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Black Woman Earns PhD In Nuclear Engineering From MIT

Black Woman Earns PhD In Nuclear Engineering From MIT

 

Graduation from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was a little sweet for Mareena Robinson Snowden. The 30-year-old recently became the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from MIT.

“Grateful for every part of this experience–highs and lows,” she wrote on Instagram. “Every person who supported me and those who didn’t. Grateful for a praying family, a husband who took on this challenge as his own, sisters who reminded me at every stage how powerful I am, friends who inspired me to fight harder. Grateful for the professors who fought for and against me. Every experience on this journey was necessary, and I’m better for it.”

This is no small feat. According to the American Physical Society, in 2015 just over 2 percent of bachelor degrees in physics were earned by African-Americans. Even fewer go on to get their doctoral degree in the field.

Snowden was awarded her Ph.D. after 11 years of post-secondary study. Ironically, Snowden told CNBC Make It that a career in STEM wasn’t her initial dream career.

“Engineering definitely was not something I had a passion for at a young age,” she says. “I was quite the opposite. I think my earliest memories of math and science were definitely one of like nervousness and anxiety and just kind of an overall fear of the subject.”

Like many young girls, she shied away from math until a teacher encouraged her. “I had this idea that I wasn’t good at math and they kind of helped to peel away that mindset,” she explains. “They showed me that it’s more of a growth situation, that you can develop an aptitude for this and you can develop a skill. It’s just like a muscle, and you have to work for it.”

“When Snowden, who grew up in Miami, was in the 12th grade and studying physics, she and her dad were introduced to a friend of a friend who worked in the physics department at Florida A&M University. At the time, she says, she was considering colleges and decided to make a visit to the campus,” MSNBC reported.

“We drove up there and it was amazing,” says Snowden. “They treated me like a football player who was getting recruited. They took me to the scholarship office, and they didn’t know anything about me at the time. All they knew was that I was a student who was open to the possibility of majoring in physics.”

But instead, she participated in MIT’s summer research program while an undergraduate student and it was then that she was introduced to nuclear engineering. “She decided to pursue graduate study, applied to eight schools and was accepted by one–MIT.’s nuclear engineering program,” MSNBC reported.

“Mareena was one of the best students I have had in more than four decades of teaching and research at MIT.,” senior research scientist Dr. Richard Lanza tells CNBC Make It. “Mareena has that rare combination of passion, enthusiasm and technical and policy expertise, which drove her interest in finding a solution for nuclear arms control.”

While Snowden may have stood out in her work, there were some difficulties. She was after all often the only Black person or woman in her nuclear engineering classes and having come from a historically black college, this was a major adjustment.

“I had a picture of Katherine Johnson on my wall right after ‘Hidden Figures’ came out, because she was a model for me,” says Snowden. “People ask me all the time, ‘Who’s your role model?’ and you know, you pick and choose from different places. And it was like now, I have a tangible woman. I have Katherine Johnson, who was a mathematician and a Black woman killing it.”

Following the completion of her studies at MIT, Snowden went on to finish a fellowship with the National Nuclear Security Administration. “This month, she started a new position at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she says she will be focused on nuclear security, including policy research and writing about nuclear weapons,” MSNBC reported.

Snowden realizes she has made a difference. “When you go into these spaces, whether its MIT, or Google or Apple, you don’t change yourself for the institution. The institution needs to change for you,” she says. “They need to grow because you’re there, and if you don’t bring your full self to the table, then they don’t have the opportunity to improve.”

 

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