NORFOLK — Out of more than 15,000 students from 33 countries, Norfolk Academy junior Marissa “Chai” Hibbert was chosen to be one of 20 to receive an award at an international robotics championship in St. Louis in April.
As she took the stage to receive her FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Dean’s List Award and take photos with the other recipients, she had a surprising realization.
“I was the only African American girl out of 20 people from the combined two divisions,” she said.
While Hibbert was honored to receive the Dean’s List Award she was introduced to a startling reality.
With a lack of female and minority representation in the world of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), diversity is hard to come by
According to a study conducted by Change the Equation, an organization that works to boost STEM literacy in young people, female and minority representation in STEM fields during 2014 was much lower compared to white and Asian representation.
Women reportedly represented 12 percent of the engineering workforce, 26 percent of the computing workforce, and 10 percent of the advanced manufacturing workforce.
African American and Latino workers also represented between 10 and 16 percent of the same category.
Racial and gender disparities within STEM fields are still a concern recently addressed nationally during the Obama administration, which worked to boost STEM education among students within those demographics.
According to Hibbert’s father, Capt. Kirk Hibbert, who began working in a design and production aspect of engineering back in 2001, he noticed the lack of female and minority presence in his work in the Navy.
“I was working in Washington D.C., and I had a number of different programs; five production programs to be introduced to the [Department of Defense] in addition to supporting 18 other systems out there,” he said. “I will tell you, from a demographic perspective, there were very little minorities that I was exposed to.”
He added that the workforce at the time was about 20 percent women which he found surprisingly higher than expected.
According to Capt. Hibbert, he and his wife encouraged their daughter to pursue her interests in robotics when they first noticed that she found them fascinating, nurturing her love for “how things work.”
“We didn’t think much of it at the time, but she has always looked at mechanical things and tried to understand what makes them work and why they are there and we try to encourage her to do some research,” Capt. Hibbert said.
Marissa Hibbert gained recognition from her school and peers for her work on the Norfolk Academy Robotics engineering notebook, which chronicles the entire project and tasks that she and her teammates carried out during the season.
The engineering notebook contains information about each team member, notes on every practice, blueprints of the robot, and other miscellaneous items. According to Hibbert, she focused on gathering all the information her teammates took from practice and organized them.
At the same time, she helped raise funds for the team as well.
“I really wanted to get the word out there to my school so a friend and I collaborated on a raffle for any 3-D printed object students wanted in March,” she said. “All of the money from that raffle went to a non-profit robotics organization called Robotics For Youth.”
Hibbert added that she created games for students to play like a science and math scavenger hunt for upper school students, where participants traveled around the building with their friends and solved math problems and found “cool facts about science.”
With her recent success in robotics, Hibbert is looking help break the norm of STEM disparities and boost interest in robotics within Norfolk Academy and in the Norfolk Public Schools district.
Hibbert added that while she was the only African-American female to win a Dean’s List Award, she was encouraged to try and change that in any way that she could, starting with her robotics team.
“Just the fact that I was able to stand among all these other people and represent two minorities is absolutely amazing and I am really proud of myself that I had the ability to do that,” she said.
Hibbert is looking to host more demonstrations and information meetings for the student body to increase student interest in STEM and robotics.
Looking down the line, Hibbert said that she also wants to hold more fundraisers and connect with other schools to begin building interest in the Norfolk and Chesapeake public school systems to build interest in robotics.
“I thought that if I get more people to understand what we do they’ll definitely be more interested and more people will be able to apply,” Hibbert said. “At my school, I was just elected co-captain for my robotics team and currently I’m running for president for the multicultural club, and I would like to somehow incorporate the two … I hope that I can, in any way, make [students] feel comfortable with the STEM, engineering field.”
