Professor Taviare Hawkins helps pave the way for Black women in STEM
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- You may not know it, but today is a holiday. It's International Women's Day -- a time for women around the world to fight for more rights.
This year's theme is to get more girls and women involved in science, technology and math or STEM.
WCCO went to St. Catherine University to talk with a woman excelling in the field.
While the stars in the sky are interesting, to many, they are life-altering -- to Dr. Taviare Hawkins, "I developed a fascination with astronomy when I was 6 and it just grew from there."
Physics became her north star, "If there was something else I could do, it didn't bring me the joy in life of science like that. Figuring things out, how they work, how you can go and expand that knowledge base, problem-solving, I just really loved it. I still do."
And now she gets to solve problems -- at St. Catherine University in St. Paul. She heads the maths and sciences at the women's college -- a title that in many ways did not come easy. She was only around the 50th Black woman in the U.S. to earn a Ph.D. in physics.
Zoe Sternberg, a pre-med student, is Dr. Hawkins' lab student, "It's amazing to think, to be able to learn from someone who went through all the things she had to go through just so me and my classmates can learn."
Dr. Hawkins says of her students, "They won't have to go through the many firsts that I have. There won't be a first Black woman to graduate from the University of Iowa, I already did that. There won't be the first one from Syracuse, I already did that. There won't be a first Black woman division chair, I already did that. So now they just get to write their story in history."
And as she continues to make history. Hawkins is giving her students a boost so they too can reach for the stars
Census data shows women are nearly half of the U.S. workforce but only 27% of STEM workers.
Dr. Hawkins says the good news is -- she believes STEM programs with young girls are working.
She will be having a STEM camp for middle school girls this summer at St. Kates.