From Student to Teacher: Pursuing Social Equity Through STEM
When I was 13, I decided that I would be going to MIT for university and studying mechanical engineering. It was probably a bit of a lofty goal, but I was determined to achieve it. To this end, I applied during my junior year of high school to an MIT program called MOSTEC (now, MITES Semester). And I got in! As a part of MOSTEC, I was placed in a college-style course, Mapping Justice, which was spearheaded by its instructor, Nick Okafor (if you recognize his name, shhhhh…we’re getting there!), and my experience in this course sent me down a path that I never would’ve expected, a path where I wound up at Columbia instead of MIT and one where I entered an internship for a platform founded by Nick: trubel&co (see, I told you we were getting there). But before I talk about that, let’s start at the beginning: Mapping Justice.
Merging STEM and the Humanities to Advance Racial Justice
I took Mapping Justice the summer before my senior year, which happened to be the same summer of nationwide protests against policing and police brutality: summer 2020. The backdrops of Black Lives Matter activism, mass COVID-19 deaths, and an impending presidential election set the stage for my Mapping Justice cohort as we set out learning the ins and outs of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and how spatial analysis could be used for social justice. As a part of the course, we were placed in pairs to create a capstone project by the end of the 6 weeks of the course.
For our capstone project, my partner and I decided to use GIS and historical evidence of the connection between slavery and policing to demonstrate how the higher police presence in Black and brown neighborhoods contributed to apparently higher rates of crime, a topic that we chose in large part due to our contemporary social landscape. Using what we learned and practiced in our flipped classroom model, we performed research, found and analyzed map layers that included the data that we were looking for, and created a dashboard and story map, Exploring the Over-Policing of Black and Brown Communities. It took a lot of work due to the fact that we were given 3 weeks to learn ArcGIS basics and 3 weeks to create our capstone, but we put in the work and created something that I’m still proud of 3 years later. Even though the nationwide uproar in support of Black lives has died down since 2020, the inherently unsustainable and oppressive nature of policing is still something that I center my activism on, particularly through community-building strategies like mutual aid.
Besides being a fun and unique experience, Mapping Justice taught me a lot that extended past GIS and spatial analysis. It taught me that my pursuit of both STEM and the humanities didn’t have to be separate endeavors: the 2 could be combined. As a student interested in art, history, physics, math, and social justice, I never saw any future where I could have the best of both worlds and focus on them all, but Mapping Justice changed my outlook. It was my first real experience combining STEM–data analysis–and the humanities–mapping and storytelling–in such a way that I was also able to demonstrate a social injustice. I had always assumed that I would only pursue STEM in college, but Mapping Justice helped me see that it didn’t have to be either/or. And that realization was one of my main factors in choosing to attend Columbia instead of MIT. While I never started favoring MIT any less, I knew it was very tech-oriented; whereas Columbia had both a designated STEM and a designated humanities school. I still wanted STEM to be my main focus, but I also wanted to have a vast set of humanities choices at my disposal, which Columbia offered me. So ultimately, my path towards MIT took me straight to Columbia. And while my decision wasn’t exclusively made because of Mapping Justice, the course’s illumination of a potentially different route than the one I had intended made all the difference.
Working Towards Liberatory Education & Community-Building
Now, let’s fast forward to the spring of 2023. After a gap year and one semester of college, I was a little over halfway through with my first year at university when I received an email from Nick to Mapping Justice alumni: his newly launched platform, trubel&co, was looking for an intern focused on research and engagement. I was immediately interested, so I applied, and I was accepted! My internship is ongoing, and as a part of trubel&co I’ve engaged in smaller projects like research and communications support, but I’ve also played a large role in 2 major projects: our Race, Power, and Technology workshop series and our alumni community-building initiative.
Shortly after I started at trubel&co, we led a 3-part workshop series in conjunction with the MIT Introduction to Technology, Engineering, and Science (formerly OEOP) about the connections between race, power, and technology. I worked alongside Nick and fellow trubel team member, Natalie, to build these 3 workshops. I helped to brainstorm ideas for activities and topics like collective care and liberatory design, I performed research on case studies and data humanism to guide group discussions and contribute to powerpoint slides, and I co-presented alongside Nick and Natalie. The RPT workshop series was my first major project with trubel&co, and it was really fulfilling to be able to contribute as much as I did to such an impactful and collaborative bit of outreach and education, particularly one that was such a full circle experience coming from my Mapping Justice capstone on racialized over-policing.
My second major project is an ongoing alumni community-building initiative. Out of all my work, I’ve done the most on this, being given a lot of free rein to plan the strategy for the rollout and initial parts of the outreach to trubel&co alumni. I’ve worked on crafting the outreach strategy and used graphic design to design a newsletter and infographics to inform our first communications. To ensure the platform centers alumni needs, I also created a survey for our community of almost 500 alumni to co-design an alumni network that is human-centered and data-driven. I organized this all within a central document that outlines the strategy.
I’ve really enjoyed getting to put so much work into the community-building initiative because it’s something I’m passionate about as not only an intern at trubel&co and an alum, but also as someone who, as I mentioned earlier, recognizes the importance of community. I feel that harnessing the power we have to build a community of people who have engaged with trubel&co through Mapping Justice and/or the RPT series is both a privilege and a necessity. We have the unique ability to connect multigenerational alumni to affect change, engage in mentorship, and to foster a community in and of itself. All in all, I’m glad that I’ve been given the opportunity to facilitate such an essential initiative.
Overall, my journey to where I am now hasn’t been the easiest, but it has been rewarding. From learning ArcGIS in Mapping Justice to studying at Columbia to interning at trubel&co, I’ve seen just how intertwined STEM and the humanities are, and I’m glad that I’ve been able to utilize their combined power to pursue paths of social justice.
Learn more about Raquel Conard on LinkedIn.
