Promoting diversity in STEM
Join us March 14, 9:00 am – 12:00 pm Discovery Building Town Center Join Wisconsin Institute for Discovery Director Jo Handelsman and the Illuminating Discovery Hub team for a conversation on programs and initiatives that focus on impact beyond the lab in areas such as policy, public engagement, intersections with the arts, and more.
What attracted you to UW–Madison? I came to UW–Madison to join the faculty in the Department of Biochemistry and to direct the department’s new cryo-EM facility that will serve as a resource for all of campus. The Department of Biochemistry’s vision for this facility really drew me to UW–Madison. We are not just thinking about the present state of structural biology and the field of cryo-EM, but about making investments that will shape the next several decades of research in the fields of structural biology, biochemistry, cell biology, and medicine and build a community of investigators across the UW–Madison campus.
UW-Madison senior shares her undergraduate experience and how her life and career path changed after joining a student organization. My transition to college was harder than I expected, emotionally and academically, and I added to the difficulty by being too ashamed to admit I was struggling. I avoided my friends from high school, because I thought they had this image of me as a perfect student, and I didn’t want to tarnish that reputation. I was too young to realize that my grade school friends may have seen me this way because I was one of the only Asian-Americans in a predominantly white town. I had molded myself to fit their stereotype so it would easier for me to fit in. It was hard for me to make new friends, because my previous friend-making model of being in the same classes and activities with people for twelve years where my reputation preceded me wasn’t working anymore. I told my parents that everything was fine - more than fine, great in fact - in every weekly phone call. Even the thought of letting them know their “perfect” daughter was crumbling under the pressure of expectations and barely finding the motivation to get up every morning paralyzed me and kept me from seeking help. We didn’t talk about mental health problems in our family. Years later, my parents told me they knew I was struggling the whole time.
