Greetings from the bi-annual meeting of the National Center for Women in IT. We are hearing from keynote speaker Dr. Mae Jemison, Former NASA Astronaut and founder of the Jemison Group.
Jemison is setting the context for the 2 day meeting, on the topic of Advancing Computing from Multiple Disciplines.
Jemison talks about her own history as an African American growing up in a time of racial civil unrest, and yet she aspired to go into space. She credits her parents for giving her the self confidence to be able to see herself in that position – she has learned to not limit herself because of other’s limited imagination, and she has learned not to limit others in the same way.
Jemison talks about her early multidisciplinary roots – as a child, she both loved engineering and arts. She found that it was difficult to juggle both disciplines, yet brought her a varity of perspectives which brought her the ability to innovate and be creative. When she went into space, she brought art artifacts and a certificate from Chicago Public Schools promising to improve STEM education. Multiple disciplines, she says, are representations of human creativity and multidisciplinarity enables science to advance further.