32 women in various STEM fields were given awards and recognition at the 6th annual Own It! Awards, quadrupling the number from 2020.
At the Nov. 15 UW Own It! awards ceremony, 32 women were recognized for their involvement in STEM fields, including professors and students. Each person was recognized for their involvement in their field through teaching, researching, and generally supporting their department.
“You may just be starting off in your academic career, but you can still be nominated for something like this,” Lauren Biehle, a Clinical Associate Professor in the Pharmacy department said. “It’s for all comers and really highlights women in fields where maybe there aren’t as many women.”
Biehle was given the Service Award for the combination of her teaching, research, advising, and clinical practice efforts in her department.
This year’s event saw unprecedented support and success. In 2020, only 8 women were recognized at the event.
“I love that they chose to honor everyone,” Biehle said. “I think they recognize that this has been a tough year for everyone and that we can all use a little bit of recognition and supporting each other.”
Poster presentations from award recipients were also featured this year, allowing those who were unable to attend in person a method of sharing their work. Biehle was one such person who had her poster on peer mentorship of women faculty on display despite her inability to attend.
Posters featured work from a large variety of fields, including the chemical engineering work of Alexandria Williams, a senior at UW and recipient of one of the Overall awards.
Williams’s most recent work focused on finding a solution to creating 3D printing filament while in space.
“I was not expecting it when I was first assigned to it, because the project had been dead for 5 years,” Williams said. “I completed it in 8 months.”
Williams presented her research at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers conference and currently serves as the president of its student chapter at UW.
Williams most appreciated the opportunity to learn about the work other students were doing in different fields, exploring how they were all intertwined or different from one another.
“Put a chem-e and a psychologist in the same room. It’ll be hilarious, but they’ll learn so much from each other,” Williams said. “I feel like the [award] celebrations as a good avenue to have those conversations and to finally branch out a little bit more.”
Fellow Overall award recipient Lauren Shoemaker, an assistant professor in the Department of Botany, also stressed the benefits of combining aspects of STEM fields, which she does in her own work outside of the event.
“From a teaching standpoint, one of the most rewarding things is having students who are really excited about the biology aspect, but not as much about the programming part,” Shoemaker said. “[It’s rewarding] to see them take their own data and making graphs of it and visualizing it for the first time, and how excited they get.”
In addition to teaching two courses, which she developed herself, Shoemaker mentors students on campus and works on research projects in and around Wyoming.
Currently, her lab works in research centers located across the Rocky Mountain region, including SAREC in Lingle, WY, and the Niwot Ridge Research Center in Colorado.
Speaking to this blending of methods, Shoemaker also stressed the field interaction opportunity that Own It! provides.
“I think that’s one of the coolest things about [the event]. How even within STEM it really highlights how interdisciplinary science is, and the many different ways people at UW are expanding our scientific knowledge,” Shoemaker said.
“I feel like at UW there are so many opportunities to create your own way that you want to give back and contribute to the community, and I think Own It! does a great job of celebrating those avenues,” Shoemaker said. “Putting all of those on even playing fields, and saying ‘we recognize all of these different avenues are really important for STEM’ is really cool and a really unique experience too.”
For more information on the event, click here.
