The Conference on Research in Equity and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT) was my first professional conference experience out of college. Being a recent Boston University graduate, this would be my first professional event as an “adult”. However, my three years of experience at TERC, a STEM education research and development nonprofit based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, gave me the confidence to face this challenge.

While not my first project at TERC, working on the CompuPower project with Dr. Maria (Mia) Ong, Dr. Michael Cassidy, and Sabrina De Los Santos was the first time I helped write a conference proceedings paper and presentation. CompuPower was an in-school technology and leadership program aimed at exposing rural high school students to culturally responsive computing projects.