Knotts went on to start businesses in the oil and gas industry and has recently joined Barrios Technology, a small woman-owned business supporting NASA for 40 years.įor more information contact Paige Nesbit She was a part of the Space Shuttle, International Space Station and Moon/Mars Exploration Programs. Knotts, an aerospace engineering graduate, spent two decades working at NASA’s Johnson Space Center where she focused on advancing Human Space Flight and served in engineering and senior leadership roles.Poore has served as an adjunct professor at WV State University, as a faculty member in residence at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University and has teaching privileges at WVU College of Law. She has mentored and consulted with hundreds of elected officials throughout the nation as they seek higher office. Poore, an attorney who served in the House of Delegates from 2009 – 2014, is also an experienced educator and mentor.Vice President for DEI at WVU and Statler College alumnae, former NASA engineer and partner of Ventures Yonder Kerri Knotts. She remained resilient while facing biases and restrictions a powerful woman at work who recognized and used her talents not only to advance space exploration but to open the door for cultural changes along the way. NOTES: Pioneering NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson was the voice of endurance. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee in partnership with the Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at West Virginia University It is critical to the future of our society to not only encourage women, but specifically women of color to drive the next phase of space exploration.WHAT: A virtual one-hour panel discussion webinar will celebrate Black History Month and honor Katherine Johnson and the legacy of strong women she inspired. We are at a place in time where we MUST inspire the next generation of women to explore science. The next year, Margot Lee Shetterly’s book Hidden Figures, as well as a movie adaptation by the same name, highlighted the accomplishments of Johnson and her colleagues. In 2015, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama, who described Johnson as “a pioneer who broke the barriers of race and gender, showing generations of young people that everyone can excel in math and science, and reach for the stars”. In 2015, Katherine Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom The earliest of these publications made Johnson one of the first women at NASA to become a named author or co-author on an agency report, according to Margalit Fox at the New York Times. Her work fueled innumerable feats of aeronautics, several of which were outlined in the 26 research papers Johnson published over her decades-long career. “My dad taught us, ‘You are as good as anybody in this town, but you’re no better.’ I don’t have a feeling of inferiority. “I didn’t have time for that,” she told NASA in an interview from her home in Hampton, Virginia in 2008. Along with the agency’s other female African American mathematicians, she worked in quarters separated from a much larger pool of white women “computers,” who were in turn kept away from their male colleagues.īut Johnson’s consignment did little to hold her back. Relegated to an office marked “Colored Computers,” Johnson spent her first five years at NACA dealing with a double dose of segregation. In 1953, Johnson-then Katherine Goble-began work at Langley Research Center at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), which later became NASA, where she would stay until her retirement in 1986. “I counted the steps to the road, the steps up to church, the number of dishes and silverware I washed… anything that could be counted, I did.” “I counted everything,” she once proclaimed. Born Katherine Coleman in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, on August 26, 1918, a date that now commemorates Women’s Equality Day, Johnson showed an early aptitude for math.
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