Presenters: Lucy Cotter, Marcel Pelletier
The presenters shared their career experiences and upcoming project opportunities, which connect their work to STEM across North America.
To begin the session, Marcel Pelletier, from the Pine Creek First Nation in Manitoba, offered a land acknowledgement and a song. Pelletier has over 30 years’ experience collaborating with Indigenous people across Canada and the United States and has been with global infrastructure consulting firm AECOM for 11 years.
Co-presenter Lucy Cotter is SEI Lead (Canada), process engineer, and project manager at Jacobs, a technical professional services firm. She is a chemical engineer with over 20 years of consulting, research, and onsite experience in industrial process and municipal wastewater treatment facilities. A member of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business, Cotter said she is invested in diversity and inclusion at Jacobs where there are over 61,000 employees across 10 offices in Canada and 150 offices in the United States.
The presenters talked about two Canadian projects requiring STEM skills. By 2050 there will be an estimated 3.6 million people in Vancouver. The Iona Island Wastewater Treatment Plant, built in the 1960s, requires upgrading to meet current and future demand and comply with provincial regulations. Metro Vancouver is collaborating closely with key stakeholders, the public, and First Nations to ensure this project fits the community. The upgraded plant and ecological project will be designed to withstand an earthquake and sea level rise due to climate change. Other ecological benefits include restoring fish habitat, protecting bird habitat, and minimizing odor.
Passive water systems that do not require regular human intervention to operate are a low-maintenance alternative to active treatment systems. Cotter said lots of STEM disciplines are involved in passive water treatment systems.
Presenter: Tobias-Jesiah Keohokapu
Rochester Institute of Technology physics student Tobias-Jesiah Keohokapu is completing his senior year. During this brief session, he presented a snapshot of his capstone project using the autoregressive model to analyze the double gravitational wave background produced by residuals of the pulsar timing arrays. He said, “Pulsars are the most accurate clock in the universe. They tell us more about our universe by indirectly showing us gravitational wave background, which was predicted by Albert Einstein.”
According to Keohokapu, gravitational wavelength, speed, and frequency are related on a spectrum like light, but there is not enough data on double gravitational wave background. Keohokapu is applying gravitational wave physics using the autoregressive model and Phi values. The letter phi is commonly used in physics, but in this instance, it is just a variable that relates to a specific step in the autoregressive model.
Keohokapu described his research and how he has adjusted his methods in data collection to run more efficiently. For example, using four phis takes weeks to run, three phis takes days, two phis takes minutes, and one phi takes seconds. He improved this data collection by using the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method — a class of algorithms for sampling — in his research. For Keohokapu, the MCMC method is “a great tool for running this large number of data sets in a shorter amount of time, with the same level of accuracy.” When asked why he couldn’t do this in the first place, he quoted his advisor who said, “We didn’t think we needed it at the time for smaller amounts of Phi values. It’s like using a chainsaw to cut through bread — it would have been overkill at the time.”
Keohokapu’s interest in stars and astronomy is linked to his Polynesian background and his ancestors who navigated by the stars, waves, and tides; he now looks at the pushing and pulling of “the ocean space” being the interstellar medium.
Presenters: Cameron Bishop, Melanie Howard, Justice Bressette-Fleming, Madeleine Duncan
Presenters shared the excitement, insights, and experiences of the Queen’s University AISES Rocket team, which participated in the NASA First Nations Launch (FNL) rocketry competition. This is Queen’s fourth year with FNL, having placed second overall for the past two years.
With an aim to increase interest in FNL in Canada, the presenters described the competition format and expectations for both advisors and students, as well as the technical design elements of the past years’ winning rockets, Kanatakon’ha and Waawate.
Q-AISES Rocket Team advisor Melanie Howard said, “In the Ojibwe language, Kanatakon’ha means, ‘they come from the village’ or ‘little sparrow’ and Waawate means, ‘northern lights.’”
The First Nations Launch competition offers students in tribal colleges and universities and AISES College Chapters the opportunity to demonstrate engineering and design skills through direct application in high-powered rocketry. The Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium supports three rocket competitions —Gateway Challenge, Moon Challenge, and Mars Engineering Challenge.
Compared to previous years, the team said the 2023 FNL competition — set for April 28–30 in Kenosha, Wis. — is the most difficult because this year’s goals are to make the rocket lighter and stronger. They are not using the NASA kit but are building their own rocket of fiberglass or carbon fiber. Other considerations in reconfiguring the rocket include avionics, aerodynamic modeling, mechanical and structural design, fundraising, and logistics.
Presenter: Melissa Anderson
Hardware required for in vivo mouse imaging (MRI) to infer axon diameters was developed and evaluated by PhD student Melissa Anderson. A 3D mousebed was designed along with a 3D printed anaesthetic device to fit around the nose of an unpreserved mouse.
Anderson described the challenges of designing makeshift devices called mousebeds to hold mice during MRI testing. The purpose of her research has broad impact in the identification and early diagnosis of conditions like multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease.
The use of the mousebed and anaesthetic device satisfactorily centered the sample in the magnet without causing noticeable artifact in the images.
Presenters: Jannik Eikenaar, Pamela Wolf, Kear Porttris
With a goal of prompting participants to think about how they can support Indigeneers in the workplace culture, presenters moved to edit the narrative about what people expect an engineer to look like. They cited the Report on Truth and Reconciliation in Engineering Education, prepared by Engineers Canada, which highlights the gross underrepresentation of Indigenous people in the engineering profession. Pam Wolf was a co-lead researcher of this report.
Presenters pointed out that losing language, accents, and connection to home and community can result in “self-censorship,” or the loss of one’s sense of belonging. It can be a sad story of loss. Editing the story of yourself into colonial institutions plays out in professional lives as well.
The presenters talked about “hybridity,” which brings different cultures into spaces. Hybridity can also involve risk because it can end up appearing or manifesting as tokenism, appropriation, or pan-Indigenizing. In hybridity the goal is to reach an equitable mixture.
In Western professionalism, work is work; home is home. The goal is to keep them separated. But for holistic professionals, core values are the foundation that everything grows from, and they bring core values to both their personal and professional lives.
In this interactive session, participants were asked to share their values, relationships, and goals with each other. Next, participants filled out multicolored cards representing their values (blue), goals (red), relationships (green), and other factors (yellow). Then they went to a central table and cut varying lengths of colored ribbons for each card.
All the participants tacked (wove) their ribbons together in various shapes and dimensions to a “core-board.” Eventually, a shared art piece emerged that represented the complexity and positive outcomes of Indigenous cultural representation in engineering contexts.
Presenter: Jennifer Bennett
Environmental consultant and licensed engineer Jennifer Bennett discussed the prospect of working in the U.S. as an engineer. She is a senior environmental engineer and client program manager at Arcadis, a global design, engineering, and management consultancy headquartered in Amsterdam, with 36,000 employees in 70 countries.
Bennett discussed cross-border issues and facts about the Jay Treaty, which allows Canadian-born Indigenous people to travel freely to the U.S. to live and work without a Green Card requirement. Technically, all that is needed is a letter of quantum from a board or community office.
So why work in the U.S.? Bennett pointed to information on competitive salaries and outlined benefits and pitfalls of working in the U.S. For example, Americans work an average of 80 hours more than Canadians per year. Bennett cited Indigenous Pay Gap Regression Analysis data, which indicates up to 14 percent pay gaps in Canada for Indigenous people.
Based on her own experiences, Bennett shared advice and tips for recent STEM graduates and entry-level professionals on ways to build credit, obtain banking, and import a vehicle.
Engineering licensing was covered along with the benefits of achieving the NCEES Professional Engineer (PE) and Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) certifications for international professionals. Bennett said PE certification is required to advance within U.S. companies.
She discussed PE and FE exam preparation and cautioned that the pass rate for first-time test takers is only about 50 percent for the FE test, and 60 percent for the PE test.
As a licensed PE with over 20 years’ experience in diverse industries in the U.S. and Canada, Bennett shared one caveat: “I am not advocating that you leave your home. I am presenting information that allows you options and opportunities to display your brilliance and go back to your people.”
Presenters: Dr. Lloyd Mitchell, Noah Gunter
This session explored how to better incorporate Indigenous wisdom into the highly political, technical, and expansive future of airport management. It was facilitated by Dr. Lloyd Mitchell, a tenured associate professor at the Elizabeth City State University School of Science, Aviation and Health.
Dr. Mitchell shared opportunities for members of First Nations and tribal communities to become involved in the work of airport management and prepare to serve as an airport manager.
Issues encountered in airport management include transportation, health and safety, and animal and human trafficking.
Dr. Mitchell said airport management offers an incredible opportunity to consult with Indigenous populations. He used the Green Bay Austin Straubel International Airport, near the Oneida Reservation in Wisconsin, as an example of Indigenous involvement.
Mitchell covered FAA schools and salary ranges and emphasized that more Native American representation is needed in aviation careers.