Whitney Gaskins: See it, Be it – Breaking the Barriers of STEM
Women of Cincy sat down with Dr. Whitney Gaskins in the cutting-edge new Digital Futures building at the University of Cincinnati. With research labs, drone rooms, and contemporary architecture as the backdrop for our conversation, it was impossible not to be inspired and uplifted by all the hard work and advocacy Dr. Gaskins pours into her work every day, making sure everyone has a fair shot at a career in STEM.
Interview by Melanie Schmid. Photography by Jennave Traoré.
Tell me a little bit about yourself – what’s your background? How did you come to be in Cincinnati?
I grew up in Mansfield, Ohio – right in the middle of the state, very rural. I came to Cincinnati to attend the University of Cincinnati because I wanted to be a biomedical engineer. I knew that from a young age. I was reading Time magazine when people still got those [laughs], and they had this new up-and-coming field of biomedical engineering, and the University of Cincinnati had it.
I've been here ever since and have attended U.C. three times. I got my bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering, my master’s in quantitative analysis, and my Ph.D. in biomedical engineering. In between that time, I was Miss Black Ohio in 2009, which is how I started the Gaskins Foundation. I wanted to help young kids who looked like me because as I was going through classes, I thought, “There are no Black girls in my class with me. Why is that?” And I didn't think I had anything special, I just knew I could do engineering. Why don't other people know they can do that too?
Can you tell us more about the Gaskins Foundation and Cincinnati STEMulates? What does the foundation do for our community?
Cincinnati STEMulates started as pop-up workshops. I was traveling the state, doing these workshops to help kids understand how to do engineering, design, process, and understand STEM. Now we offer a program where kids get to come to the University of Cincinnati on the first Saturday of the month, and they get to engage in hands-on STEM projects. What's so beautiful is just even this year, being in this Digital Futures space, right behind us is this drone lab. We had these kids build drones, and they got to see what a drone looks like and what the uses are – delivery, photography, movie making, etc. We do this in partnership with all these researchers here at the University of Cincinnati and other collaborators in the city. The kids get to see how the world is interconnected and how STEM connects all those things together.
In the beginning, we were going into middle schools and high schools, and some elementary schools. We would do quick projects. A popular activity was building a bridge with spaghetti and marshmallows but making it sturdy enough to hold weight. We would do those, and we would just kind of talk about it. But we would take volunteers that looked like the kids that we were going to see. This made it no longer foreign to them, and they were able to eliminate the thought of, "Oh, I can't do that because people who look like me... we don't do this." No, we do! This helped to build their self-esteem to build the confidence to try to pursue a career in STEM. We took off the “Cincinnati” part of the name because we're not just in Cincinnati anymore – we're in Columbus, Cleveland, and Toledo.
Do your roles with the Gaskins Foundation and U.C. intersect at all?
They do intersect a lot! With my role at U.C., I'm an assistant dean, and I oversee our inclusive excellence work. My whole goal is to figure out how to get marginalized populations to feel welcomed and safe in the College of Engineering so they can matriculate and hopefully be these wonderful engineers in the world. That's almost the same thing that we do in the foundation. We are working with marginalized populations, exposing them to STEM and helping them understand that they can go into STEM fields. So the outreach piece that we do in the foundation helps with my U.C. work because, hopefully, they filter into the college eventually.
I actually had a student just graduate. This makes me feel old [laughs]. He’s been in our foundation programming since he was in middle school, and he just graduated with his bachelor's degree last year from the College of Engineering. Oh man, the waterworks. I had another student go to the University of Dayton for engineering, and we just reconnected. We saw each other at an engineering conference, which was amazing. I felt like I built my own colleague.
What other barriers are marginalized populations facing when it comes to taking the path to STEM?
There are so many barriers. I don't even know which ones to start with. So, we always have systemic issues. There are students that don't get recommended for the right math class, and math helps you get into STEM. It's not because they're not capable, but because they're not the person that looks like what they think a mathematician or a math-abled student would look like. That's a problem for women, and it's a problem for minorities. That's disheartening because once you're off track in math, it's hard to get back on track. So that's a huge barrier.
Another barrier is just know-how. People don't realize what you can do with a STEM degree. A lot of people think it’s just science, which is wonderful, but there are so many other things that you can do that we don't talk about, and people don't know what skills they need to get there. We don't have those conversations. We could talk about other things. For example, if I said I wanted to be a professional athlete, you could tell me, even without ever being one, what I would have to do to be a professional athlete. You couldn't tell me how to become a STEM consultant on a TV show. So how do we work on that? It's a lot of conversations with parents, with teachers, administrators, about what it actually looks like and takes to get into STEM.
If you had a wish list for the Gaskins Foundation for the next five years, what would be on it?
We’ve just redone our strategic plan for the Gaskins Foundation, and we’ve identified several pillars: from workforce development to STEM activities and events to continuing our signature programming. The thing I hope we can do is to build advocacy so that way we don't have to continue forward with the same barriers. For 30 years, we've known what the barriers are. Nothing that I'm saying is new. How do we build advocacy so we can stop having these continued barriers in our school system? That would be my long-term wish.
What does the structure of the foundation look like? Do you have a board, volunteers?
Yes, so we have a working board and an advisory board. Our working board is our team of volunteers that make all these things that we wish for come to life. We just hosted the STEMmys in October, which is our event to honor Black STEM talent in the city of Cincinnati, and we hosted the same event in Cleveland as well. It's how we annually honor, showcase, and highlight excellence in STEM. In March, we're hosting our first-ever Women in STEM honors because, again, women are often shut out of these conversations. So this is a moment to honor and recognize women in STEM. That's what our volunteers work on, these huge signature events. Some of them help with the smaller things we do, like in-school activities and after-school activities. Our advisory board helps us fundraise because we can't do any of this work without funding.
Tell me about your role at the University of Cincinnati – what does that look like?
My office was started in 2018, so I was the inaugural assistant dean of this office. We started the office because we had such a focus on minority programs, but there were other people that needed outreach, so we included women, L.G.B.T.Q.+, veterans, and those of varying abilities. We're really trying to make sure everyone has a sense of community and a welcoming environment. I love what I do. From working with the students, the faculty, and the staff, we do so much.
We do programming to help all those groups, but then we also push changes in policy and curriculum to make sure people are included.
You have an impressive list of accolades, but with all of the different ways you've been honored and recognized for various works, which one has been most meaningful to you?
Wow. This is so difficult because being recognized always surprises me. And I know people are like, how? But it just shocks me because I don’t do my work for that. This is my passion work, and I'm fortunate to be one of those people that have found their passion work. It’s never been about recognition.
Recently, the Girl Scouts honored me as a woman of distinction. I was a Girl Scout from Daisies all the way through high school, and my grandma worked for the Girl Scouts for 24 years. It was a huge part of my life. The award meant so much because it helped me remember and appreciate the roles people played in my life and brought back my memories of watching my grandmother work to help diversify the Girl Scouts. I watched this woman advocate for years, and I think I took it for granted. No wonder I care so much about advocacy and women's empowerment – I watched her my whole life growing up. Because of that, I started a scholarship in my grandma's name for a Girl Scout to honor her legacy and advocacy work.
You don't realize how much those groups and activities can influence you when you’re younger. I still carry so many of those lessons with me. I'm an over-preparer. I learned how to pack because of Girl Scouts. You never want to go somewhere and not have what you need.
What keeps you going every day, and what gives you hope?
I believe in the power of one. I know how just one person has impacted my life. And if I can have an impact on one person, and they can have an impact on one person – there’s a ripple effect. It doesn't have to be huge grand gestures all the time. Be a good person, pour into people, and always help people. It keeps me going because I know that one person can make a difference because a lot of people don't believe that. No, one person really can change your whole life. So that's what keeps me going because I know that I can make a difference.
I think that I have moments where I am disappointed or hurt, and I can get burnt out or jaded. But honestly, I can look at my kids, and I know they deserve an amazing life and future. I can't give up. They deserve it. And I keep going. I know. It's cheesy [laughs]. You can think about 30 years, 40 years down the road; what do you want that world to look like? I want to leave a legacy of goodness for them so that, hopefully, anything that I'm putting out into the world, they'll be the beneficiaries of that energy in life.
What would you like to see change in Cincinnati in future years?
Cincinnati isn't without its issues. We have the same racial bias in the city that probably other cities experience. I would love to see us removing some of those barriers, especially when I think about things like Black maternal health. In my own life, I didn’t have straightforward births; I lost a child. I got preeclampsia after delivering my youngest. It's never been easy, but it shouldn't be that way. We are in a city, and we have one of the best hospitals in the world right here, and we're still seeing infant mortality rates and Black maternal health at ridiculous levels in this city. What is going on here that needs to change? We have amazing researchers right down the street, and we're still not seeing these racial disparities eradicated.
Our neighborhood structures could be a little bit better. Our public transportation could be better, so people can get connected. This city is very neighborhood-centric, but it would be nice if people ventured out of their neighborhoods and were able to see the connectedness and the beautiful city in its entirety, not just in their neighborhoods. I would say I would want to see more of those connections.
I know this is probably an impossible question. Do you have a favorite book?
A favorite book? Absolutely not. I can tell you what I'm reading now, though! So, I'm reading Gabrielle Union's second book and Michelle Obama's second book. And one for fun that my husband and I read together is called The Perfect Marriage.
Who is an influential woman that you look up to in your life, and why?
It is not fair for me to name just one woman because there has always been a woman that's had my back to make sure that I was okay since I arrived in Cincinnati. But I'm going to name five because it goes over the span of my life.
This woman I call Mama Joy was a math professor at the University of Cincinnati. She was my calculus teacher, Joy Moore. My youngest’s middle name is Joy for that reason, and she's the godmother to my son. She made sure I had a church home when I moved here. She made sure I had a job when I moved here. She treated me as if I was her daughter because she knew what I needed when I lost so much. When my dad passed, my grandma had passed two months before that. I was just lost. She was there for me, picking up the pieces and making sure I was whole. I just adore her and love her. I know I wouldn't be where I am today if it wasn't for her. She believed in me when I said I wanted to get a Ph.D.
And this next woman, Sandra Parks, used to put extra food in her house because I would have to go over to her house all the time. She would act like, “Oh, I bought too much!” But it was really just for me. She was one of the first women that showed me what sisterhood looks like in our sorority. I don't know if I would have survived without her because she made sure I ate all the time.
Sheila Taylor – she has unfortunately passed. She was my mentor. She was the one that told me I could get married and have kids. She taught me that I could have it all. She made sure I believed it.
And then Delores Hargrove Young, who I affectionately call my “big cousin.” We think we're related in some way; we haven't figured out the tie, but she helped me understand and navigate the city when I moved here and didn’t know anyone. It is a very connected city, and she helped me navigate that.
Karen Bankston, if you didn't know any better, you would think she was my mother. I can call her and share absolutely anything with her, with no filter. I can be myself around her 100% of the time.
Okay, I'll stop because that's a lot of women. But they all poured so much into me to make me who I am. I never do this stuff alone. Everyone always asks, “What's the secret?” Incredible people is the secret. And let people love you! Because I would reject it, and I still do sometimes. Don't – just let people love you!
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