Showing posts with label Mareena Robinson Snowden MIT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mareena Robinson Snowden MIT. Show all posts

Sunday, July 22, 2018

Mareena Robinson Snowden: First black woman to earn a PhD in nuclear engineering from MIT

When Mareena Robinson Snowden walked across the commencement stage at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) on June 8th, she became the first black woman to earn a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the storied university.

For her, there was one particular word that the experience brought to mind: grateful.

"Grateful for every part of this experience — highs and lows," she wrote on Instagram. "Every person who supported me and those who didn't. Grateful for a praying family, a husband who took on this challenge as his own, sisters who reminded me at every stage how powerful I am, friends who inspired me to fight harder. Grateful for the professors who fought for and against me. Every experience on this journey was necessary, and I'm better for it."

Snowden's Ph.D. was the culmination of 11 years of post-secondary study. But the 30-year-old tells CNBC Make It that a career in STEM wasn't something she dreamed of as a child.

"Engineering definitely was not something I had a passion for at a young age," she says. "I was quite the opposite. I think my earliest memories of math and science were definitely one of like nervousness and anxiety and just kind of an overall fear of the subject."

She credits her high school math and physics teachers with helping to expand her interests beyond English and history, subjects she loved.

"I had this idea that I wasn't good at math and they kind of helped to peel away that mindset," she explains. "They showed me that it's more of a growth situation, that you can develop an aptitude for this and you can develop a skill. It's just like a muscle, and you have to work for it."

Read more: 30-year-old Mareena Robinson Snowden is the first black woman to earn a PhD in nuclear engineering from MIT