD
Serrano Castillo joined the Department of Chemical and
Petroleum Engineering at Pitt as a PITT STRIVE Fellow in 2014. While earning
his doctorate, Serrano Castillo was first author on two peer-reviewed
publications and presented his work at several national and international
conferences. He joined Fourth Rivers Consulting, where he participated in
several engagements for healthcare startups in the Pittsburgh area. He was also
part of the winning team of the Pitt Challenge Healthcare Hackathon. Serrano
Castillo served two years as vice president of the Chemical Engineering
Graduate Student Association, two years as the Chemical Engineering Department
Representative to the Engineering Graduate Student Organization, and one year
as the Graduate Student Representative for Pitt SHPE. Serrano Castillo will be
starting a new role in industry as a clinical research scientist with Amgen at
the Clinical Pharmacology, Modeling and Simulations division, developing system
pharmacology models for the development of large molecule therapeutics for
various indications.
Sossena
Wood, PhD
Wood is a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow within the
Biomedical Engineering department at Carnegie Mellon University. As she earned
her doctorate in bioengineering at Pitt, she was a PITT STRIVE Fellow and
a K. Leroy Irvis and National GEM
Consortium Fellow. Additionally, Wood won a number of awards, including being
one of the University of Pittsburgh’s Rising Afriacan American Leaders, the
National Institutes of Health F31 award, the New Pittsburgh Courier’s FAB 40,
NSBE’s 2017 Mike Shinn Distinguished Member of the Year award, and Professional
Women’s Network award. She served two terms as the National Chairperson of the
National Society of Black Engineers. She is committed to engaging and
empowering underrepresented youth to pursue STEM degrees locally and globally.
Maggie Pavlick and Leah Russell, 8/28/2019
Contact: Paul Kovach