▸ Honors, Accolades, and Milestones
Dr. John Herrington was the 2024 honoree at the American Indian Festival of Words Circle of Honor award ceremony in Tulsa, Okla. Honorees are recognized for their efforts to preserve Indigenous culture. Among his many recent contributions, Dr. Herrington spoke to Alaska Native students at the University of Alaska Anchorage. The event was part of the 29th annual Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program (ANSEP) celebration. The first tribally enrolled NASA astronaut to walk in space, Dr. Herrington is a former member of the AISES Board of Directors.
Jessica Vandenberghe has been named a Trailblazing WISEST (Women in Scholarship, Engineering, Science, and Technology) STEMinist at the University of Alberta. The current chair of the AISES Canadian Indigenous Advisory Council, she is the assistant dean of community and culture at the University of Victoria Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science.
Dr. Kelsea Konoho Hosoda is a 2023 NIH Mosaic (Maximizing Opportunities for Scientific and Academic Independent Careers) Scholar. She is a post-doctoral scholar in the Institute for Health and Aging at the University of California, San Francisco.
Mary Golda Ross was inducted posthumously into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. The first Native American woman engineer, Ross was active in AISES and a pioneering rocket scientist specializing in aerodynamics at Lockheed’s Missile and Space Company.
Dr. Lydia Jennings was one of five soil scientists awarded a 2023 Women in Science Incentive Prize from the Story Exchange. This is the third year the organization has used its grant program to recognize female scientists working to combat climate change. Dr. Jennings, a postdoc at Arizona State and Duke Universities, is working to help Native lands recover from the depredations of mining and gas pipelines.
Danielle Boyer is the subject of a video titled This Woman — and Her Robots — Are Giving Indigenous Kids Life-Changing STEM Skills. The film, part of the MIT Big Idea documentary series about innovators creating systemic change (a project of MIT Solve), documents her EKGAR (Every Kid Gets a Robot) mission to get free robotics kits into the hands of children, especially Indigenous young people. Founder of the STEAM Connection, Boyer has also been working with the Department of Education National STEM Festival You Belong in STEM Challenge to ensure that Native youth are represented at the event in Washington, D.C. She reports that one of her students has won the Gender Equity in STEM prize from MIT Solve.
Dr. Steven Crossley was named in a EurekAlert! news release of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) as part of a new NSF-supported collaboration working on innovative approaches to a global renewable energy supply chain. Dr. Crossley is a professor in the School of Sustainable Chemical, Biological, and Materials Engineering at the University of Oklahoma, where he is the AISES College Chapter advisor.
In March Sky Wildcat earned her PhD in the Department of Counseling, Leadership, and Research Methods at the University of Arkansas, focusing her dissertation on “ᎤᏛᏒ ᏂᎬᎢ: Reclamation Stories of Indigenous Graduate Students at a Native American Serving Non-Tribal Institution.” Dr. Wildcat is a research and career support senior program officer at AISES.
John Desjarlais spoke on stage in Tromso, Norway, with Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre as part of the Arctic Frontiers Conference. As executive director of the Indigenous Resource Network, Desjarlais was at the gathering to discuss Indigenous involvement in the development of natural resources. He is a founding member of AISES in Canada and winner of the 2023 Executive Excellence Professional Award.
Cara Cowan Watts has been inducted into the Hall of Fame at the College of Engineering, Architecture, and Technology at Oklahoma State University. Hall of Fame honorees must be a distinguished engineer, architect, or technologist who has made outstanding contributions to the wider community. CEO and principal owner of Tulsa Pier Drilling and owner and contract consultant for Cherokee Star, Cowan Watts is the recipient of the 2020 Ely S. Parker Award, the highest AISES honor.
Dr. Henrietta Mann has been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from NAFOA (formerly the Native American Finance Officers Association). The award recognizes leaders who have spent a career serving their community and all of Indian Country. A distinguished educator, Dr. Mann has won many other prestigious awards, including the National Humanities Medal. Dr. Mann is a charter member emerita of the AISES Council of Elders.
Photos by:Jerrad Moore/Mvskoke Media (Herrington); HALEY ERDEGARD (Vandenberghe); MIT Solve (The Big Idea, Episode 3: Indigenous Robotics Film Still); others: courtesy images
AISES is grateful for the generous sponsors of the Canada National Gathering. Their support is critical to the AISES mission and we thank them for their efforts to serve the AISES community.