Victoria Andler ’18
Each year, Siena’s First Year Seminar program holds a conference that allows students to showcase their research, practice presentation skills and learn more about their peers’ unique academic interests. Siena’s First Year Seminar program consists of a wide range of topics, allowing students to choose their own field to study for the entire academic year. Because of this, the 2017 annual conference had a wide range of topics, covering themes from football and body cameras, to designer babies and Eddie Murphy.
Three students from the course “Women: Their Vision, Their Voices, Their Values,” taught by Britt Haas, Ph.D., participated in the conference. Over 60 students participated in the conference's afternoon and dinner events.
Noraya N. Pettiway ’20 presented her research titled, “Black Women are Geniuses, Too: Why Black Women Are Not Engineers.” Her research delved into statistics that showed black women excelling in college physics and advanced classes. She emphasized that black women are just as qualified, but lack the support from others to become engineers.
Pettiway is in the Physics and 3/2 Civil Engineering program at Siena and chose to research this topic after her own experiences. She also found inspiration in Hidden Figures, a movie that showcases a true story about three black women engineers who work for NASA during The Space Race.
“If Black women were not engineers there might not be a NASA today,” Pettiway argued.
Political Science major Gabrielle Agostino ’20 presented her research, “Women in Politics: Is that Even a Thing?” Her project showcased the difficulties women have in politics, highlighting some examples from politicians Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand where they experienced unique hardships in comparison to their men counterparts.
Agostino believes in order to solve this issue, the United States needs to do what other democratic countries have done: follow successful quota systems. A quota system would require a certain amount or percentage of women to be in political positions.
Siena’s First Year Seminar program helps freshmen students have a smooth introduction into what college-level classes and their curricula consist of. The classes are purposefully small and unique to a particular theme, but all stress analytical reading, valuable discussion,writing and Siena's core Franciscan traditions.
