Access to Advancement, Part 1: Entry Point! Opens Doors and Launches Women Into STEM Education Programs and Careers
(fighter jet sound)
Allison Dunne: Although the fighter jets are taking off and landing all around her, Susannah Calhoun is working on a project much closer to the ground. I met Susannah at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, where she was part of a science team analyzing West Coast fisheries using satellite data. She'd applied for the internship via Entry Point!, a program for undergraduate and graduate students with disabilities.
Susannah Calhoun: It's an amazing experience. I wanted a good internship for the summer. It's definitely within the science field. I feel like no matter where you are going in science academia, working at NASA for the summer on a project is something that looks really amazing on your resume as well as I'm getting more experience in doing research. I do have background in marine biology 'cause that is part of what I've had to take for my general biology degree.
Allison Dunne: Susannah is a biology major with a specialization in infectious diseases, at Smith College, a liberal arts college for women in Massachusetts. Although she does not plan to pursue marine biology, her career direction does involve staying in science, perhaps in a lab looking into prosthetics on a molecular level.
Susannah's plans would ultimately count her among the more than 90 percent of Entry Point! alumni who are in STEM fields, STEM being short for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. That's according to Virginia Stern, director of Entry Point!, a program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She says the goal is:
Virginia Stern: To be a starting point, in fact, an entry point, for high-achieving students with disabilities to continue and advance in their education and careers in STEM.
Allison Dunne: It is Stern's hope the paid internships help students land their first STEM jobs, and she points out that several Entry Point! interns do receive job offers in the places where they intern.
Entry Point! internships are competitive. Stern says an Entry Point! applicant not only studies STEM in college, but also generally has a minimum grade-point average of 3-point-0, two faculty recommendations, and is a U.S. citizen.
Susannah, who is from Brooklyn, New York, is part of the one-quarter to one-third of Entry Point! interns who are women. She had applied for the internship while studying abroad in Scotland, with the help of a mentor back at college.
Allison Dunne: How important is it to have a mentor?
Susannah Calhoun: I think very, very important. My advisor at Smith College, who is actually a man, but, he's been amazingly helpful with getting me recommendations for my internships, talking to me about things. I actually just spoke to him a couple of times when I was in Scotland to get all my internship stuff done, but then we would talk about what was going on in Scotland, how my classes were going, how things were. And I think it's just really great to have someone in your field who's helping you pursue your interest, who knows what's out there for you, and helping you pursue things. It's extremely important to have someone in your corner who has the knowledge that you need.
Allison Dunne: Entry Point!'s Virginia Stern says mentors play critical roles during the internships, though the roles vary. For example, a certain internship may involve one key mentor, while at another site, the intern would report to several mentors and advisors. No matter the arrangement, one thing is clear: mentors can help open doors to careers.
Susannah Calhoun had a mentor at Langley, as well as an advisor at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Susannah credits her NASA mentors with providing problem-solving guidance, and teaching her more about science. Susannah says she also has role models: her mom for one, who she describes as a rock, along with two female biology teachers back in high school, where her interest in biology took root.
Susannah Calhoun: I took biology my first year, freshman year, and really liked it. I was surprised, I was like, oh mom, look, I'm good at science, 'cause before that I had been really into English.
Allison Dunne: And here's another reason for her interest in science:
Susannah Calhoun: Being disabled, and being a below-the-knee amputee, wanting to know what, perhaps, was the reason for my congenital birth defect, how exactly is a prosthesis helping me and how it can simulate and function like a natural, real leg. And, yeah, just sort of understanding, I think, the dynamics of my amputation, my disability.
Allison Dunne: Have you come to understand that?
Susannah Calhoun: Yeah, I would say so, certainly. And, I have a great prosthetist who is excellent, actually. I'm actually picking up a new leg tomorrow. It should be at the rental office and sitting there waiting for me. So yeah. (giggles)
Allison Dunne: She jokes and exudes confidence now, but says it took her some time.
Susannah Calhoun: Now I've come to a point where I am totally comfortable with myself, but growing up in... Being a teenager is hard, first of all. Being a teenage girl, secondly, with a below-the-knee prosthesis is a totally different thing. So, for a long time, I think I struggled with being totally comfortable with other people seeing my leg, people knowing I have it, people occasionally staring at me and being okay with that. It took me a long time to really just kind of wear shorts and short skirts and not worry about it. It took me awhile to just kind of be like, yeah, like, I have a prosthesis, here I am world, like, this is what I'm doing.
Allison Dunne: Meanwhile, this is what Entry Point! Director Virginia Stern and her staff are doing, prior to the 10-week summer internship: poring over a pool of some 500 inquiries based on the Entry Point! Web site, word-of-mouth, and on-campus recruiting. Then, they vet the inquiries, and whittle the number down to around 125 students, who, in Stern's words, are "good to go". Yet the number of vetted, talented applicants far exceeds the number of internships available. The hope, says Stern, is to place about one-half.
Entry Point!, which began in 1996, has partners. For example, NASA is a partner, and sponsors internships with Entry Point! in a program managed by Entry Point!. It's called ACCESS, or Achieving Competence in Computing, Engineering, and Space Science, and is specific to the Entry Point!/NASA partnership. Other Entry Point! partners include IBM, Lockheed Martin, Merck, and Shell.
Back in Virginia, at Langley, Susannah points out that in the summers prior to her NASA internship, she had been a counselor at a camp of the Amputee Coalition of America. Susannah said, while at camp, she would try to impart her experience to some of the girls.
Susannah Calhoun: Whatever your physical limitations, there's always an adaptation, there's always a way around it. I think that was always really important that when I went to camp that I realized, oh, I can do this, too; there's other people doing this, like, look at that cool counselor girl who is, like, playing kickball with all the boys and, like, is in college, and doing so on and so forth. And it's really, really important to know that you have that strength with inside you, you just have to harness it.
Allison Dunne: Across the country at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffet Field, California, Katie Browne is working on problems relating to aviation safety and other application areas. She has been using her math skills to build algorithms to detect anomalies in large data sets. Katie's Entry Point! internship is in the Data Mining Group at NASA Ames. Dr. Ashok Srivastava leads the group, and the effort to make commercial flying safer, by analyzing huge amounts of data, and looking for certain patterns that could impact aviation safety. He's also Katie's mentor.
Katie Browne: Ashok has helped me so much deciding on, like, going to graduate school and what I want to do. And so I would definitely say seek out a mentor because they're going to help you where you want to go in life, and they're going to tell you things that you need to watch out for, and all of that stuff. So I think it's very important to have a mentor.
Allison Dunne: Dr. Srivastava, who has won several awards for his pioneering work in computer science, says mentors can help bring focus to careers, and, to life, in general.
Dr. Ashok Srivastava: What I found in my own life is that mentors have been one of the most important aspects of my professional development and, in some ways, my personal development as well, because they have gone down the path, and they kind of know what some of the pitfalls are; they know what some of the turns might be that are coming up on the road, and they can provide you with that insight before it happens.
Allison Dunne: As for where the mentor relationship goes after Katie returns to school, Dr. Srivastava replies:
Dr. Ashok Srivastava: Wherever she wants it go to. So, if she wants to stay in touch with me and take advice as far as graduate schools, or job options, professional things like that, I'm more than happy to be in touch.
Allison Dunne: Katie, who is from Carson City, Nevada, said her path to computer science stemmed from her math ability.
Katie Browne: In high school, I was always very good at math, so I was always in the advanced math program.
Allison Dunne: In spite of this strength, Katie had to handle misconceptions.
Katie Browne: Well, I had a teacher who did not want me in their class because they didn't think that I would be able to keep up with the work. And it was one of my advanced math classes, so it was a class that I really wanted to take, and needed to take. And I decided to take the class anyway, regardless of what the teacher thought, and I ended up doing great.
Allison Dunne: When Katie arrived at college, she knew she wanted to do some type of engineering, and she took a computing for engineers class, doing programming, and loved it. That's what drove her into computer science. After her Entry Point! internship at NASA, she's back at the University of Nevada for her senior year.
Dr. Srivastava, says he selected Katie for his group, not only because of her near-4-point-0 GPA, computer science background, and interest in programming, but because she stood out from other applicants in the following way.
Dr. Ashok Srivastava: When we're going through the selection process, I often e-mail students and say, hey, we're going to be submitting your name to come and work in our group. And I just see what the response is. I send kind of an open-ended statement. And, Katie responded very quickly - I don't remember if it was the same day - but within a day she responded. And I could almost feel the enthusiasm through the e-mail about coming and wanting to work here. And I thought, wow, this is great. So, that really struck me, is, the paper resume doesn't convey the enthusiasm, but a well-sent e-mail, a well-crafted e-mail can really do that.
Allison Dunne: In the Data Mining Lab, Dr. Srivastava meets with Katie at a table a few steps from where Katie works. It's their daily meeting, a time for talking about how work is going and how Katie is tackling any problems. On this particular day, the conversation then focuses on Katie's plans once her internship ends.
Dr. Ashok Srivastava: How are other things going? Have you had time to look at graduate schools or anything yet?
Katie Browne: Not yet.
Dr. Ashok Srivastava: Okay, we've been keeping you too busy.
Katie Browne: Yeah.
Dr. Ashok Srivastava: So, I think one of the important things that we need to do in our internship program is make sure that you have some time to look in graduate schools, if you want to go to one, and I'm happy to help you in making decisions about where to apply and some of the ways we can evaluate them.
Allison Dunne: Thinking about graduate school, Katie says she is interested in robotics, and artificial intelligence.
Katie Browne: Well, I definitely want to go to graduate school, and maybe even get my PhD. I really like doing research.
Allison Dunne: Katie has cerebral palsy, a neurological disorder that permanently affects body movement and muscle coordination. She does not need accommodations at NASA; however, in college, she does.
Katie Browne: I do have accommodations in math classes with testing. I can't write, so when I take tests, I have to have somebody else write.
Allison Dunne: She says the Entry Point! internship at NASA has helped her prepare for a career, in that she has now proven she can type quickly in the workplace.
Katie Browne: It's definitely given me an example of how work is going to be like, and what the workplace is like. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to type fast enough and keep up with my work.
Allison Dunne: Dr. Ashok Srivastava says keeping up with work is certainly not a problem for Katie.
Dr. Ashok Srivastava: I think she's a very strong programmer, and that is of great benefit to our group. When I talk to others in the group about how things are going with Katie, they say, gee she's done already. We have to keep the ... And so I tell them, keep the pipeline strong of work towards her 'cause she's just blasting through what needs to be done, and it's of good quality, and it's really what we can use, so it's working out very well.
Allison Dunne: For Entry Point! Director Virginia Stern, Katie Browne and Susannah Calhoun have a few things in common with other Entry Point! women. When asked on the spot, Stern can list nearly 20 female Entry Point! alums who are now in either graduate school for STEM, or in a STEM career. Although there are many more, these success stories come quickly to mind. And about 10 of these women, says Stern, either have their PhDs or are in the midst of a doctoral program. Stern says they all share similar traits.
Virginia Stern: They are very smart, each one of them. Second of all, everyone is persistent. They did not get where they were going without barriers: physical, sensory, or attitudinal. And, third, they are all enterprising. So if it did not work one way, they figured out another way. The keys that made them successful: families, mentoring, assistive technology - for some, not, not always necessary - internships.
Allison Dunne: Director Stern says more than 90 percent of Entry Point! alumni enter Stem fields, which is a clear indication of the program's success.
For The Best of our Knowledge, I'm Allison Dunne.
Access to Advancement is made possible by the National Science Foundation Research in Disabilities Education program.