As a transgender woman and first-generation student from the Navajo community of Teec Nos Pos in northeastern Arizona, Arizona State University alumna Trudie Jackson is used to forging her own way.

Today, she holds concurrent bachelor’s degrees in American Indian studies from The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and public service and public policy from the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions, and a master’s degree in tribal leadership and governance from The College’s American Indian studies program. But the road hasn’t been easy. Trudie Jackson graduated with a master's degree in tribal leadership and governance from The College's American Indian studies program. Download Full Image

Trudie Jackson, an alumna of The College's American Indian Studies program's master's degree track.

“Native students balance being in a Western educational institution and coming from a tribal community,” she said. “Part of going to school is just learning sometimes you had to make sacrifices — you may not be able to engage in a ceremonial event back in your community, for example, because you have a paper due.”

Learning to navigate those challenges is what led her to attend Graduate Pathways ahead of her master’s degree track a few years ago. Organized by American Indian Student Support Services (AISSS), the biennial conference helps Native American undergraduates and alumni learn more about advanced degrees and application processes.

Now pursuing a doctorate at the University of New Mexico, Jackson returned to campus this month to share her experiences with a new generation of postsecondary-bound indigenous students at the 2019 Graduate Pathways.

Alumna Trudie Jackson speaks to a room of fellow Native American students considering graduate paths.

“You may encounter professors who have never had a Native student, but that’s actually where you have the chance to share your knowledge,” Jackson said, speaking to a crowd of around 50 students, alumni and faculty mentors at the conference. “I believe one way I contribute to academia is through my own experience as an American Indian transgender woman; that perspective is not always reflected in the scholarship we read, and that’s what inspires me to keep going.”

Paving the way

According to AISSS Acting Director Laura Gonzales-Macias, more than 3,000 Native American students were enrolled at ASU in 2018, many of whom are in The College’s 23 schools and departments. Over 500 are working toward doctorates or master’s degrees.

She said the number is continuing to grow and already significant, particularly by national standards — Native Americans make up less than 1% of U.S. college students and are represented even less in graduate programs.

Several initiatives aim to bring more young people into the fold and support them once they arrive, but fewer exist at the graduate level.

Graduate Pathways was designed to bridge the gap.

“There are many challenges involved in being a Native American student, one of them being that often you are the only one in the course,” said Gonzales-Macias, who is also an instructor in The College's American Indian Studies program. “I think it is particularly important at the graduate level for these students to hear what the climate is like for indigenous students and how they can continue navigating such a large institution.”

The two-day training includes resume and personal statement workshops and one-on-one mentorship sessions with faculty from the degree programs students are interested in. Perhaps most importantly, Gonzales-Macias hopes participants walk away feeling like they’re not alone. It is a sentiment she remembers being a vital step of her own psychology graduate track at The College, in 1992.

“Coming to ASU back then, it was not as diverse a place as it is today,” she said. “I was far from home and family, a first-generation student and by then, continuing onto my doctorate — connecting with fellow Native graduates was my saving grace.”

Lasting connections

Now in its fifth year, Gonzales-Macias says the program comes full circle when alumni like Jackson return to give today’s prospective graduate students a unique insight into what’s next.

“Bringing back former participants lets new students see that someone else has been in their shoes,” she said.

That was the case for Rodney Aguilla, a Tohono O’odham tribal member who came to Graduate Pathways to learn more about advanced programs in fields spanning American Indian studies, law or teaching.

Rodney Aguilla, a senior in The College's American Indian Studies program, came to Graduate Pathways to learn more about advanced degree options.

Growing up in Three Points, Arizona, southwest of Tucson, Aguilla saw getting an education as a way to give back to the sister who raised him.

“My sister always told us that education is the key to the world,” he said. “She literally saw me go from dropping out of high school, to getting my GED, and finally, to coming here — she did a lot to help push that forward.”

He transferred to ASU from Tohono O’odham Community College last May to pursue a bachelor’s degree in American Indian studies and a minor in history, both from The College.

He said being homesick and away from family made coming to ASU difficult at first. Hearing from current graduate students at the conference made him feel like he was on the right track.

“I think as Native students, we all kind of have that extra weight on our shoulders to come back and do something for our tribe,” he said. “Meeting other students and learning from their experiences really helped, I hope to one day be here too, putting on these programs for others who come after me.”

For professionals involved in geospatial science — an area of study related to geography — it is standard operating procedure to help answer the question, “Where are we?”  

But for women with careers in the geosciences, that question may have a profound personal implication, too, as they navigate their professional journey. Like other STEM professions, there is a shortage of women in geoscience, particularly in leadership positions.  Dean Elizabeth Wentz Download Full Image

The TRELIS 2019 workshop hosted at Arizona State University’s Barrett & O’Connor Washington Center on June 7-8 was an opportunity for women in geographic information science academic positions to focus on their career paths.

“The field is fairly computation intensive, so, much like other computer science-oriented fields, it does struggle to attract women and to retain them,” said Elizabeth Wentz, ASU’s dean of social sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning. “They face the same challenge a woman in computer science might face: implicit bias and lack of access to the same types of resources.”

The purpose of TRELIS, funded by the National Science Foundation, is to bring together women in the geosciences to build leadership and to provide mentoring and networking. The June workshop was strategically scheduled for the weekend immediately prior to the UCGIS 2019 Symposium, which brings together academic professionals from around the country. UCGIS, the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, is a nonprofit organization that creates and supports communities of practice for GIS science research, education and policy endeavors in higher education and with allied institutions.

ASU’s Washington center provided the perfect venue for a select group of 15 women from universities around the country for the TRELIS workshop.

“We wanted to create an opportunity for women to develop different professional development skills including a social network and an exchange of ideas,” said Wentz, who helped organize and direct the two-day workshop. “How do you negotiate? How do you manage conflict?”

This is the second of three NSF-funded workshops and the target this year, according to organizers, was early-career women. The workshops are held in association with the annual symposiums held by UCGIS. Participants for the workshop were selected based on their responses to a set of questions and their professional orientation. Fifteen women from across the country were selected from a pool of 45 applicants. 

The U.S. Department of Labor has identified geospatial technology as a high-growth industry. While the federal government was one of the early adopters of GIS technology, state and local governments as well as utilities, telecommunications and transportation are now among the largest users of GIS/geospatial solutions. 

The TRELIS workshop included two sessions on “Obstacles and Conflicts”, sessions on communications and language, work-life balance, setting priorities and planning and a panel discussion on career trajectories. Dawn Wright, chief scientist at Esri and a leading authority in the application of GIS technology to the field of ocean and coastal science, was the keynote speaker. Wright talked to the group about taking risks and gave a candid presentation of the challenges she has faced and the joy of working in the field of science. 

Participants throughout the two-day work shop were “engaged, honest, raised important questions and expressed genuine interest in the activities" according to Wentz and her fellow organizers, Kate Beard from the University of Maine and Laxmi Ramasubramanian, a professor at the Hunter College of The City University of New York. They said the relationships the women form at the workshop don’t end when the conference concludes. 

“The TRELIS fellows in 2018 paved the way for concrete steps to stay in touch,” Wentz said. “The UCGIS has put into place community circles where fellows can opt in to different topics. There is also a Facebook page to share events, questions and activities. Last year’s cohort set up regular web meetings to stay in touch. They will be eligible to apply for Carolyn Merry mini-grants to facilitate joint research and future events. We see this as just a starting point for increasing participation and inclusion of women in GIS.”

Wentz said the event is another way the Washington center is helping raise awareness about the work of the university and also helps the university do that work.  

“People at this event come from universities across the U.S. so there will be nationwide visibility from this group that starts to ripple out,” she said. “And it helps to fulfill ASU’s charter with regard to inclusion. The whole purpose of the grant is to be more inclusive to women in a field that is disproportionately male.”  

Five years ago, Amanda Thart had no idea she’d be embarking on her career as an engineer in the defense industry.

The recent electrical engineering master’s degree graduate from the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University will begin a job as an electrical engineer at Raytheon Missile Systems in June. Amanda Thart Download Full Image

When she began studies at ASU, Thart said, “I wanted to make an impact, but I had absolutely no idea how to go about it,” and the security field wasn’t even on her radar.

Her skills in math and science, and a special engineering program in high school called Project Lead the Way, led her to choose electrical engineering as a major. She found in ASU a college destination not too far away from her family but also a school that would give her the most opportunities, and she took full advantage of them.

“I was specifically drawn to ASU because there were a lot of extracurricular opportunities I wanted to get involved with, a lot of big companies were coming here looking for students and there are a lot of opportunities for undergraduate research,” she said. “I liked that."

Getting started in research early and jumping straight into to the ASU Grand Challenge Scholars Program opened door after door, especially in the security field, her chosen Grand Challenge theme.

Thart's first research project as a freshman was in Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Paulo Shakarian’s Cyber-Socio Intelligent Systems Lab. Her project involved looking at military events happening in Iraq and Syria and then identifying the causal relationship between them to predict what might happen next by using historical patterns and machine learning. The cross-disciplinary experience in Shakarian’s lab also gave her the first opportunity to be a co-author on peer-reviewed research journal articles.

“It was important for me to get involved in research that early, and Dr. Shakarian was willing to take me on even though I didn’t have any computer science experience,” Thart said. “My involvement (in Shakarian’s lab) opened the doors to so many things. I was not only able to get an introduction into computer science but I was also able to get an internship early.”

In addition to internships with Raytheon and Moog Broad Reach, Thart participated in the Engineering Projects in Community Service program, known as EPICS, at ASU and was a NASA Space Grant recipient. These experiences enabled her to apply her knowledge to hands-on engineering projects.

“Actually doing engineering and being in an engineering environment is different than learning things in class,” she said. “You’re never going to know what engineering is truly like until you take the knowledge you learn in class and apply it in a real-world setting.”

She also conducted research during her undergraduate years through the Fulton Undergraduate Research Initiative and for her thesis as an honors student in Barrett, The Honors College.

Thart joined the ASU chapter of the Society of Women Engineers and was a member of the STEM sorority Phi Sigma Rho and the electrical engineering and computer science honor society Eta Kappa Nu.

Her most memorable moment at ASU was presenting at the NASA Space Grant Symposium during her junior year. Though she had been involved in undergraduate research since her freshman year, this experience was the first time she had presented her research to a crowd instead of at a poster session.

“It was specifically that moment that was significant because it felt important that I was standing there, presenting research that was backed by an organization like NASA,” she said. “It was something I never expected to do when I came to college.”

Thart’s undergraduate experience culminated with a Moeur Award, the prestigious honor given to students who earn a 4.0 GPA for all classes taken at ASU. She was especially proud of this achievement because of how challenging her classes were and it meant she had successfully pushed through the ups and downs of her engineering degree.

But her educational journey wasn’t over yet. She immediately moved into the 4+1 accelerated master’s degree program in electrical engineering. Pursuing an advanced degree was an easy decision for Thart as she always knew she wanted one — to follow in the footsteps of her mom. This spring, Thart joined more than 930 Fulton Schools graduates who earned master’s degrees.

During both her undergraduate and graduate studies, mentors such as Robin Hammond, director of the Fulton Schools Career Center, and coworkers at her internships helped her figure out what she wanted to do in her career and how to get there.

Finding a role model in Laura McGill, vice president of engineering at Raytheon, helped Thart see how she could use her engineering skills and be a leader.

“I wanted to not only focus on a technical aspect of a problem, but the problem as a whole and have a higher-level view of engineering,” Thart said. “(McGill) showed me this role was possible.”

She also started to return the favor by getting involved during her junior year as an EPICS High mentor for high school students involved in community service engineering projects, and as an Engineering Futures mentor for first-generation college freshmen. The opportunities reminded her of her own experience in the Project Lead the Way program and motivated her to help aspiring engineers discover their love for the field.

“I realized I had all this knowledge I’d gained in college that I wanted to pass on to people because I wanted to make sure they had the best chance of success,” Thart said. “I can inform freshmen how to get to their goals and how to use the tools available to them.”

Thart’s idea of success in her engineering career is to one day have a position as an engineering leader like McGill and to keep learning more about different fields of engineering and business.

She also wants to continue mentoring at ASU, especially to encourage more diversity in the field and close the gender gap she noticed as an engineer herself.

“I want to make sure I continue working with students to not only show them what engineering is, but show everyone that it could be a viable option for them,” Thart said. “I want to open the doors to engineering for more people.”

Keon McGuire, assistant professor at ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, is having quite a year. This month, McGuire was selected as a 2019 National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow; back in March he was named one of five Emerging Scholars for 2019–21 by the American College Personnel Association; and in December he and his partner Meskerem Z. Glegziabher became a father to their first child, Malcolm Ra’iy Zikru-McGuire.

The $70,000 fellowship provides funding and professional development to 30 early-career scholars throughout the U.S. working in critical areas of education research. Keon McGuire Download Full Image

Black male feminism

“This project will give me an opportunity to focus on what I’m calling a black male feminist research and learning community,” McGuire said. “It’s an opportunity for black undergraduate men to engage with feminist literature, feminist ideas and to be in conversation with black feminists who are either professors or community organizers on campus or elsewhere.”

McGuire’s goal is to give these students an opportunity to rethink notions of masculinity and what it means to be a man, mainly in ways that are committed to resisting and dismantling patriarchy, sexism and homophobia.

“Over the year, we’ll have bimonthly meetings to engage in conversation or reflection on how the young men and myself have been socialized into what it means to be a man in ways that may be harmful to ourselves and other people and learn more about the ways race, gender and sexuality intersect in the lives of black women and queer folks,” he said.

“Typically, when you hear the word ‘feminism,’ the assumption is it’s just women who are feminists. That’s not correct. The notion of black male feminists is this idea that there are black men who can and should embrace feminist politics work to unlearn their own investments in patriarchy and struggle alongside women, trans and queer people for a more just society.  

“Whether the discussion is disproportionate disciplining of black girls in schools, the lack of media attention given to murdered black trans women, or unequal pay for women of color, the black male feminist point is: How can black men embrace feminism as a necessary strategy for achieving a safe and inclusive society?"

For the last four years, McGuire has led a study group at ASU called Visions of Black Manhood in his role as adviser to African American Men of ASU. The group talks about societal and cultural “rules” boys and men are taught, such as not crying and being tough and how this has affected their ability to ask for help, develop emotional intelligence and communicate effectively. The group also delves into more current topics, like the #MeToo movement and Black Lives Matter.

Gender privilege

McGuire, by his own account, hasn’t always been a feminist.

“Coming from North Carolina and the Bible Belt, the term feminism didn’t mean much to me. Of course, I thought women should get equal pay, not be sexually harassed, and could achieve anything a man could as evidenced through the example of my amazing mother and grandmother. But that was the extent of it,” he said.

Then he moved to Philadelphia for graduate school and met a great community of black and brown feminists.

“They became like family and really challenged and pushed me to be better. They called me out on my sexism, my homophobia and my transphobia in ways that were holding me accountable, yet still loving,” McGuire said. “I feel a responsibility to pay it forward.”

McGuire points out that black men are in no ways more committed to patriarchy than any other racial or ethnic group.

“The reason I focus on black men is because that’s the community I’m a part of and feel responsible for,” McGuire said. “And I’ve always wanted my work to have a meaningful impact and be relevant to the community that has given me so much.”

In the way that white allies are called to help develop racial consciousness for other white people, McGuire believes a lot of the effort to end patriarchy and misogyny falls in the hands of heterosexual men.

The conversation around patriarchy and sexism usually stops at issues of sexual assault and harassment, McGuire said.

“Men tend not to think about the ways that patriarchy and sexism influence so many other areas of life. We fall into this good guy/bad guy binary,” he said. “So if you’re not the overtly sexist guy, then you’re a good guy and everything else passes because you’re not the bad guy.”

There are many ways that patriarchy and the way men live out their masculinities become marginalizing for anyone who isn’t stricly a heterosexual male: domestically, in the workplace, through mansplaining and manspreading: “We must raise our consciousness and transform our politics when it comes to gender equity,” McGuire said.  

“Gender privilege allows us certain forms of advantages largely over women and trans folks as well. And for me, that means none of us are free until we are all free.”

Claudia Cervantes-Soon, associate professor: Her research interests center on critical ethnographic approaches to the study of identities, intersectionalities and pedagogical practices, with a particular focus on the fostering of agency, critical literacy and biliteracy, and empowered identities among children, youth and families from marginalized communities.

Amanda Tachine, postdoctoral scholar: She researches college and transition, sense of belonging and qualitative methodology, through an indigenous lens.

Bryan Henderson, assistant professor: His research focuses on oral argumentation and learning environments that allow students to feel more comfortable and motivated to talk and interact with one another.

This spring marks the 35th anniversary of ASU’s Hispanic Mother-Daughter Program that aims to increase the number of first-generation Arizona students who are prepared to enroll and succeed at Arizona State University.

The program was launched in 1984 by Joanne O’Donnell to address the underrepresentation of women and women of color attending ASU. Every year, the program selects hundreds of seventh grade students and family member participant teams — 650 this year alone — to become more familiar with the process of preparing for a college education through activities focused on skill building, mentorship and community-building around higher education. Monthly workshops on ASU’s Tempe campus address topics such as peer pressure, financial aid and preparing for high school. Translators are available for Spanish speakers to make the material more accessible.   From left: Cesar Arevalo, ASU grad Jackelyne Arevalo and Delia Acosta at the 2019 spring Hispanic Mother-Daughter Program graduation celebration. Download Full Image

The program, which earned Helios Foundation support in 2007, has reached thousands of parent-student teams, and its impact has been significant. The enrollment of resident Latina women at ASU in 1984 was 556. As of fall 2018, that number increased to more than 7,000 Latina students.

The program can have a huge impact on families’ higher education goals. Liliana Campos was a participant when she was in middle school. She enjoyed the program as a student but didn’t complete it after she had her daughter, Briana. She encouraged her daughter to participate when she was old enough.

“It’s a great opportunity ... to continue my daughter’s education,” Campos said.  

Her daughter is now a senior at Metro Tech High School in Phoenix, and Campos said she’s noticed how focused her daughter is on college. She has been admitted to ASU and is pursuing a fashion degree starting in the fall. Campos said the most beneficial part of the program for their family has been the community support and confidence to “believe that … it’s possible to get through college.”

“There are so many resources out there. (The mentors) pretty much guide you and give you that support,” she said.

Connecting students with resources and preparing them for the sometimes intimidating processes of higher education is a core component of the program. Leonela Urrutia is a senior at ASU and an alumna of the Hispanic Mother-Daughter Program; she said the program’s financial aid workshops helped her earn a full ride to ASU. She is about to graduate with a political science degree, a minor in French and a certificate in international studies.

Urrutia is also an office assistant and peer adviser for the program, so she works on the daily functions of the workshops and also serves as a presenter, emcee and particpant mentor for the monthly workshops.

She said the program is invaluable because it lets families know that higher education goals are reachable.

“I tell all the students that this program is for them and the resources are right in front of them. If they’re thinking about it they should just take the leap of faith,” Urrutia said. “The program is going to help educate you and your parents or guardians about college and higher education. (These are) goals that are attainable, even though they seem so unrealistic to some.”

Urrutia has seen the program’s effect on her whole family. Her older sister, Katherine, went through the program and attended Grand Canyon University with scholarships. Urrutia said her mom, Glenda, was inspired through the Hispanic Mother-Daughter Program to get a certificate to be a teaching assistant. Her mother now works with a speech pathologist after spending time caregiving and working in the cleaning industry.

“My mom encourages all parents she knows to go through the program,” said Urrutia, who plans on pursuing work with the state legislature advocating for education and immigration equity after she graduates.

Participants and alumni often introduce the program to others, and partnerships with schools and community organizations have also fueled the program’s success over the decades.

Cyndi Tercero, who was awarded the program’s Commitment to Service Award at the recent Hispanic Mother-Daughter Program graduation ceremony on May 1, has been involved in the program for more than 20 years as an educator at Carl Hayden High School and later as an administrator at Phoenix Union High School District.

Tercero saw early on the contributions that the program made to students. A turning point for her was in the mid-1990s when she was at Carl Hayden; Tercero remembers an intelligent young girl in tears because her grandmother told her to “stop the crazy talk about going to college” because her role as a woman in the community was to find a husband.

“Her parents and grandparents were shocked that at the school level we were trying to encourage her to go further on,” she said.

The student was not in the Hispanic Mother-Daughter Program, but some of her friends were.

“I just kept thinking, what a difference the program could have made for her,” she said.

Since then Tercero has served on the former Hispanic Mother-Daughter Program board and been an advocate for higher education for students in Phoenix. She said she’s humbled and honored to receive the award.

“I’ve been so committed to this program. I was not a Hispanic Mother-Daughter Program alum; I didn’t get to experience the program firsthand but I know I got to experience how it impacted many of our students.”

Tercero said that through the program, students and parents all benefit from the mindset that college is an attainable goal, including living on campus and having a full campus experience.

The impact has been felt among a diverse group of students. Although it has retained its original name, the program also embraces participants of diverse ethnic backgrounds, and sons and fathers or other caregivers have also participated. Alumni of the program have gone on to diverse careers, including in broadcast media, financial planning, teaching, nursing and engineering. And the number of teams served is growing to 1,000 annually in the next two years, including an expansion to ASU’s West campus in Glendale.

“It has been so inspiring to see all of the classes of mothers and daughters enter and graduate from this program over the years,” said Anita Verdugo Tarango, director of outreach for ASU Educational Outreach and Student Services. “We are building skills, community and a legacy of higher education for entire families through the Hispanic Mother-Daughter Program, and we’re thrilled to celebrate 35 years of this work at ASU.”

Find out more about the program, including how to apply or support the program, at the Hispanic Mother Daughter Program website.

Engineers solve some of the world’s biggest problems, but they need more than technical skills to create meaningful solutions.

Ambitious students in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University take on more than their engineering degree requirements when they participate in the Grand Challenge Scholars Program. Through GCSP, they become transdisciplinary, collaborative and global problem-solvers. Thirteen students from the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering graduated as National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenge Scholars, having completed coursework and experiential opportunities in service learning, multicultural awareness, entrepreneurship, developing an interdisciplinary perspective and conducting research or a creative project related to one of 14 Grand Challenges designated by the NAE. Pictured from top left to bottom right: Philip Mulford, Stephen Lane, Randee Huffman, Ekta Patel, Cole Brauer, Andrea Kraetz, Eduardo Luciano Huapaya, Jobana Westbay, Diana Chen, Sheena Benson and Bhavna Ramesh. Not pictured: Tyrine Jamella Pangan and Ryan McBurney. Photo by Erika Gronek/ASU Download Full Image

Endorsed by the National Academy of Engineering, the program tasks students with choosing one of the NAE's 14 Grand Challenges facing society over the next century that span the broader themes of sustainability, health, security and joy of living.

Students accepted into the program must complete coursework and experiential opportunities for five components of the program: service learning, multicultural awareness, entrepreneurship, developing an interdisciplinary perspective and conducting research or a creative project related to their Grand Challenge theme.

During the 2018-19 academic year, 13 Fulton Schools students were added to the official NAE Grand Challenge Scholars Registry as they completed the program requirements and graduated with their bachelor’s degrees. This is the second-largest graduating class of Grand Challenge Scholars from ASU after the graduating class of spring 2017. They join 43 others who have completed the program since its inception at ASU in 2011.

“Through their own individual set of experiences, each of these students has explored different cultures, applied their technical skills to research or creative projects, developed an entrepreneurial mindset, learned to view problems from an interdisciplinary perspective and has already made an impact on local and global communities through service learning projects,” said Amy Trowbridge, director of the ASU Grand Challenge Scholars Program and a senior lecturer in the Fulton Schools. “These students are dedicated to creating value for communities in the world, and I can’t wait to see the positive impact they have in the future.”

The program often attracts often Fulton Schools’ most high-achieving students who take part in ambitious programs that offer well-rounded experiences. A majority of the program's students are in Barrett, The Honors College, others are Entrepreneurship and Innovation Fellows and many take on minors in other subjects in addition to their engineering studies. The program also opens up opportunities for students that are often in the realm of graduate studies. This year, at least two students co-authored research journal articles, four or more presented their work at national conferences and a few even started their own businesses.