A recorded version of the live town hall event, including the presentations and panel discussion, is now available to view.
View Town Hall Session
Date: Wednesday, November 4, 2020 Time: 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
Why does diversity matter? How are we doing as a profession? How can I promote inclusivity? The Town Hall speakers and panelists will focus on these questions and other issues, while audience members are invited to submit questions, address concerns, discuss actions at their own institutions, and present suggestions they may have for their Society.
Karl Reid, Ed.D., Executive Director, National Society of Black Engineers Presentation: "The Elements of Inclusion: Strategies for Increasing Diversity in Materials Science and Engineering"
About the Presenter Karl W. Reid was named executive director of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) on June 2, 2014, marking his return to the organization that gave him his first major leadership experience, 32 years earlier. For the past 22 years, he’s been a leading advocate for increasing college access, opportunity, and success for low-income and minority youth.
Reid came to NSBE from the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), where he oversaw new program development, research and capacity building for the organization’s 37 historically black colleges and universities, and held the title of senior vice president for research, innovation, and member college engagement. Before his service at UNCF, he worked in positions of progressive responsibility to increase diversity at his alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which he left as associate dean of undergraduate education and director of the Office of Minority Education. While working at MIT as Director of Engineering Outreach Programs, Reid earned his Doctor of Education degree at Harvard University. His dissertation explored the interrelationship of race, identity and academic achievement. He is the author of sa.
Reid was born in the Bronx, New York, and grew up in Roosevelt, New York, a mostly working-class, African- American community on Long Island. The high value his parents placed on education, and his admission to a well-resourced, magnet high school near Roosevelt, put him on a track to follow his older brother to MIT, where he earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees in materials science and engineering and was a Tau Beta Pi Scholar. He credits his membership in the NSBE chapter at MIT with giving a vital boost to his self- confidence and leadership skills. He joined the Society during his freshman year, was elected chapter vice president his junior year and subsequently served as NSBE national chairperson.
After graduating from MIT, Reid worked in the computer industry for 12 years, in product management, marketing, sales, and consulting. In 1991, five years into a successful career in sales and marketing with the IBM Corporation, Reid read Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities, a seminal book about educational disparities in the U.S., which sparked his passion for bringing about positive change through education of African Americans and other underserved populations.
Reid sits on the DC STEM Council, the Dean’s Advisory Cabinet of the Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences as well as the Dean’s Advisory Council for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the University of Michigan College of Engineering. He holds memberships in the American Association of Engineering Societies, the American Society of Engineering Education, and the Council of Engineering and Scientific Society Executives.
Reid is also a founding member of the 50k Coalition, a national effort to produce 50,000 diverse engineering graduates annually by 2025. He was recently named a Top 100 Executive in America by Uptown Professional magazine.
He is a frequent contributor to the national diversity engineering dialogue, author of several commentary pieces and quoted in numerous articles such as Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, and The Hechinger Report.
Reid is now supporting NSBE’s National Executive Board and the Society’s 25,000 active members in reaching the main goal of NSBE’s 10-year Strategic Plan: to end the underrepresentation of blacks in engineering in the U.S. by annually producing 10,000 black engineers in the country, by 2025.
Olivia Graeve, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, San Diego Presentation: "Address from the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers"
About the Presenter Olivia A. Graeve joined the University of California, San Diego, in 2012, and is currently Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Director of the CaliBaja Center for Resilient Materials and Systems, and Faculty Director of the IDEA Engineering Student Center. Graeve holds a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of California, Davis, and a Bachelor’s degree in Structural Engineering from the University of California, San Diego. Her area of research focuses on the design and processing of new materials for extreme environments, including extremes of temperature, pressure, and radiation.
Keith Bowman, Dean, College of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Maryland Baltimore County
About the Panelist Keith J. Bowman (He, Him, His) is Dean of the College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT) and Constellation Professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). UMBC was recently recognized by USNEWS as the 9th most innovative university, just ahead of the University of Texas, Berkeley, and Brown. Bowman received BS and MS degrees from Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) and a PhD degree in materials science and engineering from the University of Michigan. He has served as a visiting professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, and the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He is a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society. Awards while serving as a faculty member at Purdue University from 1988 until 2011 include Purdue’s highest teaching award, the Charles Murphy Undergraduate Teaching Award. In 2007, he received the Purdue College of Engineering Mentoring Award, and he became the first Professor of Engineering Education (by courtesy) from MSE. In spring 2018, he was recognized with the third University of Michigan Materials Science and Engineering Distinguished Alumni Lecture Award. Bowman is openly gay and has consistently been the first openly gay individual serving in his leadership roles.
Ellen Cerreta, TMS Vice President and Division Leader, Materials Science and Technology, Los Alamos National Laboratory
About the Panelist Ellen K. Cerreta is the Division Leader for Materials Science and Technology at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Cerreta also serves as HE safety program manager at LANL, requiring strong partnership across program and support organizations to enable compliant and safe, moderate, and high hazard operations. Since coming to LANL, she has examined the correlation of microstructure to mechanical response of metals and alloys, with the support of the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, the Weapons Program, and Laboratory Directed Research and Development. Her research has had a focus on material behavior in dynamic loading environments. Cerreta is also an adjunct faculty member in The Institute of Shock Physics at Washington State University.
Cerreta earned her bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Virginia and a master's and Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. In 2006, she was the TMS Young Leaders International Scholar to the Japan Institute of Metals and Materials. In 2013, she was named a TMS Brimacombe Medalist. Most recently, in 2016, she became a Fellow of ASM International.
As a TMS member since 1997, Cerreta has co-organized several TMS symposia and has served as a member of the Mechanical Behavior of Materials and Titanium Committees. She served on the TMS Board of Directors twice before being elected as TMS Vice President: first as Membership & Student Development Director and, more recently, as Structural Materials Division Director. She will be installed as the TMS President in 2021. She is the author or co-author of more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific articles and one book chapter.
Marc Brooks, Talent Acquisition Specialist, Nucor Corporation
About the Panelist Marc Brooks, Talent Acquisition Specialist at Nucor Corporation, began his career at Bank of America in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, after graduating from Fayetteville State University with a B.S. degree in business administration and a minor in finance. While at Bank of America, he held three different positions including a technical trainer for the Global Corporate Investment Bank, which allowed him to travel and work in countries such as the U.K., Brazil and Canada, and many U.S. cities. Prior to joining Nucor, Brooks worked as a director for strategic accounts and business development at INROADS, a leadership development organization and the nation’s largest provider of paid internships. At Nucor, Brooks works in talent acquisition, where he leads a team that focuses on attracting undergraduate students to Nucor through paid internships, co-ops and campus involvement. He also works closely with external recruiters, human resources staff across the enterprise, and diversity and inclusion efforts throughout the company.
Elizabeth Dickey, Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, North Carolina State University, President-Elect of the American Ceramic Society
If you have questions you would like to submit to the panelists, please fill out this brief form. You may also ask questions via the Q&A chat function during the Town Hall.