LUCY SANDERS: Our final award before the plenary session is the NCWIT undergraduate research mentoring award sponsored by AT&T and as we all know mentoring is just so important this is a wonderful award. Helping with that award is Luz Gonalez from AT&T. She’s the Senior Vice President of solutions delivery, and has all kinds of oversight over cool things like all the technical aspects of DirectTV offerings, and she also oversees a lot of merger conversations and also IT legacy transformation. She is one of our new members of the Board of Directors of NCWIT, so give her a warm welcome. [audience applauds] [jazzy music]
LUZ M. GONZALES: Thank you, Lucy, for inviting me to NCWIT. I really have bene enjoying the sessions. I’m learning more, and being a minority woman in IT I see everything that we are talking about. So great, great to be here. The NCWIT undergraduate research mentoring award recognizes academic alliance representatives at nonprofit, US institutions for their outstanding mentorship, high quality research opportunities, recruitment of women and minority students and efforts to encourage and advance undergraduates in the computing related fields. There are four undergraduate research mentoring awards. Two awards to junior faculty, and two awards to senior faculty. The college of each awardee receives a $5,000 contribution to honor their accomplishments. AT&T, who funds this award, and NCWIT, are pleased to announce the 2016 recipients of the 2016 undergraduate research mentoring award. Our first awardee Dr. Amy Hurst, Assistant Professor Human-Centered Computing, in the Information Systems Department, the county of University of Maryland, Baltimore County. [audience applauds] In her five years at UMBC Dr. Hurst has mentored 41 students, 61% of which belong to unrepresented groups in STEM. Of her 41 students, 27% of them have gone on to graduate school. Thank you. [audience applauds] Our second awardee, is Bonita Sharif, Assistant Professor Department of Computer Science and Information Systems in the College oF STEM, Youngstown State University. [audience applauds] In addition to mentoring 14 students, Dr. Sharif has served in many different planning roles for the Ohio Celebration of Women in Computing, an important mentoring conference. Thank you. [audience applauds] Our third awardee is Dr. Daniel Garcia, Teaching Professor Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley. [audience applauds] Dr. Garcia has mentored 500 students in his 16 years at UC Berkeley, and has created a well-known name for himself on campus. Recently, when Berkeley undergraduates gave a presentation to faculty their only request was to have more groups like Dan Garcia’s. 40% of Dr. Garcia’s mentees come from groups underrepresented in STEM. Thank you. [audience applauds] Our fourth awardee is Dr. Tiffany Barnes, Associate Professor Department of Computer Science, North Carolina State University. [audience applauds] Dr. Barnes encourages students to apply for awards, honors, fellowships, and attend graduate school, scaffolding that experience with talks on how to write applications, in addition to offering in-lab reviews for applications. Dr. Barnes has mentored 83 students with 73% of her students belonging to minority groups in computing. [audience applauds] Please join me in recognizing our awardees for their dedication to student mentoring. [audience applauds]
LUCY SANDERS: Well thank you, Luz, and thank you Darren, and thank AT&T and Microsoft writ large. The importance of these awards can’t be underestimated, overestimated, whatever. So important that we have them, they’re sustained, they start to have value and we are starting to develop prestige and honor. And I know the academic alliance members super appreciate your sponsorship. So let’s give them a round of applause. [audience applauds]