RosePod: Classes to Careers

Engineering a Diverse Future in STEM

When we talk about diversity in STEM fields, most people immediately think of the race or gender gaps. But for today's guest, promoting diversity in STEM means encouraging diversity in thought, behavior, interaction, and much more.  Dr. Carlotta Berry is the Lawrence J. Giacletto Endowed Chair and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rose Hulman. Her areas of expertise include educational mobile robotics and enhanced human-robot interfaces. Also specializing in recruitment and retention activities for underrepresented populations in electrical and computer engineering, she helped found the Rose Building Undergraduate Diversity (ROSE-BUD) program, which she co-advises.  In this episode of RosePod, Dr. Berry joins our student hosts Isaac and Reese, and shares her journey from aspiring math teacher to esteemed professor, touching on her educational experiences from Nashville to Vanderbilt and her commitment to diversifying STEM. Dr. Berry discusses her initiatives to inspire young and diverse demographics through STEM outreach, including writing children’s books and engaging in hands-on STEM activities. The episode also highlights Rose Hulman's supportive environment promoting group work and practical experience, aiming to produce well-rounded graduates prepared for challenging engineering and science careers.   EPISODE QUOTES: On promoting STEM for people with diverse backgrounds 10:17: I write children's books so that little kids can see themselves doing robotics, can see themselves doing programming at a level they understand. My engineering research is in robotics education, engineering education. I have flower bots, open-source robots that are modular, that grow with the student. So if you're a little kid, then you are doing graphical programming, and I can still tell you the basics of robotics. If you're a high school student, you may be doing Arduino programming, Raspberry Pi, or something like that. But you start to grow them into STEM so that when, especially if it's a young lady or if it's a black or brown student, they're in class, and they're in middle school, and somebody goes, "girls aren't good at math" or "there's no such thing as a black or brown engineer," they go—no, I saw one in a book. I know I can do this. Why humanities is important in STEM 05:30: Something I talk to, especially when I teach freshman design, is humanities. Students are notorious. I hate how many humanities courses I have to take. Why do I have to take ethics? Why do I have to take writing? Why do I have to write all these papers? Why do I have to do all these presentations? Well, you have to do it because if you're going to be an engineer, you want to be able to convince people to give you money for your great idea. And you want to be able to explain to people how it works. You're not designing in a vacuum here. You're designing as an engineer for people. So if you don't get some people skills in there, you're going to have all these cool things down in your garage or in your basement that nobody is going to use. That's why the humanities courses are equally as important as the STEM courses, the engineering and all of that, because of the major you have selected. Pushing for multidisciplinary interaction 0743: Another thing I push a lot, along with diversity, is multidisciplinary interaction. Can you, as a computer engineer, work with a mechanical engineer and help them understand the perspectives you have about your major so they can give you some of theirs as well? Because you're not going to only be working with computer engineers when you graduate. Sometimes, you're going to be working with a manager who doesn't even have a technical degree. Can you help your manager understand what you've been doing for the last week? Right? That stuff is equally as important.   SHOW LINKS: * Carlotta Berry | Rose-Hulman [https://www.rose-hulman.edu/academics/faculty/berry-carlotta-berry123.html] * Dr. C.A. Berry – Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology [https://wordpress.rose-hulman.edu/berry123/] * Carlotta Berry, Ph.D. | LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlotta-berry-phd/] * Coded Bias | A.I. Bias & Facial Recognition Discrimination | Documentary | PBS [https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/coded-bias/] * FIRST Robotics Competition Team [https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc] * Branam and Kremer Innovation Centers | Rose-Hulman [https://www.rose-hulman.edu/academics/degrees-and-programs/cross-cutting-programs/BIC/index.html] * Rose Power [https://www.rose-hulman.edu/admissions-and-aid/early-planning/rose-power/index.html] * Carlotta A. Berry: Children’s books, biography, latest update [https://www.amazon.com/stores/Carlotta-A.-Berry/author/B07MKPLWRC?isDramIntegrated=true&ref=ap_rdr&shoppingPortalEnabled=true] * These Romance Novels Represent Black Women In Science [https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/black-stem-romance-novels/] * Rosebud [https://admissions.rose-hulman.edu/register/?id=e5e39889-86f5-47df-8f9e-3431ac0a64bb]

What It Means To Be a Fightin’ Engineer: How To Get Involved With Athletics at Rose

At Rose-Hulman, athletics and academics go hand in hand. And no one knows how important the balance between classes and practices is than head football coach Jeff Sokol.  Sokol has coached at Rose-Hulman for 13 years and played DIII football himself when he was in school. On this episode of RosePod, Sokol chats with student hosts Isaac and Reese about the variety of athletics offered at Rose, what coaching DIII football is like, and how Rose-Hulman supports its student-athletes on the field and in the classroom.    EPISODE QUOTES: Fostering a supportive community outside the field 18:37: I always encourage our guys, especially during orientation, [to] reach out and become friends with guys on the football team. The easiest thing to do is just to have 40 friends of other first-year guys. You can be perfectly happy having those be your only friends. But if you go out and really start to meet the other people on your floor and in your resident hall and just reach out and befriend all the other people on this campus, hopefully other students that aren't student-athletes appreciate the effort that the student-athletes put into their sport, enjoy coming out and cheering them on, and take some pride in the success that we have. Coaching is instilling love for the game in your athletes 05:20: The big challenge in coaching is: you have to make your players love playing the game. Like they have to really enjoy being a part of the team. You're going to ask them to do difficult things in order to be competitive and to be successful. But they've got to enjoy doing it, 'cause there's no scholarship to hold over their head. They can walk away anytime. So, the student-athletes are here playing the games because they love them. And for us as coaches, our challenge is just to make sure we don't do anything to take that love away.   On appreciating the academic commitment of student-athletes 18:10: A lot of the students, when they come here, maybe they had a certain perception about the athletes in their high school and what it was like. But I hope when they go to a class and they see that all the athletes are in the classes with them, taking all the exact same classes, having the exact same struggles, and working through all these complicated academic issues that everyone hears. And I hope there's an appreciation for that, and they want to come out and support them.   SHOW LINKS: * Rose-Hulman Football [https://athletics.rose-hulman.edu/sports/football] * Rose-Hulman Athletics [https://athletics.rose-hulman.edu/]

From Brain Surgery to the Superbowl: Internship Opportunities at Rose-Hulman Ventures

One thing we pride ourselves on here at Rose-Hulman is providing our students real-world experience and exceptional internship opportunities.  And our guest today is passionate about fostering innovation and solutions-oriented product design right here on campus.  Brian Dougherty is the Senior Director of Rose-Hulman Ventures, a product design, rapid prototyping and development firm located on Rose-Hulman’s south campus. He is also a Rose alum from the class of 1993! Today, Brian will share what Rose Ventures is all about with our student hosts Isaac and Reese.  He highlights the variety of projects students are working on through the program from software development to medical devices, and how these challenging projects prepare students for the workforce.    EPISODE QUOTES: Creating a best internship experience at Rose-Hulman Ventures 09:15: People are sometimes shocked or a little skeptical of this, but the truth is that an internship experience at Ventures is among the best in the world. And primarily because myself and the full-time engineering staff down there—well, the whole staff down there—our jobs exist to make it the best internship in the world...09:49 So unless that company invests heavily in their internship culture, which some do, a lot of times, that experience can be a little bit lacking. So the way we create that experience, though, is by putting our interns in positions where they have to deliver. What’s unique about Rose-Hulman Ventures? 30:19: That intersection of driving that value for the client. In a real project in a way that maybe the student interns never had any idea that they could even do. That's where that educational opportunity happens. And we're unique in doing that. We've been doing it for a long time now, and we've been a very open book about how we do it, but it's really a testament to the culture of Rose-Hulman that most other schools haven't really figured it out yet.   Rose-Hulman Ventures is an engine for driving innovation 24:32: Rose-Hulman Ventures is an engine for driving innovation for our clients. So usually, they have an entrepreneurial idea but no idea how to make it work. They don't have the resources, the building blocks, or the skills that they need to figure out how to make this idea come to reality. And we do that.   SHOW LINKS: * Rose-Hulman Ventures [https://www.rhventures.org/] * NICO Corporation [https://niconeuro.com/] * Innovation Grove and More Rose-Hulman Ventures Changes [https://www.rose-hulman.edu/about-us/history-and-leadership/strategic-plan/strategic-plan-innovation.html]

Where Passions Come To Life: Getting to Know Rose-Hulman’s Innovation Centers

Here at Rose-Hulman, we really believe in hands-on experience, and our innovation center are filled with opportunities to get dirty. In this podcast episode, we are digging into Rose Hulman's Branam Innovation Center (BIC) and Kremer Innovation Center (KIC). For this conversation, we are joined by Lee Dagle, the administrative assistant for the BIC, the KIC, and engineering design, as well as Garrett Hart, a Rose-Hulman electrical engineering student who is very involved in the BIC as well. Lee & Garrett chat with our student hosts Isaac and Reese all about how these centers provide students with tangible experiences, fostering innovative thinking and practical learning outside the classroom. They discuss how the centers enable students to express their passions and have an accessible platform to experiment and take risks, and share a bit about what all the student teams at the BIC and the KIC are working on lately.   EPISODE QUOTES: The whole mission of BIC 16:42 [Lee Dagle] Our role is simply to assist you. We are to assist you to do the best that you can do to get to competition and compete with all the other, whether they're large or small. We want to empower you. [The] bottom line is we want you to gain the skills and have all the knowledge in manufacturing, creating, revising, and learning how to pivot when you fail. Basically, we want you to become a better engineer before you even graduate. How passion fuels success in the BIC and KIC 23:19: [Lee Dagle] It's your passion. What is your passion? And I think that the BIC and the KIC shine when the students come down with their passion, and this is what they love, and we're going to do what we can to help them be successful.   The power of a maker space mindset 24:32: [Garrett Hart] When you put a bunch of people in a building, that is just a huge maker space that also has the mindset and ideology of, like, just ask, and they'll stop what they're doing and drop what they're doing to help you or even work with you for, like, this multi-year effort of developing rocket engines, you can do so much there.   SHOW LINKS: * Branam and Kremer Innovation Centers | Rose-Hulman [https://www.rose-hulman.edu/academics/degrees-and-programs/cross-cutting-programs/BIC/index.html] * Branam Innovation Center – Teams & Clubs | Rose-Hulman [https://www.rose-hulman.edu/academics/degrees-and-programs/cross-cutting-programs/BIC/teams-and-clubs.html#canoe] * Battery Workforce Challenge | Rose-Hulman [https://www.rose-hulman.edu/academics/degrees-and-programs/battery-workforce-challenge.html] * Lander Challenge [https://landerchallenge.space/] * Office of Innovation | Rose-Hulman [https://www.rose-hulman.edu/about-us/get-to-know-rose-hulman/office-of-innovation/index.html]

Building Connections and Finding Your Passions: How Career Services Can Help You Succeed

You’ve found your place and are doing your coursework here at Rose-Hulman, but what happens once you graduate? The post-college career world can be difficult to navigate, but we have so many resources right here on campus that can help students & alumni find the best career to fit their goals.   To tell us more, we are joined today by Scott Tieken, Director of Career Services & Kathy Kassissieh, Associate Director of Career Services and Employer Relations at Rose-Hulman. With almost 2 decades each at Rose-Hulman, Scott and Kathy sit down with our student hosts Isaac and Reese about what career services has to offer, working with peer advisors, how its okay to not know what you want to do with your life big picture just yet and more that shows why the Princeton Review ranks us No. 10 in the nation for Best Career Services!   EPISODE QUOTES: How Rose-Hulman's career services benefits students 07:14 [Kathy Kassissieh] One thing that Rose-Hulman's career services office does that most schools do not, is we have one career services office for the whole campus. However, we have career advisors that are assigned to specific majors. And what happens there is it gives each of us, whatever major we are assigned to, we then can delve a little bit deeper into that. We get to know the professors who are teaching the classes. We get to know what you are learning in those classes and what skills you are gaining, which helps us be able to help you, the student, talk about what it is that you're learning. How stepping out of your comfort zone can give you a headstart for career growth 23:19: [Scott Tieken] Let's not be so closed-minded on the front end. Let's get those offers, then decide what's the best fit for the company. What's the best size of the company? Do they do what I want to do? Are they where I want to go geographically? I think the earlier you step out of your comfort zone and try something new, the more it's going to reward your career in the long haul, and employers love to see that. What makes Rose-Hulman’s career services unique? 19:49: [Kathy Kassissieh]  It's getting to know you as a person, not just as a student, not just as a specific major, but you're going to sit down with your advisor and they're going to get to know you. And then, based on that, we're able to almost play like a matchmaking game where you're not going to just graduate with a job; you're going to graduate with a career.   SHOW LINKS: * Career Services & Employer Relations – On-Campus Recruiting | Rose-Hulman [https://www.rose-hulman.edu/career-services/for-recruiters-and-employers/on-campus-recruiting.html] * Career Services & Employer Relations – Info for Alumni | Rose-Hulman [https://www.rose-hulman.edu/career-services/info-for-alumni.html] * Princeton Review: Rose-Hulman ranks No. 10 in the nation for Best Career Services  [https://www.princetonreview.com/college-rankings?rankings=best-career-services]   Guest Profile: * Scott K. Tieken | LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/scotttieken/] * Career Services at Rose-Hulman [https://www.rose-hulman.edu/career-services/about-us.html] * Kathy Kassissieh | Rose-Hulman [https://www.rose-hulman.edu/about-us/get-to-know-rose-hulman/faces-of-stem/staff-profiles/kathy-kassissieh.html] * Kathy Kassissieh | LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathykassissieh/]