Hey yall!
I just realized that I jumped right into this blog with no sort of introduction whatsoever. My bad! Hi. I'm Alexandra Garr-Schultz (also know by about 1,000 nicknames) and I'm a QEM/TDIS summer scholar at the NSF this year. Back in my "real" life, I'm a PhD candidate in Social Psychology at Northwestern University. My research all centers around the ways that people understand themselves and how the groups we belong to (race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) affect how we navigate the world. If I could sum it up in one sentence, I'd say my goal is to highlight the challenges that folks from minority backgrounds face when we're just trying to live our authentic lives and to find solutions to those challenges.
Before I came back to grad school, I was a software engineer at a large tech company in Silicon Valley. I couldn't help but notice how differently I experienced that space than my white male colleagues, and at some point I jumped ship to do research and find answers to all the questions I had. I believe that everyone should have access and opportunities in STEM fields-- and that not only should we have access, but folks shouldn't have to sacrifice their mental health or happiness to be successful. To this end, I spend a lot of time thinking about pipelines, serving on panels for students interested in STEM careers, and planning diversity programs and campus visits for students who I hope have will have a slightly easier time than the generations before them.
In graduate school, this type of work isn't always valued. We're really encouraged to focus exclusively on our personal research and publishing academic papers, because service work won't help graduates get jobs. Sometimes, though, you have to do what feels right to you. I've found that when you do, the communities you care about will notice. I was honored to be selected as the 2018 Student Leadership Award winner at the national Women of Color in STEM conference, and it was the most validated I've ever felt. It took a village yall!
Anyway, all of this brings me back to my summer at the National Science Foundation. Last week, I got to sit in on a meeting of the Committee for Equal Opportunity in Science and Engineering (or CEOSE, as the acronym-filled NSF refers to it). This is a committee of appointees who get together and review the latest research about diversity and participation in STEM, think about how those goals dovetail with national initiatives, and contribute their perspectives into a biennial report to congress. Before QEM, I didn't even know this committee existed. Now, I'd love to end up participating in it one day.
The CEOSE members all have other jobs, but they are charged with carefully considering and helping to shape national policies and initiatives for a goal that I both personally and professional support. That's incredible. People say you can only dream about what you know to envision, and thanks to QEM I have one more pathway to add to that list.