Aisha Bowe, Co-Founder and CEO of STEMBoard, speaks with students of The College of The Bahamas and local high schools.
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Nassau, Bahamas - As an aerospace
engineer, Aisha Bowe has used her imagination and creativity to
contribute to space exploration. But it wasn’t until college that anyone
ever encouraged her to pursue studies in a science discipline.
When that happened, it became a life changer.
A former aerospace
engineer and mission engineer at NASA Ames Research Centre and the
current Co-Founder and CEO of STEMBoard – an engineering and development
enterprise – Bowe is a passionate proponent of science,
technology, engineering and math (STEM) education. She is also of
Bahamian descent.
Bowe was the recent
guest speaker at The College of The Bahamas, encouraging high school and
college students to fully embrace educational opportunities in the STEM
field.
She admitted that, initially, she had no idea that she wanted to become an engineer.
“I was in community
college. I was pursuing a degree in business and at the time no one I
had met had encouraged me to pursue anything in the science field,” she
shared. “It was never really a possibility and
while my father is an electrical engineer, he received his degree at 40
so if you do the math, he was not yet an engineer when he encouraged me
to just take a math class and see how that would turn out.”
It turned out that
following her father’s advice led her to become one of two African
American females and approximately ten females enrolled at the time in
the aerospace engineering programme at the University
of Michigan. She eventually earned a B.S.E. in Aerospace Engineering
and a M.Eng in Space Systems Engineering, both from the University of
Michigan.
“You are why I am here,”
she told the captive audience of students, “because I want to see more
Bahamians in the science and technology field.”
Aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe shares her experiences as a university student, professional and proponent of STEM education.
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The Ministry of
Education, Science and Technology has a similar goal – to convince an
increasing number of students to pursue studies in the science,
technology, engineering and math.
“I started my
engineering degree with pre-algebra at a community college and as I
started to do better and better in math, which I feel was my gateway, I
then found that I’m in calculus II, I’m in calculus III.
I’m good at this stuff, so maybe I should set bigger goals for myself…”
Bowe said.
In 2008, she landed a
job as an Intern at NASA Ames Research Centre working on a new modular
adapter for satellites. Eventually, NASA Ames hired her as a mission
engineer.
“I found myself out on
an island in Alaska with a satellite that we had carried up in
essentially a large briefcase. Who could beat that, right? As your first
year on the job you really can’t beat that anywhere
and so it was an amazing experience where I had the opportunity to meet
lots of talented engineers, work on a diverse set of phenomenal
projects and for five plus years I spent my time on launch pads working
satellites and also working on aircraft in the United
States Aviation System,” she said.
Bowe was in town as the
keynote speaker for the Eta Psi Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha
Sorority Honours Day Scholarship Programme. An accomplished professional
who has been honoured for her excellence and
leadership, the 29-year-old is also the recipient of the 2015 US
Women’s Chamber of Commerce ‘Emerging Star’ award, the 2014 National
Coalition of 100 Black Women, Inc. Silicon Valley Chapter Woman of the
Year in Technology honour and the 2013 Black Engineer
of the Year award.