This year’s celebration of women in the past and present for Women’s History Month during March saw the theme of “Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future”. There are many such women on Anderson University’s campus who are taking charge on the path to sustainability, including within the realm of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Here are the perspectives of just a few of them who have taken the time to join the celebration of women in the past, present, and future.
Derricka Wolfe: Trailblazing with the Female Touch
“A sustainable future is when we give it our all for the people and the environment, paving the way for women to voice their opinions,” Derricka Wolfe said, a junior from Jamaica who studies civil engineering at Anderson University. Among all the fields of study she explored, she got into civil engineering because she was intrigued by how infrastructure shapes everyday life, from how people move around to how they interact with their communities. This human aspect is significant to her as the decisions made by engineers impact safety, accessibility, and quality of life in a community. “I want my work to create spaces that are inclusive, sustainable, and beneficial for the people who use them,” she said.
The path isn’t easy, but she takes after a woman in her life who trailblazer into unfamiliar terrain: her mother. According to Derricka, Yvonne Walker Wolfe became a pastor against the tide of the culture around her that dismissed and discouraged women from doing so. This meant that there were many places where she would be the only woman in the room.
This act of bringing a folding chair to a table not yet accommodating for women is something Derricka herself runs into as a woman in STEM. When she faces such situations, she makes sure that her ideas are heard and that she is engaged in the conversation, guaranteeing that her voice and the voices of other women are represented and belong there too.
Derricka emphasizes on the feminine touch in innovation, and how it is needed in spheres like civil engineering, from appearances to inclusive functions. She believes that women can introduce a more fashionable, caring, and practical touch to the everyday spaces and things we use in our lives. An initiative on campus such as a garden for students with a green thumb or decorating the Valley in flowers is one of the many ways that she believes this can be incorporated on campus.
Vanessa Harrold: Science, Fiction & SWE
“We’ve seen so much being discovered in the realm of science that has been prompted by science fiction,” said Vanessa Harrold, a senior in mechatronics engineering in the electrical track. She will be heading to John Hopkins University in the fall for her graduate program as she gets closer and closer to her dream, designing satellites. This passion for satellites stemmed from the sci-fi influence of the 1980s, a niche culture that her parents grew up on. Harrold recognized the curious relationship between science fiction and the sphere of science in the past 20 years, drawing her into the idea of turning fiction into reality.
She was also inspired by the women in her life and in history who carved out spaces for themselves to participate in STEM. In history, Harrold fondly remembers Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, the three African-American women in NASA who inspired the book Hidden Figures by Margot Shetterly and its film adaptation that came out during her middle school days. She was also inspired by Natalie Portman, who famously studied psychology in preparation for her degree on the set of Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones. But her most personal example is her grandmother, who lived in Anderson her whole life and was one of the IT staff who helped to install computers in the local hospital and worked here for a long time. Harrold admires her grandmother for doing incredible things in technology during a time where it wasn’t common or encouraged for a woman to do so.
Caroline Baker, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and faculty advisor to the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) at AU, is adored dearly by Harrold and the other members of SWE. She helps her students navigate the world of engineering, taking the SWE members to the SWE National Conference and connecting her students with other professionals in the field. Harrold has gotten close with her in the last few years, going from a scared freshman to someone she can personally talk about, whether it is SWE, life, or even cats.
For Harrold, being a woman on the way to the world of satellites means that a sustainable initiative comes from the way materials are used. Taking a look at the old satellites shot up into space and the materials that have become “trash” reminds her of the beginning of the Disney film Wall-E, where there’s a coating of trash surrounding the Earth, and she would love to reuse or study those materials to see what can be learnt and used from them.
Dr. Renfang Taylor: Curiosity and Calling
“If your experiment goes wrong or something doesn’t work, this is a good opportunity. That’s why they call it REsearch, because you come back and redo it,” said Renfang Taylor, an associate professor of biology at AU. To Taylor, biology is fascinating, a peek into the miracles of creation. Curiosity given by God guided her through the world of science, from organic chemistry and medicine to biology and teaching.
She is intrigued by the concept of development in living things, especially on a microscopic level. Ideas such as how cells know what to become and how God fearfully and wonderfully made humans is one of the many reasons biology excites her. Though challenges like testing hypotheses require patience and perseverance, it is also why she finds the cycle of research very rewarding.
Taylor emphasizes how the stories of Nobel Prize winners can inspire people to create new ideas. Some of the winners who inspire her include Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier for the invention of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system, and Barbara McClintock for discovering jumping genes, a concept later supported by evolutionary biologist Margaret Kidwell’s research. She recognizes that ideas leading to breakthroughs such as these stem from interactions between researchers and professionals from other departments, and she would like to see more of these kinds of interactions on campus in order to spark new ideas.