Johnson, experienced when she walked into the bay of engineers to be met by a sea of white, male faces staring back at her. The movie helped Pierce Burnette realize the significance of what had come before her, she says, adding that the film changed her life. “When I saw the movie Hidden Figures, I realized that the monumental moments that happened in that movie happened in the ’60s. That happened six years before I entered Ohio State,” Pierce Burnette says. “And I didn’t get the gravity of what had happened before me, to pave this way or to open this trail…to give me an opportunity.”
But understanding how far things had come also made it frustrating to see how far things still have to go. The lack of diversity in the realms of science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, is something Pierce Burnette has personally experienced her entire career, and seeing the struggle continue for other generations can be disheartening. “It makes me sad because I sit on an advisory board for my alma mater, Ohio State, now, and [they are] still talking about how we can increase the number of students of color...in the field of engineering,” Pierce Burnette says. “I graduated 37, almost 40 years ago and that makes me sad.”
“Whether you’re going to be a history major, a journalist, a philosopher...math makes you think critically and it stretches the brain in ways that other courses of study cannot, that other subjects cannot.”
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