Spelman Database Documents Black Women’s STEM Contributions
Credit: Paras Griffin / Getty Images- The hub, created by the Center of Excellence for Minority Women in STEM, began in 2022 through a $5 million grant and volunteer work by Google’s charitable organization Google.org.
- The hub will contain a section dedicated to the stories of Black women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and a database dedicated to research.
- In 2019, women made up a little over 29% of the STEM workforce, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. About 66% of those women were white, and almost 15% were Black.
- Those involved in the hub’s creation said they hope the database provides visibility and encouragement for Black women studying STEM.
Last year, Gabriela Ortega, a fresh Spelman College computer science graduate, joined a project dear to her as a Black woman in a science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) field.
She’s responsible for designing something never done before: an online hub and database for Black women in STEM.
Spelman’s Center of Excellence for Minority Women in STEM in 2022 created the hub, powered by a $5 million grant and volunteer work supplied by Google.org, Google’s charitable organization.
Spelman’s goal with the hub is to create a database for students, journalists, politicians, researchers, and the public to find data on Black women in STEM. The hub, which is currently in its beta phase, will highlight Black women in STEM who have excelled in their fields and inspire others to follow their lead.
“This is something I wish I had at the beginning phase of my academic journey,” Ortega, a user experience (UX) designer on the hub, told BestColleges.
Ortega said that if she’d had access to this portal during her academic career, she’d have been able to network with other Black women further along in their STEM careers to gain advice and guidance for achieving her goals as a UX designer.
Associate Professor of Economics Miesha Williams is a member of the Center of Excellence steering committee to develop the dashboard. She told BestColleges that the database fills a gap for Black women in STEM.
“For most of the STEM disciplines, it’s not common to have a Black person, nor is it common to have a woman,” Williams said.
“And having somewhere that houses that intersectionality and allows people to contribute data stories and research, we’re hoping to have a premier avenue for which people can find the information without having to scour the internet where it’s hardly found anyway.”
In 2019, women made up a little over 29% of the STEM workforce, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Among them, about 66% of women in STEM were white, and almost 15% were Black.
In its early stages, the hub beta includes interviews of Black women and links to their X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn social media profiles so students can follow and interact with them.
Some examples of the women the hub profiles include:
- Lisa Cook, an economist and the first Black woman and first woman of color on the U.S. Federal Reserve Board of Governors
- Sadie Tanner Mossell, the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in economics in the U.S.
- Janelle Jones, the first Black woman to serve as chief economist at the Labor Department
As a UX consultant, Ortega’s job is to understand people’s experiences using the hub by interviewing and surveying users and tailoring the site to their needs.
Ortega said the first phase of the project was dedicated to academic research for the database. But as the project continues to develop, she wants to have more student involvement to meet their needs.
So, she included an online community through the platform Slack where students can network with academic researchers, policymakers, and journalists on the project.
Ortega’s mentor brought her on to work on the hub. A 2021 study by Spelman and Winston-Salem State University researchers found that mentorship for Black undergraduate women in STEM can increase the pipeline of Black women pursuing advanced STEM degrees and STEM careers.
“Black women may need different resources and support than their Black male and white counterparts, not because of a deficit of knowledge or intellect, but because of the double jeopardy that they face by being both Black and woman in a white-male dominated field whose culture has been ‘characterized as insular, masculine, and white male-dominated,'” the study says.
Students not only can network with potential mentors on the app — they also have the opportunity to work on the hub.
Williams said current students can work on the project as equity scholars through the Center of Excellence. These students work directly with faculty on the hub, researching and writing stories of Black women in STEM.
She told BestColleges that the site will evolve as more people publish research. While the team has made significant progress, and Spelman’s community has shared feedback, the project will still take a few years to be officially released.
“As people publish more research and add more things to the site, we want the flexibility for people to be able to add their work and add their data,” Williams said. “And that’s going to take figuring out, but it’s going to always be a living, evolving, breathing site. That is our goal.”
Ortega and the rest of the team hope this hub will inform the public and inspire other Black women in STEM.
“Just know that we’re out there. We do exist,” Ortega said. “And because we exist, that personally gave me hope, knowing that there’s another Black woman ahead of me that’s already done what I am hoping to achieve.
“If a Black woman doesn’t already exist in your field, then you be the first.”