#298 – College and Career Connections: Women in STEM, with Lisette Terry, Structural Forensic Engineer

If you are listening to the podcast with your instructional team or would like to explore this topic more deeply, here are guiding questions to prompt your reflection:

• What do you know about engineering?
• How did you become interested in your current career?
• How can you help students discover new career opportunities?
• How can you introduce students to careers that they may not normally consider?
• How might you introduce a career in engineering to your students?
• Which of your students might be interested in engineering?

• STEM Teaching Tools (University of Washington Institute for Science and Math Education)
• STEM Careers Coalition (Discovery Education)
• Careers in Engineering & Applied Sciences (American Academy of Forensic Sciences)

#298 – College and Career Connections: Women in STEM, with Lisette Terry, Structural Forensic Engineer

AVID Open Access

40 Min

Keywords

Women in STEM, structural forensic engineer, education, career readiness, mentorship, role models, career fairs, STEM education, Panama Canal project, engineering challenges, dream advocacy.

Transcript

Lisette Terry 0:00
Being a woman of color in this field is even more rare than just being a woman. In every single company I’ve worked for, I’ve discovered that I make less than my male counterparts.

Rena Clark 0:14
The topic for today’s podcast is College and Career Connections: Women in STEM, with Lisette Terry, structural forensic engineer. Unpacking Education is brought to you by avid.org. AVID believes people learn through collaboration and community. To learn more about AVID, visit their website at avid.org. Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I’m Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann 0:47
I’m Paul Beckermann.

Winston Benjamin 0:49
And I’m Winston Benjamin. We are educators.

Paul Beckermann 0:52
And we’re here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 0:57
Education is our passport to the future.

Rena Clark 1:03
Our quote for today is from famous NASA astronaut Mae Jamison. She says, “Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination. Never limit others because of your own limited imagination.” All right, who would like to respond first today?

Paul Beckermann 1:20
This took me right back to an educational motivation course that I took a while back. They talked about the danger of self-limiting comments, things like “I can’t” or “I’m just . . .” or “I’m not good at that.” You know, that type of mindset, no matter where it comes from, that truly is limiting. It just kills confidence, kills motivation. So let’s not do that to ourselves. Let’s not do that to our colleagues. Let’s not do that to our kids, right? Let’s, let’s flip the script on that and build them up and say, “We can,” “We are,” and “We are good at . . .,” things like that. It makes a huge difference.

Winston Benjamin 1:55
This took me to a personal conversation. I remember as a kid growing up in the Bronx, there was a lot of people who said, “Oh, you’re from the Bronx. You’re not going to do X, Y, and Z.” Just because I was an urban kid, first-generation immigrant, there was a lot of expectations of not succeeding placed on me by teachers, by society. And of course, like you said, Paul, there’s sometimes that you take those on. But for me, I think the importance, like you said, is to flip the script, but it’s also for teachers to recognize that they are creating minimal opportunities, also known as microaggressions, for students that could kill dreams. And for me, I think this is important to remember, like, not to be a dream killer but to be a dream advocate. And as teachers, we can always try to do the best to advocate for our kids’ dreams. As wild as it may seem to us, it is a dream, and that’s what it’s supposed to be.

Paul Beckermann 2:51
Oh man, Winston, you had two T-shirts right there.

Rena Clark 2:53
I was like, there’s a T-shirt moment right there: “Dream Advocate.”

Paul Beckermann 2:56
“Dream Killer” and “Dream Advocate,” you got front and back.

Winston Benjamin 2:59
Hey, listen, that’s the . . .

Rena Clark 3:00
That’s a song; you got lyrics there to make a song. Paul, you gotta write a song called “Dream Advocate.” I’m waiting for that one.

Paul Beckermann 3:05
I think I’m gonna have to work on that, yeah.

Rena Clark 3:08
[Laughs] So I am very excited about today’s episode, and really the next few episodes. So we’re gonna start with a series of episodes exploring the journeys and achievements of women in STEM, and I am really excited to have Lisette Terry with us here today. She is a personal friend of mine as well. I’ve known her for a while, and I’ve always been in awe of the things that she does. And she, on top of that, all of that, is a distinguished structural forensic engineer, and she has 17 years of structural engineering experience. She played an important role in significant projects ranging from designs of residential structures, and this part, next part, is really cool, contributing to the Panama Canal’s third set of locks, which I learned all about because my parents listened to an entire, I don’t know, like podcast series on the locks because they were traveling the Panama Canal. So I’m very, I learned a lot about it. And today we will look into how she entered into her STEM career, impact of her work, and just her insights into being a woman in the engineering world. So, Lisette, welcome to the show.

Lisette Terry 4:20
Thank you so much for hosting me today. That’s, you know, really an honor for me that you thought of me, and glad to be here so I can help pass along some information to the other ladies who are coming up into this field.

Rena Clark 4:35
Mhm. So, about that, if you could just share a little bit about your educational journey, maybe some inspirations. What kind of pushed you into a career in engineering?

Lisette Terry 4:47
Sure, yeah, so I was kind of one of the rare ones who figured out what I wanted to do when I was 15 years old. So, you know, I would say that, you know, that’s not going to be everybody. A lot of people figure out what they want to do when they finally get to college. But engineering was something that, you know, I just kind of thought of. I was taking this class called MESA, math, engineering, science, achievement. And it was, it was the class that changed my entire, you know, career path, where I decided I’m going to be a civil engineer one day, and we had a career day in that class in 10th grade. And you know, my mom always told me, “You got to find a career that’s always going to be stable and, you know, you make a decent amount of money to take care of yourself.” And that, you know. I was like, well, I’ve always been fascinated with buildings. I want to know how they’re constructed, how they’re designed, why don’t they fall down all the time. And so I was like, well, that’s a civil engineer, right? And so I decided that day, I am going to be a civil engineer. And I realized, you know, at that young age, as long as there’s people on this planet, they are going to need civil engineers. So it’s a career that will last me my entire life.

Rena Clark 6:01
I think we got the same message from our moms [Laughs]. You need to be able to take care of yourself, not rely on anybody else. That was always it.

Lisette Terry 6:09
Exactly, yeah, exactly. So I kind of, that kind of, you know, pushed me into making sure that I had the prerequisites that I needed in high school before applying for engineering at University of Washington. When I got to University of Washington, my eyes were really opened with the crazy math and science classes that you have to take for prerequisites to get into engineering, calculus and physics and chemistry. But it was all, it was challenging, but it’s what I love to do. I was never great at, like, language-arts- and world-history-type subjects. If you look at my SAT scores, the math side was almost perfect, and the reasoning side, or the reading side, and all of the other side was average, I will say. So, but yeah, so I, you know, I went to UW and applied for a civil engineering degree when I was a sophomore there, which, I would also advise students not to put all your eggs in one basket, because I nearly didn’t get into that major. They only accept 120 people a year, and I was like number 121 on the list. So I was very lucky that one or two people did not accept the offer and went to a different school for that major, and I was able to get in. And once I was in civil engineering, oh, my grades went super high. They went almost to 4.0s. [Laughs] The prereqs were definitely challenging. So I’ll say, you know, don’t give up. If you really enjoy math and science, I’m pretty certain you’re going to enjoy a career that challenges you in the STEM field.

Winston Benjamin 7:59
I really appreciate that you are honest about like your ups and downs academically, because, like, a lot of times when people are successful, they forget to tell the truth about the road and the journey itself. So I appreciate you being honest about the journey. I’m going to kind of take us back to our quote, in terms of having an idea of limiting yourself. I know that in my life, it was important to have a role model, to see myself in a space, or that I can make it to the end of something, and I can imagine that it’s similar in STEM. Did you have any role models or mentors who influenced you along the way, as you were going through schools, through those up and downs, that journey of life?

Lisette Terry 8:39
Well, I will say that my mom was my biggest advocate. She actually had the most important job in the world, which is a teacher. I believe teachers do have the most important job in the world. She was an English teacher, so. [Winston laughs] Not graded. But she was, you know, she was definitely my biggest advocate, and she taught me to be strong. She was a single parent. She just was, you know, this amazing hero to me in my life. Unfortunately, she left this world too early when I was 18 years old during my first year of college. So she never got to see me graduate, but she knew that I was going into this civil engineering field. And then, you know, throughout the, you know, through my college years and throughout my career, I, you know, I’ve always kind of wanted that motherly figure, which there are basically zero in engineering. There’s a few. So I, you know, I wanted to highlight a few names at University of Washington, Dorothy Reed, Professor Reed, she was my wind and wood teacher, and she was just always there with her door wide open for me. She said, you know, come ask me any question you want. Whereas I felt some of the other professors were a little bit more harsh and like, “You should know this already.” But Dorothy Reed, she was great, and she loved me as a student, and she really helped me kind of figure out some of the extracurricular classes that I wanted to take in my master’s degree there, and then I’ve been, so, since I started my career, I’ve been at five different companies, which is something I also, you know, for students who have no idea about what careers are like, there’s a lot of people who stay in their career for a long time and stay at one job forever. Which is great. So, you know, you can get really comfortable doing that, but I’ve kind of been around the block. I’ve got to design a lot of cool, different types of buildings, lots of different materials. And every time you go to a new company, generally, you get a pay raise. So that is something I will just throw in there, you know. [Winston laughs] My fifth company now, and, you know, some of the women that I’ve worked with, the one thing I did want to mention is that since I’ve been in this engineering field for 17, 18 years now, I have never worked with another Black female structural engineer in one of my companies. They are very rare. And so, but a lot of my mentors were women, and some of them women of color, just not, you know, somebody that I personally identify with. I am mixed. I’m half Black, half White. And it is just extremely rare to find somebody who looks like me in this field. So I kind of gravitated towards different women. One, her name is Ardel Jala, she was becoming a mom when I started my career, and I helped her with one of her big projects at Magnusson Klemencic Associates, where I worked. Then a few other—when I moved on to Tetra Tech, that’s where I worked on the Panama Canal project. And Sabet Vallejo and Lois Loesch were also great women who were about 10 years, 10 to 15 years more senior than me that were always just there for answering questions and more, you know, gentle personality. When I moved on into forensics, actually my first job in forensics, at CASE Forensics, I will say one of my best mentors ever was a male. His name is Mike Bramhall, and he’s just one of the best engineers in our state, or probably in our country. He’s super smart, but he’s also really nice. And he showed me how to design wood structures, because I’d been working in concrete and steel for so long. I took wood back in college. I’m like, I need some help here. And he was great at really sitting down with me and, you know, walking me through some engineering, you know, designs and details, and just being . . . he wanted to make sure that the work that I was doing was quality work, right? Because we’re in, I was in forensics, some of the projects that I work on now are like litigation projects, so we have to be very careful about what we’re writing down, how we’re doing our calculations, you know, what we’re putting in writing. And he was very, very good at kind of navigating that, you know, me through that. And then my partner in crime, Cecelia Guess, who’s actually younger than me, but we went to college together, and we worked—she’s the one who brought me into forensics. So we have navigated now through CASE Forensics, a company called Degenkolb, and now we’re both at Young and Associates Engineering Services, and we’ve gone through these different companies together. And she is awesome. We lean on each other a lot, working on projects together and holding each other up, supporting each other. And I just wanted to throw out two other names. Laurie Johnston at Degenkolb was amazing. She’s a senior principal there, the only senior principal that’s a female—or actually no, one of two. She’s one of two. She spent her whole career at that company. It is a good company, but it just was not going to work out for myself and for Cecelia. So now we’re at Young and Associates Engineering Services, which, we work with our first female boss ever in our career. Her name is Michelle Couture, and she is an amazing architect. I love getting to work with her. She’s super smart, super witty and quick, and she’s just a lovely person overall. So a lot of, you know, as you can see, all these women have had a major influence, impact on me during my career. And then there, there is one man in there. But, you know, I would say 90% of the people that I work with are men.

Paul Beckermann 14:48
You know, that, obviously, for me, that’s not the same experience I’ve had, because, you know, [laughs] I’m a guy. And I’m just curious how that experience was for you, being, you know, one of the few women in a male-dominated field. Did that present any specific challenges as you went through that you experienced?

Lisette Terry 15:08
Absolutely.

Paul Beckermann 15:08
And if so, what did you do to kind of push through some of that?

Lisette Terry 15:13
Well, I, you know, I distinctly remember when I became a mother and having my my daughter back in 2012, and I had took, you know, 12 weeks off of work for maternity leave, 3 months. And, you know, I wasn’t getting paid for any of that. It was unpaid. There was no . . . I had to use whatever vacation time I had, and the rest was just unpaid. And you know, I’d hear things, people in the office like, “Well, why should you get paid for stuff, for having a kid? If I don’t want to have a kid, why should we be paying you for something like that?” And then, you know, and staying home, I saw, for maternity leave, I saw some of my male counterparts, you know, getting promoted when I was coming back to work, and I was not getting promoted. And I, you know, I will say that in every single company I’ve worked for, I’ve discovered that I make less than the my male counterparts. Yes. So that’s unfortunate, and I know this because I’m blunt, and I will ask people that question sometimes, because I want to know. And then I will talk to my, you know, my manager or boss about that. But, you know, another part of it is being a woman of color in this field is even more rare than just being a woman. So, you know, I’ve had, in the recent weeks, I’ve had a contractor say that I am unqualified, that I’m incompetent. I’ve had a roofing owner say that, you know, basically the same thing, that I don’t know what I’m talking about. They disagree with my opinions. And it’s, you know, I have to deal with this, and I have to remind myself that it’s not me that’s the problem. That, you know, I do a really good job at my job. I put together sound reports, I put together sound drawings for my clients, and I just have to remember that the people who are trying to counter me in that are, they have some ego issues that I can’t help them with, so.

Paul Beckermann 17:34
Yeah, it sounds like that quote that we heard at the beginning, you know, people are trying to put limits. And good for you for pushing through that, because I can tell just listening to you the quality of things you do.

Lisette Terry 17:45
Oh, thank you.

Rena Clark 17:47
Yeah, so thinking . . . we are educators, and we want to talk a bit about that, and you talked a little bit about your experience in 10th grade, so maybe you want to expand on that, but thinking about, what are strategies that maybe you could think educators might use to encourage more young women, especially young women of color, to pursue careers in engineering or just STEM fields in general?

Lisette Terry 18:11
Yeah, that’s a great question, because there are things that teachers can do to help their students along this journey. One of the, you know, one of the things that I would let teachers know is to, you know, be on the lookout for, or educators to be on the lookout for students who are really excelling in math and science, but they may get left on the wayside when it comes to these STEM careers, because maybe they don’t look like the people who are in those careers, or maybe they hang out with a group of people that don’t look like they would be in those careers. You know, I have a, you know, wide range of friends, and the friends that I hung out with in high school are not engineers at all, but I was really excelling in math and science, and there was one teacher who recognized that in MESA, and, you know, really help prop me up to decide on becoming a civil engineer. So I would say, you know, be on the lookout for students who are really, have a—even if they don’t feel like it’s their passion, that they’re just doing a really good job and excelling in it, and letting them know, you know, that they should pursue a career or, you know, think about opportunities that might be available for them, like career fairs. Or, you know, there’s a lot of stuff that firms are doing now, like DEI-related stuff in engineering, where they’re hosting events, you know, encouraging students to attend events that might be available. But also, you know, I think that for me, when I tell students, when I ask, when I come into a classroom, I do, I go down to Enumclaw once a year, and I talk to the high school and sometimes the middle school students down there. And I always ask them, “Do you know what a structural engineer is?” And most of them are like, “No.” And so I say, “Well, you know, every single building that you’ve ever stepped foot in, this school, your house, your library, your work, your church, every single one of those buildings has been designed by a structural engineer. And it’s not, you know, the contractors know how to build them, but the buildings are standing because a structural engineer has analyzed all of those loads that the build—and traced those loads down to the foundation, and designing the connections that connect all the framing together.” So I kind of try to explain it to them in that way, and it kind of opens their eyes a little bit of, “Oh, this building I’m in was designed by a structural engineer, what?”

Winston Benjamin 20:49
So teachers don’t know what they don’t know. I’m not an engineer. I’ve never taken classes in engineering. And there are a lot of times we’re asked to bring in real-world examples into the classroom. And again, like I said, I’m not really sure, I can dream of things, I can think about what I know, but are there any ways that you can think about some of the things that you’ve worked out, worked on, and think about how teachers can integrate some of that, i.e., provide us some examples of real-world engineering problems that we could, some of our listeners could try to use to inspire some students in their classes?

Lisette Terry 21:29
Absolutely. Well, there’s the popsicle bridge contest, so, where you can use popsicle sticks and a few other materials, and you can show your students, you know, kind of what a truss might look like, which is, you know, a series of triangles and squares all put together that form a bridge, and then you place, you know, some weights on the middle of the bridge and see which one can withstand the biggest load. You know, that’s a really fun one for students. And then also, and this might be a little bit more hard to come by, but, so the the Structural Engineers Association of Washington is an organization here in Washington, and they, we’ve been, I’ve actually been trying to help them get some more shake tables for their organization that we want to be in the different cities, Seattle, Spokane, Tri-Cities, and I can’t remember where the other one, maybe Olympia or somewhere. So, they want to have four shake tables that they can use for educational settings, which, it’s just a table that models some of the earthquakes that have actually happened. Like, you know, the earthquake, the Nisqually earthquake that was here; or the Christchurch earthquake back in 2011, that was a pretty significant one; the Japan one. So it actually models what that shaking was. And then you can have students build little, like, either popsicle models or what I use is, you know the little skewers that, for, like, roasting hot dogs or something, or just roasting stuff on the barbecue? Those skewers with marshmallows, you know, so that the marshmallows are the connection points, and you can build structures with that, and then put it on the shake table and see how they perform.

Winston Benjamin 23:20
See, I appreciate those examples, because marshmallows and sticks, those skewer sticks are easy things that people can get, right? Like sometimes, for me, I think when, and I think this goes back to my I don’t know what I don’t know. I’m always thinking, I have to make it so big. I have to make these brilliant ideas. I have to do these things that are so STEM-y focused, but that really helps teachers like me think about, like, I can use what I have. So I appreciate that.

Lisette Terry 23:49
Yeah, and you want to make it fun for the kids.

Rena Clark 23:53
I just want to add in, though, because I’ve seen people do, like, the marshmallow challenge. But the thing is to connect it. Like Lisette said, kids don’t know what a structural engineer is, so to make a clear connection, and we’re working on this, and I know all you teachers in Washington have to get STEM clock hours. To get STEM clock hours, it has to be connected to career, because we’re trying to make that connection of, this is fun, but this is now connected to this career. This is actually something that you could do.

Paul Beckermann 24:22
And that’s that whole opportunity knowledge thing that we talked about here at AVID, that if kids don’t have the opportunity knowledge, they don’t know what opportunities exist.

Rena Clark 24:30
Exactly.

Paul Beckermann 24:31
They have to have that doorway, or they have to know that there’s a doorway that they can even walk through. And I’m kind of curious, along those lines, are there any changes that you’d like to see in STEM education that maybe could enhance diversity, inclusion within that field?

Lisette Terry 24:46
Um, you know, there—well, I would like to see more STEM careers, you know, firms getting involved in the schools, like hands-on work in the schools, volunteers. DEI scholarships that are for students of color, or, you know, just BIPOC students. And I think that that’s one way that really can help get people, like, notice the field, right? You know, bringing it to the classroom really is a great way to kind of hit a big range of students at one time. So I think partnering, you know, the teachers partnering with the STEM firms is a really great way to introduce them and have, you know, maybe a career day with, a STEM Career Day, where you have booths all set up with different people in different STEM careers, and they get to talk about what they do. That is also really helpful for students, because there’s so many cool things like robotics and like, you know, like, right now, AI is a big thing. So people, students are very interested in learning about stuff like that.

Paul Beckermann 26:07
I’m curious because you’ve done a little bit of that personally. I mean, you’ve gone back and made that connection. Have you noticed any interactions when you went back into the classroom between you and maybe some kids who might not have seen themselves in that spot unless you came in?

Lisette Terry 26:24
You know, I have. A few of the young ladies, I’ve seen their eyes kind of light up, and I specifically mentioned them when I was in the classroom. I said, I’m glad to see you ladies in this classroom, because there’s not a lot of us in this field. So I, you know, encourage educators to, like, specifically call it out and say, you know, especially for women and for people of color, like, there’s not a lot of the diversity in the field, and we want to see more of you. And bringing in somebody who looks like them is really helpful as well.

Rena Clark 27:00
Yeah, I appreciate that so much, and it’s interesting just to hear you talk. We constantly are talking about the importance of relationship, and I feel like it’s come up so much, even beyond education and career, how important relationships are with people, those mentors, those role models. And, as you said, those people that you feel like you can go and talk to and will listen and care and won’t make you feel like you should already know it. Relationships are still important. [Laughs] I just think it’d be fun. We talked about it a little bit earlier. You’ve been involved in so many different projects. Can you just pick maybe one of your favorite projects, or maybe even one of your most challenging projects, and how you approached it?

Lisette Terry 27:44
Well, I would say the Panama Canal was the biggest project I ever worked on. It took 6 years of my life. And it was definitely challenging, mainly because, well, this was way pre-COVID, so back in, you know, I think I started there in 2009, and I left Tetra Tech in 2017, and 6 years of that was working on the Panama Canal. And that, I mean, it was hard, just because being in an office 5 days a week is something that’s tough for me. I work fully remotely now, which is amazing, and I love it. But I would say hybrid work is much easier on people right now, at least post-COVID. But you know, that project, it was just so massive, and there was, looking back at all of the engineers who worked on it, I realized, actually recently, that there was only two structural female engineers on that project, myself and then Sabet, who was one of the people I mentioned, who was like my mentor. Because I felt like I could go to her if I had any questions, because some of the guys I worked with were mean, and they would just, like, look at me like I was stupid, or they would, you know, kind of say little snide remarks about why didn’t I, you know, what am I doing. And it just felt really good having somebody there that I could trust, that I could talk to, and that wasn’t going to look down on me. But that project, it was, we designed the water-saving basin structures, which is something that’s kind of new in this, for massive scale like this. So these water-saving basins, they actually reduce the water usage as the ships go through the canal, and the water from the upper chamber—there’s three chambers. So, actually, I should take it a little step back. There’s a big lake in the middle of the Pacific and the Atlantic Ocean. The lake is called Lake Gatun. It’s in Panama. The Pacific Ocean is on one side, the Atlantic Ocean is on the other side, and the difference in elevation is 100 feet. So you have to get the ships up 100 feet, through the lake, and then down 100 feet. And all of the water that’s used for the canal is freshwater from that lake, which is all of their, you know, irrigation water, drinking water, like everything that Panama uses, that comes from Lake Gatun. So if they opened up a third lane on both sides of the, you know, one in the Pacific, one in the Atlantic, they were going to use more water than they were going to get every year, so they needed to figure out a way on how to reuse some of that water. So the basins, essentially, they operate off of the difference in elevation of the water flow. There’s no pumps or anything. But as the ships go through, there’s a series of valves that open, and some of the water goes rushing into this basin that’s adjacent to the chamber and fills up that basin before the other half of the water gets dumped down to the next chamber. So they reuse, I think it’s almost 40 or 50% of the water every time a ship goes through. And those, each basin, there’s three of them, one for each of the chambers, and each basin is the size of 14 football fields. So they are massive structures. And I had to learn different code to design those. It’s like the Army Corps of Engineers, the codes that they use, they have these massive concrete structures. So we, it’s not the typical ACI code that we use for concrete, reinforced concrete structures as structural engineers. But that, so that project, it was just, it was so long. We started from the beginning, but I got to see it all the way to the very end. And, you know, checking shop drawings at the end to make sure that they’re building what we designed. And I got to go one time and see the, you know, the final product right before it opened up in 2016.

Paul Beckermann 31:56
That’s so cool.

Rena Clark 31:57
Yeah.

Paul Beckermann 31:59
And you know what, the Panama Canal is kind of like a tool. So let’s hop into our toolkit.

Lisette Terry 32:05
[Laughs] Nice.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 32:07
Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? What is in the toolkit? What’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann 32:18
All right, tool time! Winston, what you got?

Winston Benjamin 32:21
So going back to my “I don’t know what I don’t know.” For some teachers who are looking for STEM teaching tools, there’s a—check out this website called stemteachingtools.org. It provides a little bit of activities, things that you can think about, ways that you can incorporate new lessons into your classroom. So that’s one thing that you can try to, if you don’t know much, try to get some experts to give you a new way to bring something in.

Paul Beckermann 32:47
Rena, how about you?

Rena Clark 32:49
One of the resources I’ve used and really appreciate is the Discovery Education STEM Careers Coalition. And the main thing I like with them is they have these awesome video career—so you can kind of look at different careers, and they have a diverse range of videos, and as Lisette mentioned, with lots of different diverse people in different roles, that just give them, like, a little bit of intro, and they’re very digestible and short. So the videos are great, and there’s a whole bunch of other things in there. So it’s STEMcareerscoalition.discovery.education.com.

Paul Beckermann 33:21
Cool, and we’ll link that on our description of the podcast here. Yeah, I’m going to put a plug in for Episode 188 of Unpacking Education, from last spring. We had a sophomore in high school on, Ruby Arun . . .

Rena Clark 33:33
Oh, wow.

Paul Beckermann 33:33
. . . who created Mission:MathMinds, this national thing to get more kids into STEM education. It’s like a perfect marriage with this episode. She says that their organization’s purpose and mission is to empower girls in STEM. And she’s doing incredible things.

Rena Clark 33:56
She is amazing. She was great.

Paul Beckermann 33:58
It was really cool. She’s a junior now and still plugging along. I just looked today, the website’s still up and active. They’re still doing good work. So if you want an inspiring story, go back and check out Episode 188, Mission:MathMinds with Ruby Arun. All right, Lisette, you get a chance too. Is there anything that you’d like to drop in our toolkit today?

Lisette Terry 34:19
Oh, let’s see. Oh, man, there’s so many things, you know, that I could possibly think of. I would say, you know, one thing, this is a tool that I use every day. If kids do want to go into STEM fields, I will say forensics, which I am in now, is the—forensics is when you’re investigating damage to something. So I investigate damage to structures, because I’m a structural engineer. But there, you know, there’s forensics in all the STEM fields. So one of the things that I use in my toolkit is a camera every single day. And, you know, I had to be educated on how to use that camera. So it would be a fun little thing for students to get to learn about forensics, and have a camera there, and learn how to take photos and what they’re looking for in the photos. I think that would be fun for the kids, at least.

Winston Benjamin 35:21
I mean, I like that. That sounds like a something I’d like to do. CSI, baby, CSI! Sorry, that was one of my favorite shows back in the day. I used to love that show. I usedto love that show.

Lisette Terry 35:32
Yeah, you’re looking for that smoking gunshot.

Winston Benjamin 35:34
You know what I mean? Like, that’s so cool. But it’s time for our one thing, the thing that’s still roaming around in our minds, and, Lisette, you’ve given us so many good things to think about, including diversity, equity, and inclusion of many of our students. So, Rena or Paul, what’s going on in your mind? What’s your one thing? Rena.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 35:37
It’s time for that one thing.

Rena Clark 35:55
I just guess, through this whole conversation, even back to the beginning, when you were talking, Winston, earlier. But just this idea of dream advocate, because Lisette, you shared, and nowhere along your journey did it sound easy. It sounded like you took—you were lucky; you did have, like, an advocate and a role model, but you faced so much adversity. But there were all these people along the way, but in the end, at the same time, just having perseverance and really knowing that you could do it and being a self-advocate. So I love that idea of just being your own dream advocate. Yes, you need others, but you also have to have that persistence.

Lisette Terry 36:49
Yes. I would say, be your own best friend.

Paul Beckermann 36:52
Mm. There you go.

Lisette Terry 36:54
That’ll get you a long way.

Paul Beckermann 36:56
I mean, my thought was along the same line. And for the teachers that are listening out there, build these kids up. Notice them. I know Lisette said, you know, notice the ones who are excelling. Maybe the quiet ones in the corner, you know, that don’t have the confidence that you believe they can have and should have, help build them up. Be that dream advocate, like Rena said and Winston brought up at the beginning, and I think we can make huge differences as teachers in the classroom.

Winston Benjamin 37:24
I’m going to throw in check your implicit bias. I know when I think about scientist and engineer I think about Einstein. So again, I sometimes will also push my male students into a thing. So I need to be aware of how I engage and how the limits that I put on my students. Going back to the quote in the beginning, don’t limit our kids because we don’t know what’s out there for them. Lisette, you’ve already dropped one thing. Do you want to drop another thing in our . . .?

Lisette Terry 37:55
Well, I do love the implicit bias thing. And one thing I will say about, you know, women in STEM careers, implicit bias against women. One of those things is that you get stuck doing, like, admin-type tasks quite often, or just helping out in the office that has nothing to do with engineering. And when you do this over and over and over like I’ve done, there’s no congratulations, there’s no reward. But, you know, I feel like if it’s, and I will say this, if it’s a White male, who’s more senior, who’s doing some of these admin-type things, or mentoring, or cleaning up after somebody’s dishes, or something like that. You know, somebody will say, “Oh, you’re doing great, thank you for doing that.” But for women, it’s kind of an expected thing, so that implicit bias is still, I mean, it’s there everywhere, right? In many different facets. But that’s one thing to be on the lookout for, for women, is, don’t sign yourself up for too many tasks that are not related to what you want to do in your career.

Rena Clark 39:05
[Sighs] Yes, as we both know, we have daughters that are pretty similar age, and I’m constantly thinking about all these things for my daughter, that I don’t think about for my sons, quite frankly. But it’s good to think about and then think about our students and what we’re asking them to do sometimes, because I still observe that in classrooms, that implicit bias definitely comes out. And then having those conversations, and coaching conversations. But, Lisette, I appreciate you so much for coming on and sharing your story and just kind of exciting us with your career, and hopefully our listeners will take something away and inspire the next engineer or the next woman that will enter the STEM field. So thanks so much for being here today.

Lisette Terry 39:55
Thank you. Yeah, we need more of you women, so join me.

Rena Clark 40:01
Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin 40:04
We invite you to visit us at avidopenaccess.org, where you can discover resources to support student agency, equity, and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future-ready learners.

Paul Beckermann 40:19
We’ll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education.

Rena Clark 40:24
And remember, go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin 40:27
Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann 40:29
You make a difference.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai