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My STEM education journey starts when I started my master's degree in library science. Since my background is in Electrical Engineering, I have a natural love of solving problems using engineering skills. Then I started working at the library and helped people with engineering reference questions. And I felt very passionate about helping people find the right engineering information resources. Indeed engineering information access lies at the core of engineering education!

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I will never forget the day that we changed the face of the STEM component of a 23.5 million dollar capital improvement project using nothing but our wits, skills and vision to see STEM education come to life. For many years, my school board was planning to add to the existing facilities of our school district. Part of this project involved the sanction of a brand-new wing, dedicated to just Science, Technology & CTE instruction. I was hired as Instructional Coach for STEM, roughly four months new. Needless to say, I was involved in this project, whether I planned to be or not.

Three years to go until tenure, my knees were wobbly and my throat dry as my Assistant Superintendent called me into his office for a meeting. The meeting was in response to my proposal to set up a subcommittee to assure that new facilities would meet the needs of the comprehensive CTE workforce program that we were building. The district board had approved the current plan—before I was hired—for a NEW center that would not work for our teachers, and certainly not industry, if we were to build this from the ground up to mirror them.

The day to meet the architectural team was today and they were understandably uneasy to scrap a year’s worth of planning. My assistant superintendent agreed to let me form a taskforce to redevelop the floor plans to meet the needs of our students. Today we would present, no tell, the Board of Education, the senior architectural team, and my administrators, that their plan needed to be revisited.

I do not consider myself an aggressive person, at least I try not to be, but today I had to be. This project was more than just a building; it was a potential cornerstone to the economic rehabilitation of our region. Recently, the machinist warehouse down the street relocated due to a skilled labor shortage. Downtown main street, once a bustling business hub of restaurants and community life, now consisted of boarded-up real estate and tax-free smoke shops. This pipeline engineering training center, called our STEM wing, has the potential to grant college-credit CTE workforce credentials to our students and revitalize our region’s workforce! Our team drew up new floor plans and submitted a revised STEM program outline for the architectural firm to review. We modeled the building after industry functionality and 21st century creative form and design—an antipodean in most circles-- but a functional masterpiece to us.

Through a series of talks and presentations, we managed to convince the decision makers that the changes we made were for the better. This shift in design philosophy will have positive consequences for the  school  community and larger region for decades to come. What goals for the future do I have for my career that would affect the profession? We teach our Technology students that innovation is one of the powerful accolades of the STEM occupations; engineers and CTE educators alike have a unique position to augment culture and society for the better. Our new CTE-STEM center stands as a testament to that. Positively affecting my school and (long-term) society for the better through STEM Education are my goals.

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I loved nature and animals as a child.  My work as a camp counselor allowed me to work closely with an environmental educator and further experience the diversity, complexity and beauty of our world. This inspired me to major in Biology and teach others about it.  I still find my greatest peace and joy when I am outdoors.

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Students who have graduated and gone into chemistry or chemical engineering. Other young women in Jamaica who told me "I didn't think girls could do science!"

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As a high school student, I was interested in science, but didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. As a senior, I was a lab assistant for my chemistry teacher. She was a mentor and became the person who really drove me to eventually go into chemistry education. As a first generation college student, I wasn't confident, but she continually encouraged me. Now as a high school teacher, my daily goal is to be that inspiration and mentor to my students, especially the girls in science. I want to show them that they can go into these STEM fields with the boys and do everything that they set their minds to!

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Birds are awesome (as a child my parents were impressed by my ability to recite facts about birds. They might have regretted that when, a few years later, we had pets that were loud, messy, and hated them. I spent many years working bird shows at zoos, and have picked vacation itineraries based on ornithological points of interest. After my students took the AP/IB exams I used the rest of the year and taught bird-watching. I now live a short walk from the Nat. Aviary and go there rather frequently- if you ever want to go I will always say yes. I like to say that even on the worst day spent birdwatching, you still spend your time looking up :)

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CMU x CMOA summer youth architecture program

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As a young person who loved and excelled at both art and science, I studied and ended up in the professional practice of Architecture and sustainability. Slowly my volunteerism in youth Arch education became a full time job, now incorporating more social justice and DEI components. All STEAM subjects can intersect and overlap in Architecture, and the field allows us to impact our communities and environment in a positive way.

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When I started school I was not fluent in the language medium (Sinhalese), but I knew numbers and that world made sense to me. So, while I was in a space that felt overwhelming and confusing, I found comfort in math and still love math to this day.