Please join the Center for Communicating Science in celebrating a new milestone for the Black Excellence in STEM Project: archiving in the library’s special collections!

    Set in motion by the center and six graduate student interviewers, the oral history project launched in 2021 in response to the onslaught of racial injustices during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the project sought to highlight a persistent but often overlooked form of racial injustice: the underrepresentation of Black people in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). More about the project’s origins can be found here and a recent VT News story here.

    Visitors can now access this oral history collection that not only celebrates diversity but embodies it. The collection reflects a wide breadth of experiences told by the experts themselves — different paths to STEM, narrators from different institutions and disciplines, invaluable advice for young scientists, and the many decisions and detours made along the way.

Images of the six graduate student interviewers behind the project.
The six graduate students behind the interviews conducted for the Black Excellence in STEM Oral History project: from left, Daniel Smith, Kregg Quarles, Anza Mitchell, Korin Jones, Amber Wendler, and Mika Pagani. Photos provided by the interviewers.

    For instance, Robert Green, associate professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry at Atlanta State University, emphasized the importance of perseverance: 

If you ever find yourself fortunate enough to be in a position to compete at this level or go on this path, don't forget that you're there for a reason, and don't let anything stand in your way of achieving whatever goal that you set for yourself. You're destined to be great. You do belong. And even if you're not the best scientist in the world, your story is there, and the example that you lead is there to inspire somebody behind you and propel them forward.

    The collection also highlights Black Excellence in STEM at Virginia Tech. Austin Gray, an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, offered this reflection in his narrative about the multifaceted nature of challenges experienced by Black students:

I can only think about those students that had it worse than I did, or, specifically, Black women who deal with situations of not just bigotry because of race, but also because of sex. . .I'm always sensitive towards people trying to get through graduate school because I just know, especially for people of color, you're entering a space where no one really looks like you, where no one really understands what you're going through.

Image contains screenshot of landing page for the Black Excellence in STEM Oral History Project landing page in the Virginia Tech archives.
Readers and listeners can now access the Black Excellence in STEM Oral History Project in the Virginia Tech Library Archives.

    The narratives also share common themes of joy, identity, community, and overcoming challenges, offering a deeply human and widely varied perspective on being Black in STEM. As Sarah Lemer, associate professor of marine invertebrate genomics at the University of Guam, put it:

Black researchers in America or in the world — there's a lot of us out there, with very different histories, backgrounds, and cultures. . .At some point, [we] face the same walls, the same issues, and we all have our own way to respond to it. I still think that there is [a] place for us out there, and we should all be helping each other, and do this job of being inclusive, supportive, and most importantly, speaking up.

    Stay tuned for additional works that amplify these powerful oral histories. These timely stories offer a vital glimpse into the past while providing hope for the future of Black voices in STEM — words too important to share just once.

By Sara Teemer Richards, Center for Communicating Science editorial specialist