Future Leaders in CEE: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Research Talk and Lunch Series

Future Leaders in CEE: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Research Talk and Lunch Series

CEE holds a regular seminar series to foster diversity, equity and inclusion. Speakers from diverse backgrounds who are considered future leaders in STEM and the domain of civil and environmental engineering will share their journey to achieve success in STEM and their research. The goal of this initiative is to start a dialogue around the topics of diversity, equity and inclusion, address the relative lack of representation of certain groups and present examples of those who were able to overcome unique challenges. Speakers will present a two-part seminar: one part of the seminar will be an overview of their research and the other will focus on how they have navigated through various challenges associated with diversity, equity and inclusion in STEM. Seminar topic: Can a deeper understanding of diversity improve engineering? Expanding engineering education through developing Contextual Social Awareness Speaker information: Greses Pérez is an Afro-Latina engineer, learning scientist and educator. She is a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University in Science Education and Learning Sciences. Her research focuses on the role of language and cognition in engineering and science learning, particularly for Black and Brown students. In addition to her ongoing work on culturally relevant VR education, Greses combines interdisciplinary perspectives and mixed methodologies to investigate issues of diversity and inclusion in engineering. Before coming to Stanford, she was a bilingual educator at low-income elementary schools in Texas. Prior to starting her career in education, Greses was an engineer project manager in the Caribbean. She holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Santo Domingo Technological Institute, a M.Eng. in Civil Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, and a M.Ed. in School Leadership from Southern Methodist University. Her work seeks to improve education for students who experience a cultural mismatch between the ways of knowing and speaking in their communities and those in STEM.