GREENFIELD — Astronaut Cady Coleman says she’s is all about using her fame and experience to help draw women and minorities into the sciences.
“People will listen to an astronaut,” said Coleman, a chemist whose storied career included two flights on the space shuttle Columbia for science-based missions in 1995 and 1999, and a six-month stint in 2010 and 2011 on the International Space Station.
Coleman will speak at Greenfield Community College on Monday from 3:30 to 5 p.m., kicking off the statewide STEM Week and concurrent events on campus.
Retired from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Coleman knows that in the United States, only 24 percent of STEM jobs are held by women. So, she travels around the country, speaking about STEM, on a mission to inspire women and minorities into math- and science-based careers to enhance their ability to be problem-solvers in their own lives, their communities and the world.
“You don’t have to take advanced astrophysics to be a useful problem-solver,” she said. “We need to have everybody who can make a contribution as part of the team, and that really means women and minorities. My mission is to get everyone to the table.”
Her talk will include telling stories from space and offering lessons learned about teamwork.
Coleman’s talk will happen on the first day of STEM Week at GCC, one facet of the statewide STEM Week that was launched by Gov. Charlie Baker and his administration. It will be held from Oct. 22 through 26, and will focus on STEM education across the state to boost student interest and raise awareness.
Alysha Putnam, the STEM special programs coordinator in the GCC Science Department, said she has planned a STEM-related talk to be offered each day of STEM Week at GCC. She also has mapped out STEM offerings for high school students in Franklin County, and is involved in a panel presentation by and for educators and students at the four community colleges in Western Massachusetts.
“We want to show that STEM and liberal arts are actually partners and work together,” said Putnam. “We’re busting down the myths and boundaries that you can only be one or the other. We have incredible STEM education and resources at GCC, and part of STEM Week is to showcase and highlight what students have access to here and what kind of solid education we provide,” Putnam added.
A retired United States Air Force colonel, Coleman was in space as a NASA astronaut for 180 days. She entered NASA as a scientist and left as the chief of robotics, and while on the space station, she served as the lead robotics and lead science officer.
Coleman lives four miles from GCC in Shelburne with her family. She was introduced to the college in the late 1980s and is now a trustee interested in getting area residents excited about education — STEM education, in particular.
It makes Coleman proud that her bachelor’s in chemistry and her doctoral degree in polymer sciences both come from Massachusetts colleges — Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, respectively.
Putnam said GCC has nine degree options and four STEM-based certificate programs. It also offers a free STEM summer academy for eligible students, and S-STEM grants of up to $5,000 annually for STEM students with a GPA of 3.0 or higher who have a financial need.
After Coleman’s presentation on the first day of the week, the schedule is as follows: Tuesday, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m., “TED’s Talk: Science Reveals How We Got Here” by GCC faculty member Ted Johnson; Wednesdsay, noon to 1 p.m., “Geoscience in Extreme Environments: Experiences from the Arctic, the Antarctic, and a NASA Space Pod,” by William Daniels, a post-doctoral researcher from UMass; and Thursday, 12:30 to 1:30 p.m., a GCC panel discussion, “Myth Busters and Boundary Breakers: STEM as Part of a Liberal Arts Education.”
GCC will also hold STEM Week High School Day on Wednesday, with nearly a dozen STEM-based presentations for all Franklin County high school students at GCC. The same day, GCC will take part in Pioneer Valley Women in STEM, a panel discussion on women in STEM and their inspirational stories, to be held at the Springfield Campus Center for the University of Massachusetts. The presentation will feature STEM industry professionals, as well as educators and students from GCC, Springfield Technical Community College, Holyoke Community College and Berkshire Community College.
To register for STEM Week presentations at GCC, contact Putnam at 413-774-1459 or email: putnama@gcc.mass.edu. To register for the panel presentation, visit: bit.ly/2ClC8BR