On Wednesday, WOC Online shared the latest Women of Color magazine's Midweek edition with WOC.
Hosted by Marsha Jews, co-founder of the WOC Alumni Association, the first episode featured Dr. Whitney Gaskins, the recipient of the 2023 Women of Color STEM Educational Leadership – College-Level Promotion of Education Award.
Dr. Gaskins is an advocate for education and will be one of the speakers at the upcoming WOC STEM DTX Conference.
She is known for her work in recruiting, supporting, and retaining marginalized and minority students within the College of Engineering at the University of Cincinnati.
Her initiatives offer students scholarship funding and professional development workshops to help them succeed in STEM fields. She also leads outreach programs introducing engineering concepts and careers to underrepresented middle and high school students.
The second episode of Midweek with WOC took place on Patriot Day, which occurs on September 11th each year in memory of the victims killed in the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
The 9/11 edition of Midweek with WOC featured Phi-Anh "Ann" Lutz, a system security engineer with the U.S. Air Force and the winner of a 2022 WOC STEM career achievement award.
During the show, Lutz shared her experience as an award winner and offered advice to future recipients of the WOC STEM award.
She also mentioned her involvement in career day events and her contributions in designing satellite doors and learning about the patent process.
Moreover, she took a moment to remember those who were lost during the 9/11 attacks.
Phi-Anh Bui, a U.S. Merchant Marine Academy graduate, gained valuable experience before starting her career as an Air Force Research Laboratory flight test engineer.
She also holds a patent for her team's electromagnetic sliding space environmental protection satellite doors design.
Lutz's deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan provided her real-world warfighting perspectives, and she demonstrated exceptional leadership as a flight commander, achieving a 95.8 percent quality assurance pass rate for 500 aircraft maintenance inspections.
Currently, Lutz leads an artificial intelligence (AI) project focused on identifying hazardous materials in Air Force weapons systems, significantly reducing processing time from years to minutes.
She also mentors high school students and volunteers with elementary school students to foster their interest in STEM.
In her 2022 acceptance speech, Lutz expressed her gratitude for the recognition among women engineers and the support of supervisors and coworkers, highlighting her educational background and sharing fond memories of her high school dance coach, Sheryl Olecheck.
She dedicated her WOC STEM award to Olecheck, her parents, who were Vietnamese migrants, and her daughter.
The 29th annual Women of Color (WOC) Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Conference will be held in Detroit and on the WOC STEM digital twin experience (DTX) platform from October 3 to October 5, 2024.
This multicultural event has been the leading platform for recognizing the remarkable contributions of women in the STEM fields.
