 at Purdue Engineering. Today's keynote lecture is Dean Stephanie Adams. The goal of the BTE program at Purdue Engineering is to prepare future trailblazing faculty in engineering for the focus in preparing outstanding scholars who are also committed to increasing the success of black engineers. Those selected as BTE fellows are attending a virtual four day workshop that will provide opportunities for scientific interactions, career oriented discussions and networking. Now, it is my honor to introduce the moderator for today's talk. Dr. Phillip S. Dunstan is a professor of construction engineering holding joint appointments in the Lyle School of Civil Engineering and in the division of construction engineering and management at Purdue. A native of North Carolina, Dr. Dunstan completed his collegiate studies at North Carolina State University obtaining his PhD in civil engineering. After seven years as a faculty member in civil engineering at the University of Washington, Dr. Dunstan joined the faculty at Purdue in 2002 and in 2003 received the NSF Early Career Award for research in mixed reality science and technology integration for the architecture, construction operations, architecture engineering and construction industry. Dr. Dunstan's research portfolio has included construction automation, monitoring control and quality of field construction operations, particularly in transportation, construction, visualization and simulator-based training effectiveness for construction equipment operators. A career-long passion of Dr. Dunstan's has been to partner with others to address the challenge of stimulating and expanding the pipeline of underrepresented students to the PhD and hopefully faculty careers. Towards that end, he has been part of both NSF and Purdue sponsored efforts over the years. Over to you, Phillip. Thank you, Arvind. Just before I introduce our keynote speaker for the evening, I just want to take care of a housekeeping item. We're going to ask that we all turn off our cameras during the talk just so that we can minimize the opportunity for bandwidth issues, also make sure we're muted as well. And of course, when we get to the Q and A portion, we would like you to turn your cameras on so that our speaker can see who she's interacting with, all right? To help further ado, since I am between you and the main event, I will proceed with my introduction of Dr. Stephanie G. Adams. Dr. Adams is the fifth dean of the Eric Johnson School of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Texas Dallas and past president of the American Society of Engineering Education. Dr. Adams has held administrative and faculty positions at Old Dominion University, Virginia Tech, Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Dr. Adams is an honor graduate of North Carolina A&T State University, my father's alma mater, where she earned her BS in mechanical engineering. She was awarded the master of engineering degree in systems engineering from the University of Virginia and she received her PhD in interdisciplinary engineering from Texas A&M University where she concentrated on industrial engineering and management. Her research interests include broadening participation, faculty and graduate student development, teamwork and team effectiveness and quality control and management. In 2003, she received the career award for the engineering education and centers division of the National Science Foundation. Dr. Adams is a leader in the advancement and inclusion of all in science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. She has worked with numerous colleges and universities, government agencies and nonprofit organizations on topics related to graduate education, mentoring, faculty development and diversifying STEM. Dr. Adams is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2017 WPAN Founders Award, the 2016 ASWE Engineering Management, Bernie Sachet Lifetime Award, the 2013 Alumni Achievement Award from North Carolina A&T State University, the Hauling Teaching Advising Mentoring Award and Henry Y. Kleinhoff Outstanding Assistant Professor Teaching Award from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In 2005, she was selected as N-A-A-A-S, well, AAAS NSF, Science and Engineering Policy Fellow and in 2013, she was selected as a fellow of ASWE. Her talk for this evening is titled, wouldn't take nothing for my journey from college dropout to dean. Without further ado, I introduce to you Dean Dr. Stephanie G. Adams. Thank you, Phillip. I have been racking my brain trying to figure out where our paths cross and today it was clear we were at NC State at the same time, not as students. I was running their minority engineering program when you were a master's and PhD student. So I knew our paths crossed but I couldn't put my finger on it. So I'm glad when Arvin said were you all the places that you've been. This is really an honor for me to address such a distinguished group of future faculty and leaders in engineering education. It's an honor for me to be at Purdue and that'll become crystal clear in just a few moments. We were saying hello to a lot of people as I came on. There was one person in particular I did not recognize because I plan to do it now and that's my dear friend and colleague, Virginia Booth Womack. I often tell people if it hadn't been for Maryam Blalock who Virginia was her predecessor, I probably wouldn't be an engineer today. Maryam was very instrumental in my deciding to go into engineering. As you'll hear in a little bit, there's a reason why I didn't go to Purdue. I went to high school in Indiana but I have no animosities about that. It's a funny story about how you bounce back from life's lessons. So we'll talk about that in just a moment. I also wanted to just, there are three colleagues that I really wanted to recognize and thank also for joining us this evening. And that's Carl Smith, Michael Louis and Larry Richards. Larry's a professor at University of Virginia actually and he was my statistics professor and he saw this on social media and asked if he could join. Carl was instrumental in my getting started doing research in the area of teams. He was always so gracious at conferences with his time. You don't get an opportunity very often to say thank you to those who paved the way. So Carl, thank you for that. Michael has been a colleague, a newer colleague as of late but we had an opportunity to collaborate on some things in his role as editor of JEE. And so I'm delighted that on a Friday evening, Michael that you would join us. And then lastly, once Larry invited asked me for the invitation, I thought, if I'm gonna send it to Larry, I should send it to my mom and dad. So somewhere out there, my mom and dad are lurking in this evening's talk. So thank you for your continued support of me. Let me get right to it. And I'm gonna go through, I have some slides more so their visuals than they are like content driven slides but I wouldn't take nothing from my journey. And this is a title from a book written by Maya Angelo. I'm gonna share my favorite Maya Angelo quote with you at the end of my talk. But yes, it's true. I was a college dropout. I laugh and tell people I actually dropped out twice and we'll talk a little bit about that and then we'll move forward. So this picture represents my journey in pictures of the various places that I've been. Lots of people don't know that I actually started my academic career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We'll give them a little shout out today only cause it's relevant for being in the Big Ten corridor this evening. But just a pictorial of some of the places and organizations that I have been affiliated with. Yes. We don't see your screen. Are you sharing screen with us? Let's make sure. Thank you. Is that enabled? Yes. Let me, as I said, today is a Zoom fatigue day. I was hosting an NSF workshop all day on Zoom. And so I just forgot my Zoom etiquette. Let me please go back and start again. So the first thing was just a slot there, original slide with my theme. And then the picture that captures all of the places that I've been over my career. And then I just wanna move right into what I've learned. So I tried to make this more of a discussion about where I've been and how I got there and things that I've learned along the way. So again, I've got some, I think cool slides to make some points. So the first thing, I play poker and they always talk about play the hand you're dealt when you're playing poker. And if you know anything about poker, when you first get started, one of the worst hands statistically is a 2-7 offsuit. Can't do much with that. Statistically speaking, the best hand when you get started are a pair of aces. Now, there are instances where people who start with a pair of aces don't actually win the hand. But statistically speaking, when you get started with a pair of aces, you have a greater chance of winning. And this is relevant to me because of where I came from. And so I did not add this slide because my parents were joining us. This is always in this talk that I give, but these are my parents, the doctors Howard and the Lois Adams. And they instilled in me, it doesn't matter what your circumstances were, you can aspire to become anything. So my dad was the son of a tobacco farmer and a cook. Many of you have seen him on the speaking circuit and know his work in graduate education. I don't think he'll kill me for telling you he was a C student in high school. He worked his way through college and he slept on his aunt's sofa all four years of college. And I keep asking myself, would I have slept on somebody's sofa all the years of college and had one of those we have to actually fold it up and pull it out? I'm kind of lazy. I was never the kid that wanted to make my bed. So it's a lot of discipline. My mom was the daughter of a Navy seaman and a housewife and the great granddaughter of a slave. And collectively, they both got PhDs. My dad in higher ed, he is a presidential mentoring award winner and the author of several books. But as I said, many of you know my dad, the quiet person in the house is probably the most accomplished person in the house in that my mom was the first African-American female to receive a PhD in molecular and cell biology at the University of Florida. And the piece about that is my mom got her PhD at 51. So when you think about, we're in our 20s or 30s getting our PhD, my mom went back to school to get her PhD. She was a district science teacher of the year and the Atlanta Journal and Constitutional finalist science teacher of the year as she taught AP biology. So that was them. So what about me? And why is it important to play the hand your dealt? Yeah, I know y'all are laughing at that picture. That was my sophomore year picture in high school. I had more gray hair then than I have now. Thank God it kind of went away though. I'm glad it's kind of coming back cause I think people think I'm a lot younger than I am. But when they see the little Patrick Gray, they figure I gotta be a little bit older. But I took a lot of advanced high school math and science courses. I went to a very good high school in Elkhart, Indiana. We didn't have AP back then, but we had advanced biology, chemistry and physics. We had computer science course and we had math through calculus. So I went to one of the better high schools, but I don't test well. So here's the low SAT and I was not admitted to Purdue, which crushed me. I started to bring back this picture from 1981. I'm sure Virginia has it on her computer somewhere. But in the summer of 1981, I attended a program at Purdue called Preface. It was a pre, I think it was a pre freshman, something engineering program. We came, Miriam Blalock ran the program. We spent a week there. We built a Balsa Wood Bridge and we learned about tension and compression. We went on corporate tours. Great program. If you're in Indiana, you go to Purdue if you're gonna study engineering, but my SAT scores were low and I wasn't admitted. No harm, no foul. I went to Wisconsin and for a number of reasons ended up transferring but had a good experience anyway and still think very highly of Purdue. As I said, without Purdue, I would not have come to understand engineering and be exposed. People say, well, how low was it? So this is my college transcript. The salient point is what's in red. My SAT score was a 900. And I tell this to people, particularly young students, because it's one number, it doesn't define who you are or what you're capable of becoming. The funny thing is today, I would not be admitted to any of the schools that Dr. Dunstan told you that I studied at, which is kind of ironic and sad at the same point because there are lots of students who are very talented that are in the same situation. But it doesn't matter. As I said, you gotta play the hand your dealt. I dropped out of school a second week of my sophomore year and I dropped out the first semester of grad school at UVA. I did transfer from Wisconsin. I think it was just too big in 1983. Freshman calculus was 300 students. Chemistry was 350 students. English was 250 students. I'd gone to a decent size high school, but that was way big. And there was just a lot of adjustment issues that 18-year-old has to make as they start college. But at UVA, I started off in biomedical engineering. I was a mechanical engineer undergrad and biomedical engineering at UVA was heavily focused on electrical engineering. So I was a fish out of water, right? I mean, I know nothing about, you know, circuits. I tell people we had to take two EE for non-EE courses as an undergrad student. And once we got past B equals IR, the rest of the two courses, the rest of the first course and all the second course are blur. So, but it doesn't, again, it's not how you start. It's how you finish. And then I had low GRE scores, which is no surprise. And so thus I was not admitted to Northwestern. Funny story there about a decade ago, they invited me to come and be a distinguished lecturer in industrial engineering. And the faculty are sitting there scratching their head like, she seems familiar, how do we know her? So finally somebody was bold enough to ask me. And I said, oh yeah, about five, seven years ago, maybe a little bit longer, I came to interview as a prospective graduate student. And they all went, oh, right. So again, it doesn't matter how you start off, it all matters how you finish. And how did I do that? Well, I love this picture, believe in yourself and then be you. I was never apologetic for who I was, I was always myself, but I always believed that I could do anything. And I think a lot of that came from my parents and my extended family. And this is this, believe in yourself is I, believe in you, that's a line from The Wiz. So for those of you, there's like The Wizard of Oz, which has a primarily Caucasian cast. And then there's a movie called The Wiz, which has a primarily African-American cast, right? And so this is where I've come from. This is my extended family on all sides. I knew several of my great grandparents and spent quite a bit of time with my grandparents. And the message that we got from our family was you can do and be anything and always go to school and be smart. Every time my grandmother saw me, the last thing she said was, get your lesson and be smart. So, you know, you can do and be anything and I have very good support system. So this is me and Phillip hit that. The most important thing I wanna call out is the one of 39 and I just pulled that number today. I had the number from probably three years ago. So we've made some progress up by three, but there are presently 39 African-American women, full professors in engineering in the United States out of 29,544. So that makes me less than a percent, probably less than a half a percent in terms of women in engineering in the professoriate. And so that's a pretty rare group. Many of us know each other and I've got some projects now that I'm keenly aware and pushing leadership development for women of color, not just the African-American women, but the Hispanic numbers about the same. So we're doing some leadership development there. I will definitely believe in using my platform. My mantra has become partner and leverage. I leverage whatever relationships I have and brand and accomplishments that I have to partner with younger faculty to bring them along. And so I've got five, four NSF grants active and one that's under submission. And I'm working with a variety of junior faculty members and earlier career faculty members to pull them along as well. Okay, so find your passion. This is a picture that I took from a balloon. So I was the balloon above this one. You sort of take off in sequence. This is in Albuquerque in 2018. Photographies of passion of mine. And so passion is what gives meaning to our lives. It's what allows us to achieve success beyond our wildest dreams. Henry Samuely was one of the founders of UCLA and UC Irvine's engineering school. So he's got two schools named after him. But passion is the thing that carries you that has inertia and power to give you sort of air to keep going day in and day out. So I'm passionate about engineering education. I'm passionate about creating opportunities for others. And it just serves me well to the point where I'm actually having fun. I mean, when I get up in the morning, I enjoy the day whatever the J may bring, it's fun for me. So you gotta find your passion. And I'm gonna at the end wrap up and show all the lessons learned on one slide in case you miss it. I know some of you are gonna probably try to capture the quotes. And some of you are gonna ask me for my slides and my dad always taught me never give your slides away because if you do, they don't need you anymore. So we can, maybe what I'll do is I'll send you the quotes if people are interested. The next one is have a goal. This is from Les Brown. He says your goal, the road maps that guide you and show you what is possible for your life. I set my first career goal at seven. I wanted to be an OBGYN. I don't know how I knew that that was something I wanted to do. The plan was for me to be an OBGYN and my cousin Jerome to be a pediatrician. Some kind of a way I knew that those two work together and I figured, okay, I can deliver the babies and care for the mom while they're pregnant. Jerome can take care of the babies. And I knew enough to know you stay with your pediatrician till you're 18. So I thought, great, I'll have them until they're born. He'll have them till they're 18. We'll be in practice together and make lots of money. Jerome went into banking and I went into engineering but that goal, which carried me until ninth grade when I, ninth, 10th grade, when I injured my knee and begin to learn about biomedical engineering and had the opportunity to go to the preface program at Purdue. Seize opportunities. So a lot of times we wanna swim in the pond with everybody else. When I was coming out of my PhD program, everybody wanted to go to Atlanta. Atlanta was like the Mecca for black professionals. I had an offer in Atlanta, but the best offer for Stephanie for what I wanted to do long term was to go to Nebraska. So I jumped out of the pond that everybody else or the fishbowl that everybody else was in and I went to university in Nebraska. The first thing people would say when they met me was, are there black people there? Yes, there are. But I went because it had the best opportunity for me as a young faculty member to get started. I had great resources and it invested in Stephanie and they understood who I was as a scholar. Philip told you my PhD is in interdisciplinary engineering. So it was, I was the person who, who I tell people, you go to the golden corral and you want steak and fried chicken and pizza and Mexican and Asian food all on a Friday night. You can get it at the golden corral in interdisciplinary engineering. You can study the things you're interested in. So my coursework was 45% in industrial engineering, 45% in management and then 10% in higher education. So it allowed me to create my own plan. Robert Frost tells us, and this is another one of my favorite quotes, two rows diversion of wood and I took the one that's traveled by and that's made all the difference. A lot of people wouldn't have gone to Lincoln, Nebraska in 1998 when I was the first African-American faculty member hired in the school of engineering, college of engineering from time to time. Every piece of diversity mail that came to the university president, some kind of way ended up in my inbox. I had a lot of requests to mentor students and advise students, but I also had a lot of protection which I think helped me be successful. I was tracked into administration after my fourth year. So many of you who know the higher ed, a sort of time served model of higher ed. It's kind of unusual to be tapped to be special assistant to a dean at the end of four years. By the time my 10 year career was over at Nebraska, I'd been an administrator for six years. When I think about it, this is my 23rd year in higher ed and 17 of them I've been an administrator. So again, I got an opportunity, the opportunity was there for me and that's what this slide is about. And I took the opportunity and it's made all the difference. Network, this is something, my grandfather again was a farmer. And you always talk about learn how to meet and greet people, which to me is modern day networking, right? I mean, learn how to connect with other people for the people who look like you, people who don't look like you, people who've been where you wanna go, learn how to network, learn how to articulate what you wanna do and where you wanna go. And again, I go back to Carl Smith. I met Carl Smith at an FIE conference in DC and we sat out in the hallway for over an hour. And I just sort of dumped on him what I was thinking about with regards to teamwork. And he sort of took me under his wing and gave me some counsel. And every time I would see him, we'd stop and have conversation and we networked. And so, sometimes we go to conferences and we stay with the people we came with. We don't venture out. I can talk to the people I came with when I get back home, but I wanna get to know people in my community. So this quote from Lewis Howell, effective networking isn't a result of luck, it requires hard work and persistence. And so next up is seek mentors, right? So look for people who are going where you wanna go or who've been where you wanna be. One of the greatest values of mentors is the ability to see ahead what others cannot see and help them to navigate a course to their destination from John Maxwell. I'm always reminded in 2004, I still to this day do not know how this happened. But by 2004, I decided I wanted to be a university president. And I started articulating that to people and I would get mixed reviews from some people. Some people say, oh, it's too early for you to think about that. Why are you telling people that? That's such a lofty goal, you shouldn't do that. But there were some people who were like, okay, great. Thanks for letting us know that. And then one day I got an email inviting me to a woman of color conference at Brown University, hosted by then-president Ruth Simmons, every black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American woman from all kinds of backgrounds who was a university president from tribal colleges to HBCUs to MSIs were at this meeting. I got an opportunity to meet them and be mentored by them. And some of my mentors today are former university presidents who were at that meeting that I met at that point. And I still to this day do not know how I got invited. I believe in sharing. So I emailed the link to a friend of mine who I also knew wanted to be a president. And she wrote it and said, hey, I like to come to this workshop. And they said, oh, it's invitation only. She calls me back. Stephanie, that was invitation only. How are you sending me this email? I'm like, I didn't know. So I always give a nice little thank you to the universe for whoever gave my name. That was a life-changing experience for me because it was the first time I got a chance to see black women as presidents, black women leading and being decisive. And as a result of that, I got to shadow a university president and lots of other things have come as the results of that opportunity. So sometimes you have to let people know what you're interested in so they can advocate for you. I always remind people to stay focused. I was a swimmer in high school. I did the 500 free. This is a butterfly from the, I think it's the 16 Olympics. You can see Michael Phelps because his name is clear. The guy who's looking at Michael Phelps, he was a South African swimmer. Chad looked close. And the thing for me is if you watch that race, they were pretty neck and neck for a while, but Chad takes a moment to stop and look at Michael Phelps, to see where Michael Phelps is. Michael Phelps is not worried about anybody, but Michael Phelps in the wall. And so as a matter of fact, that was one of the years Michael was not expected to win the butterfly and he won goal in the butterfly. So it just reminds me to stay focused, focus on your goal. Don't look in any direction but ahead. People would say to me, why do you wanna do this interdisciplinary engineering? Nobody knows what that means. Why do you wanna go to Nebraska? Why do you wanna be a president? Why do you wanna do these things? And it's like, those are my goals and I'm just gonna decide that that's the path I wanna walk until I decide I don't wanna do it anymore. But I figure if I never had a goal, I wouldn't be prepared for some of the opportunities that have come my way. So I love this one. Don't be scared. And some of you have heard the joke, don't be scared. So the thing about the turtle for me, people say, you know, well, who's your favorite animal? So mine is a turtle. And people say, why? Because the turtle has to stick its neck out to move. It's the only way that the turtle can move is if they stick their neck out. Nelson Mandela tells us, I learned that courage was not the absence of fear but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear. And I'm sure in 2021, if Mandela was with us, Makiba, he would have also added woman to that. So he or she conquers their fears. Henry Ford told us that failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. I mean, you think about what he did with Ford Motor Company and what's still there today. And he had lots of failures, but he started again and again and he learned from each failure. Hard work. You know, I don't know if you know this, but an ant can carry, I think it's like, I don't know, how many times it's body weight, that's true. And so one of my friends and colleagues, I've always heard her say, if you spend two years working like others won't, you can spend the rest of your life living like others can't. That's Dr. Lisa Yocrampton Young, who's currently provost at Morgan State. This is so, so true. I mean, I think about people I went to high school with, college with, grad school with, people who were on the same pathway and had some of the same opportunities that I did, but they chose to get off the path or do something different. And, you know, where I'm sitting right now, I mean, you know, I pinch myself some days, when I came to UT Dallas, they told me, you know, they offered me the job and they gave me my salary and told me what my package was gonna be. And then they said, and if you're no longer the dean, here's your salary. And I mean, my eyes got this big, right? Because my non-dean salary at UT Dallas was my dean's salary at Old Dominion. And I got, you know, a sizable, almost 30% raise. So it's like, oh, so if I'm not the dean anymore, I already know what my salary is gonna be. I can live off of that. But that's just, that's a testament to the hard work, to some of the sacrifices, to the, you know, not going to homecoming some years because I was going to the FIE conference. And for those of you who went to a historically black college, you know, homecoming is sacred. So you make some sacrifices for trade-offs, but hopefully at the end of the day, it all balances out. Keep dreaming. I love this story. I played basketball in high school. I don't know how many of you know this story, but in 2018, this is a gentleman named Andre Ingram. He went to American University outside of DC. I love this story for a number of reasons. He also got a bachelor's degree in physics. So he's a scientist by training. He played basketball. Was the fifth all-time leading scorer when he graduated. And he bounced around in the developmental league, bounced around here, there and everywhere. And in the last two games of the 2017-18 season, the Lakers signed him to a contract. When he made his debut, he was the oldest rookie in the NBA since 1964. He scored 19 points in his first career game. And that was the most that had been scored by a Laker since 1993. And at the time he played for the Lakers, I believe he was 35. So it's never too late to have a dream or see your dream become a reality. C.S. Lewis teaches us you are never too old to set another goal or dream another dream. So wherever you are now in life, it's not too late to start over, start anew to pivot or do something different. So the last quote, have lots of fun. Bum Phillips was the legendary coach of the Houston Oilers. For those of you who might have remembered the Houston Oilers, they became the Tennessee Titans. But Bum Phillips said, winning is only half of it, having fun is the other half. And I have to tell you, I mean, for me, yes, people look at me and say, oh, you're so successful, but more than being successful, I have lots of fun. And so I just pulled together a few slides. This is a map of the world. Everything in blue are the places that I've been. So you see, I've got a lot of work to do, but I've been pretty fortunate. I've been to six of the seven continents. The last one is Antarctica, and I do plan to get there before I turn, before my 60th birthday, which is four years from this summer. So I'm on the clock for that. I've missed, it's a little bit misleading about North America. There's one state I haven't been to, but you're not able to isolate that out. So I haven't been to North Dakota. Mom and I were supposed to go in September for a football game. She was just going cause she hadn't been either, but North Carolina A&T was playing North Dakota State. So hopefully that game will get me scheduled one day and I'll get a chance to go and check off the great state of North Dakota. These are some pictures from my journeys. The cool thing about this, I think everything on this page, and people say this sounds bad when I say it, so let me try to clean it up a little bit, was paid for by somebody else. So I had an opportunity to go to Singapore, which is the top picture for a engineering deans meeting. I love this hotel. It's the Sands Hotel. It's three stories, 57 stories, three buildings, 57 stories high with an infinity pool, a disco and a restaurant on top. The picture on the right of that is Angel Falls, which is the world's tallest, longest natural waterfall. It's in Venezuela. And I had an opportunity to lead a study abroad to Venezuela, actually it was a research program, not a study abroad, it was a research program where I took students from the US to Venezuela to do research in the summer. My first two PhD students were from Venezuela. All of you know Stonehenge. I was fascinated by Stonehenge and just thinking about the engineering marvel of having to get those rocks in place or chisel them away or however they got there. They're humongous and that's a heavy undertaking. The bottom where people are blowing in the wind, that's in St. Martin. That was the one trip that I paid for, that was vacation. But I suspect I use frequent flyer miles. And if you've ever heard about this kickback from the planes that take off, people go stand at the fence and let the kickback blow them away. I sort of, I'm smart. I stood off to the side of the fence and I held on so I didn't get blown away in the sand. The Opera House in Sydney, I had an opportunity to go to A-squared, E-square which is the American Association of Engineering Education Conference when I was department head. And my mom got a chance to accompany me there. The rainbow is from Iguazu Falls in Brazil which powered the largest hydro plant in South America. It provides power for Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay. No wait, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. And then there's Christ the Redeemer statue also in Rio de Janeiro. And then the last picture is in South Africa. And I had an opportunity to go, actually that was a trip I paid for as well. That was a trip with a colleague from Nebraska who was doing research there. And I went over and spent two weeks with her and we had a chance to do a lot of touring around South Africa. We went to Mozambique. We also had a chance to go on a safari. Okay, so the lessons learned from my journey. I just wanted to do a quick recap. Play the hand your dealt. Believe in yourself, which also is be you. Find your passion, have a goal, seize opportunities, network, seek mentors, stay focused. Don't be scared, work hard, keep dreaming and have lots of fun. And the quote that I wanted to share with you all and I am gonna read this, it's just so powerful. And I was introduced to this quote in 1995. Each of us has the right and the responsibility to assess the roads which lie ahead and those over which we've traveled. And if the future road looms ominous or unpromising and the roads back uninviting, then we need to gather our resolve and carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is also unpalatable without embarrassment we must be ready to change that as well. And this has sustained me so many times. Most recently in my deanship at Old Dominion I was dean there three years. I was so delighted and honored to have been selected to be the dean at Old Dominion. I went to kindergarten at Old Dominion. So it was a full circle come home moment. I had an opportunity to move into the same building with my parents and grandmother who was living at the time. And it was great. But work was, the position was very challenging. It rocked me to my core. It necessitated me actually stepping away from my position for three months to just kind of reflect and think about what I was about and where I was going. I had never been, I guess, attacked in the way in which I was. Obviously it was a scholarly way of attacking. It wasn't a, you know, beat her up kind of attack but you can only get beat up on so much. I described it to somebody yesterday as if you're old enough to remember weebles wobble but they don't fall down. So you see this little weeble thing wobbling and it kind of falls back and it kind of bounces up. But before I got back up, I got knocked down again. And so this quote gave me strength to decide, you know, I've worked too hard to be where I'm at. There's nothing embarrassing about, you know, owning that this is not working and making a different, making some different choices. And fortunately for me, UT Dallas was searching for a Dean. I originally was asked to apply and I declined applying. And I know someone who works here and they called and said, why didn't you apply? And I gave the reasons why I didn't apply. They encouraged me to take a look at some things from a different lens and I did. And I actually saw a place that I thought I could come and contribute my prayer to the universe. When I was looking to leave ODU was let me go somewhere where I feel valued and appreciated. And every day that I met UT Dallas, I feel valued and appreciated. So I think again, it's a testament to who I've been and the consistency that I've tried to demonstrate the manner of which I treat people that I was able to land in a great situation for me. And in spite of the pandemic of being here, you know, almost a year by myself without my mom and dad able to come and visit or friends to come and visit, I've actually thrived during the pandemic. And I consider myself lucky because I know a lot of people who have suffered during the pandemic who've lost loved ones during the pandemic. But this is definitely where I'm supposed to be at this juncture in life. And I'm delighted to have been here. So with that, I think that is my last slide. So I'm gonna stop sharing my screen so that I can see you guys. I see lots of, the number in the chat has grown. I'm not sure if there are people that are asking questions or people that just wanna, I don't know what's going on in the chat. So let me stop sharing my screen so I can go back to the chat and see what's out there for me. And if people have questions, I'm happy to address them and turn it back over to the moderator. So thank you for having me. Thank you so much for that presentation. It really was energetic for us. I just want you to know the fellows, we've been putting them through their paces. They were worn out. And I think you've given us all some energy and rejuvenation for the evening. So, and you see the, I hope you see the applause that people are showing. So I'm gonna try to fill the questions here. And now I'm watching the chat. Someone is helping me in case I miss you, but let's turn our cameras on so that Dr. Adams can see your vibrant faces. And I believe Wyatt actually asked a question first at the beginning, Wyatt, are you still there? Yeah, I'm here. Okay. So you're on first. Okay. Okay. I know that you had given a statistic. We said that there were like one of 39 or 33 women, like African-American, like full professors out of like 29,000. I was wondering if you knew how many like Native American women were like professors. That was like, if you knew anything about that. Yep. Let's do this, Wyatt. Let's keep talking. I'm gonna pull up the chart and I'll give you that date, that number. I didn't keep the chart up when I ran the numbers today, but let me in the back channel, dig that out for you and give you the number. And if it takes me longer, then I think it should take me to do that. Then I promise to email it to you, but I do, I can get you that number. It's, you'd be alarmed. I mean, just as I was alarmed that there's only 150 black women professors of engineering. There's probably less than 25 Native American faculty, but I will, Native American women, but I will get you the number. Okay. Now it's a little bit of confusion here, but two more, two people next. Chanel and Madeline. I'm gonna go in that order. So Chanel first. I'd actually put my hand down because I think we have some close time with her. Oh, okay, all right. Okay, Madeline. I hope I said that correct. Yeah, no worries. Thank you. So first, thank you for your wise words and your time. That was a really energetic talk. I echoed that sentiment. And to that note, beyond your impressive resume, I find your cheerful and highly energetic attitude so refreshing and inspiring, especially hearing that you've just come from all day Zoom event. I know I think we all experienced the Zoom fatigue. So what are some of your secrets to keeping that disposition and in the face of adversity and challenges and keeping the high energy and smiley disposition? Wow, you know, I think it really just boils down to the fact I'm having fun. I mean, it sounds really hokey. I feel like I lived a very charmed life and sharing my journey and my experience with others and people such as yourselves and we desperately need you guys in the academy. I mean, to come on and be, oh, whoa, it was me, life sucks and I don't make any money. I don't have any fun. I don't know what I'm doing. I mean, why would you wanna take this path? But for me, the path has really been energetic. No day is the same. I was interviewed this week by a lady at Clemson who's working on her dissertation. She's like, what's a typical day like for you? Like, there is no such thing as a typical day. I mean, if I had to just kind of guesstimate, I'd say typical is meetings, meetings and more meetings, but the type of meetings, who's in the meeting, what the subject matter is, you know? So it just varies every day. And, you know, yeah, I get tired sometimes, but I'm an extrovert who's become an introvert, which is really odd, because most people say they went the other way. They were introverts who learned how to become an extrovert. I like a lot more alone time now. You know, when I bought this house, I wanted certain things. I wanted a pool. I wanted a hot tub. I wanted to be able to have a massage therapist come every week. So, you know, I am really, truly living my best life. And I'm gonna ride the wave because I believe you get 15 minutes of fame and maybe my 15 minutes last 15 years, I don't know, but, you know, I'm just in a good space in life and I have fun. So why would I not convey that to others? That's awesome. Thank you. Okay. While I'm looking for someone else to raise their, oh, to raise their hand. Oh, Virginia? Yes, I did. Okay, great. I'll tell Stephanie. ABB. Hey, girl, are you doing? I'm doing all right. Good to see you and to feel your spirit. It is very positive. Always has been and just wanna tell you how much what you just shared motivated me. And just so you know, before you started, we had your Preface 1981 picture up. And I think they may show it again before this is over, but it's a real story. And as we look at challenging structures and policies that prevent people from having access and really having the opportunity to pursue their passion, your story is just perfect, you know, for the scenario. And I mentioned, we talk about the SAT scores. Well, COVID shut all that down for us this year. And it's sort of ironic, but a lot more students had been able to get through because of that. So hopefully we're learning from these experiences and this story, and we will challenge these systems and structures moving forward. So there's your picture and Stephanie is actually- Where's me? You'll see her name, but she's on next to the last- I'm right there. Yeah, the fourth person over. Put your pointer. There you go. There we are. Yeah, I had my pointer, but y'all can't see my pointer because I'm not sharing my screen. So yeah, that's me. It's her, right? Yeah. All right. I think Luciano has his hand up. Luciano, you're next. Yes. Thank you, Steve. Stephanie, thank you so much for such a great inspiring talk. And this is something I've always wanted to ask. I mean, it's very hard when one is very charming, very charismatic, because I'm sure that these opportunities, right? To lead or to- It's very inattentive, right? For many people, it's very inattentive. And especially when you're having so much fun. But there's one point when I always have this struggle, when do you actually let go of that beautiful research, right? Because I think the ability to do the research and to be with the students, to have them to listen to people crying. I mean, I'm sorry to use the word crying, but you know what I mean, right? To deal with it. So that has been the one major struggle that I always have to go into administration because you always get those invites everywhere. But that aspect, to have to leave my lab, my beautiful research, it's like, so what it was for you to make that decision to leave it behind and move forward in a different direction. So Luciano, I haven't left it behind. I mean, as I said, I have four NSF grants that are active right now. I've got a fifth one that's in for consideration. I've got two people that want me to jump on proposals with them. I've got two projects funded by Arizona State through the Keen Foundation. My last PhD, my most recent PhD student finished in the summer of 19. So I don't have a current student that I'm advising, but I am on a couple of committees right now. So I haven't let it go. Now, there's some trade-offs, right? There's only so much time in a day and people would like to sleep. But for me, now the thing that I probably have not had a hard time getting rid of is teaching. Some people hate when I say this, but if I don't ever have to go back in the classroom, I'd be okay. This generation of students, they want the short answer. Give me the bottom line. I don't want to, don't give me five homework problems. Give me one homework problem that I can learn everything I'm supposed to learn ever. And I'm like, it doesn't work that way, right? So we have to give you a little bit more homework. So research for me really married well with administration, because I'm on a plane a lot. So I'm always reading. Again, I talked about leveraging other people. I have a lot of data and I don't have a student right now. So I'm thinking about getting a postdoc to take some of this data and do some things with. And my salary right now is pretty high. So to write my salary into a grant would basically drain the whole grant. So I try to spread that around and get a grad student or a postdoc. And again, I mentioned junior faculty. So I think there's a way to do it and until you really decide. Now I've decided I no longer want to be a president. So I'm like, okay, this is my last job. It's my last job and I don't need to worry about being marketable again. So I'm in a different place in my career, but for those of you who are thinking about administration, we need talent. And one of my deans always said, hey, you supervised a proposal writer. So if you need some help with proposal writing, go get the proposal writer to help you because they work for you anyway. So you leverage your resources along the way to help you get the things done that you have to get done. Thank you, Stephanie. Thank you, Luciana. Okay, Wyatt, I found the number. There are, there's one assistant professor that's a Native American woman, two associate professors and 10 full professors. And wait a minute, yeah, I got that right. Yeah, American, Indian, Alaska, Native. That's the data. That's how they classify it in the ASW data. So there's one assistant, two associates and 10 full for a total of 13 out of 29,544. That's pretty crazy. I'm actually curious now cause I plan to get my PhD in chemical engineering to be a professor. So I'm wondering if at whatever institute I go to, I wonder if I'd be their first like Native American like woman in like getting their PhD. So thank you for sharing that. It could be highly possible, unfortunately, but it could be highly possible. Dr. Adams. Yes. Question, is this your mother, Dr. Adams that I'm seeing online? Yep, is that, yeah, that's my mom, Elois Adams. Hi, Ma. And I think the other Adams is probably my dad. Is that dad mom? He's on his own computer. Yeah, they have their own computer, so. Okay, we welcome both of you. We, on behalf of everyone, we welcome you. We're so glad you joined us. If you want to chime in and correct your daughter on any point, you can do that. But it looks like Mike is up next. Mike Harris. Hey, Dr. Harris. Hello, how are you doing? I'm good, long time no see. Oh, it has been. So thank you for your excellent presentation. And, you know, reflected on the fact that, I guess recently you were president of ASWE. Would you recommend that, since some of these, or hopefully all of these individuals will become faculty members somewhere in engineering, would you recommend that they also try to get involved in ASWE at some point in their career? I absolutely would. So my presidential year ended in June. My sort of signature event was activity, was looking at graduate students. I had a task force that spent the year looking at some of the issues facing graduate students, what ASEE could do to be more welcoming and inclusive of graduate students. That's a report I have to get working on. But yes, one of the things that led me to that was ASEE has been struggling with membership. And so I thought, well, if we get students, as grad students into ASWE early, they begin to understand the value of the organization. And, you know, by the time they get into the professoriate and they get other people telling them it's not valued, don't do it till you get tenure, don't do it till you're a full professor, don't do whatever, whatever case may be, we need to send a different message to get started earlier in your career. It's an opportunity for you to learn, you know, I think about how I became to approach teaching, right? I met the rich felders of the world and the Carl Smiths of the world who talked about engineering education. I knew Larry Richards who talked about being a, you know, being a traditional faculty member, but valuing and respecting engineering education. They modeled for me what that looked like in the commitment and how you can take ideas and how you wanna make improvements in the classroom or, you know, how you wanna think about pedagogy and scholarship and think about your teaching scholarship, you know, as importantly as your research scholarship. And so I saw that, you know, through those folks in my membership with ASWE, I went to my first ASWE conference as a grad student. I believe it was 1996 in Seattle. Karen Watson was my major professor and she's one of the pioneers, you know, we think about engineering education and happened to be an electrical engineer, but very much promoted going to things like ASWE and challenged me to write my first paper. I went to her with like, hey, K-Dubb, I'm trying to think about the stuff I heard in class and I'm hearing this and I'm hearing that. So this is coming out of the management community, this is coming out of the engineering community. She didn't go write a paper about that and we're gonna send it to ASWE and I'm like, what is ASWE and what's a paper? You know, so it just gave a lot of information for me. Thank you. Okay. So we are coming to the end of our time and I do need to explain that at this point, we are going to allow the fellows to continue in closed session with Dr. Adams. Of course, members of the organizing committee are welcome to join us there as well. Phillip, Phillip, I'm sorry. I see another face that I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge. So if you would indulge me one second. Certainly, certainly. So the name, I guess she must have her pseudonym but I see that Leah Jamison has joined us and former Dean Jamison is also one of those people who emulated what it means to be an engineering educator and gave credibility to the field and gave vision to the work that so many of us are doing and it's always a delight to see Leah and to have had an opportunity to serve on an NAE committee with Leah and to see her leadership up close and personal was very reaffirming for me. And I hold a special place for Leah along with Karen Watson. It's really funny. I hate double E. Like I know nothing. I told you guys, B equals IR is all I remember but I have all these electrical engineers in my life. So Karen Watson and Leah Jamison and Denise Denton, all EEs who have been just pioneers in engineering education. So Leah, thank you so much for the work that you've done and for being such a good role model and leader for so many of us. And it's thank you for giving up time on your Friday evening. Thank you, Stephanie. Sorry, Phillip. Stephanie, thank you so much. I wouldn't have missed this for anything. And actually, as you can see, this is a family event. My daughter is the one that's with him. And we think this is a great way to spend a Friday evening with you. So thank you and thank you for being here with us today. My pleasure. Sorry, Phillip. Oh, no, no, no, no problem. And thank you, Leah, for tuning in for sure. We want to thank everybody who has tuned in to hear this talk and just to be a part of the Black Trail Blazers and Engineering Workshop. This week has been great. There are some things will be recorded and you might be able to, especially for Purdue faculty, you might be able to see some things later that you didn't have time in your schedules to witness during this week.