Delaware Youth Reflect On AISES National Conference
Last month, three Delaware youths were given the opportunity to attend the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) National Conference in Oklahoma City, OK. Mira Randoll, Cora Randoll, and Cheynne Holley have written essays reflecting on their experiences there, which can be found below.
I was on the plane headed to Charlotte, North Carolina from BWI airport Baltimore, Maryland. Once I got into North Carolina, we switched planes to head to Oklahoma City. I was thinking about what it would be like at this conference on the plane. I thought there would be mentors talking about what their careers are like and helpful tips for becoming successful. Then there would be videos on different topics that involved science and engineering. Maybe some hands on experience so everyone could mentally understand what we were trying to learn.
When we stepped into that conference room at 8:00am, my mind was blown at how big the whole place was. Apparently it was the size of a ballroom, which I wasn’t expecting. There was a humungous stage in the middle of the room and it was filled with fifty tables on one side while the other side was with more chairs in rows than I could count; every butt was filled in each chair. I was astounded at the fact that there was that many people going to a stem conference every year. This was my first time, and I wasn’t thinking it was going to be my last.
When the main person on stage started to speak I could hear the intellect from his thoughts rolling off of his tongue. I was shocked at the fact that hundreds of people from all over the country were so incredibly brilliant, and were willing to be a part of this huge event. I was ecstatic to take notes and adhere to everyone’s experiences. As I took in the inventive ideas of the five mentors of each group that sat upon the stage. I realized that I’m only a senior in high school, and that I felt blessed to be here with people older than me who were skillful at their work.
As the conference went on we watched some short videos about Native Americans who were teaching children the process of science and engineering. It was pretty interesting how they made it fun for the children. After the videos were finished, regional directors came on stage and asked each region they represented to stand up and make some noise. The regions of the United States that presented the most noise won the spirit stick. After the spirit stick was given out to the winner, they presented awards to different groups from different tribes and colleges. As the groups went on stage to receive their awards they got to take pictures for the Aises website. Then the first Native American to go up into space from NASA went on stage and talked about his adventures. He said if we are passionate, persistent, motivated and with success in mind anything is possible.
When he was finished more than half of the people left the room. We went to sit at the round tables on the other side of the room. We were served brunch, first with a white candy looking treat. Cora and I looked at this uneasily and wondered if we should try it. I was about to pick it up, then Michelle told me that it was butter. I laughed and said “that’s the fanciest butter I’ve ever seen.” After my discomfort remark was over, we were served salads that were incredibly delectable. Followed by desert, soup, bread, and the main course. Each item of food that came had a pretty long intervolve in between. I looked to the lady on my right and said “we’ll I guess my healthy salad doesn’t count now since I had desert right after words…” She just laughed at me while I was laughing.
We were handed a goody bag that we weren’t allowed to open until the time came. After talking with everyone at my table, a lady on stage started to announce, “Does everyone have a goody bag on their table? If anyone doesn’t let me know now.” No one replied to her remark, she said “alright then, now those goody bags contain a bunch of items that each table needs to put together and has to contain at least one element to help the environment. Now it has to be a unique gizmo that no one has ever witnessed. Good luck, you will get about twenty five minutes to complete this and you will need to bring your item from your table up to the stage and we’ll talk about it. On your mark, get set, go!” We dumped open the bag, that contained some unusual items. As in sticky notes, band aids, tape, cloth, protective safety glasses, ear bud things, command hooks, and emoji sticky notes.
We were all profound at the site of these inquiring items, then decided that there needs to be a group leader. Everyone picked on Cheyenne Holley, then everyone around the table thought about ways we could help the environment. We thought what would be a good way to conserve water? I brought up the idea of a dam, the table seemed to like the concept. As we went on talking Cora had a thought of a hydro water turbine. Every piece of the puzzle we were solving was falling into place. Cora and I with a couple of the people at our table helped construct our idea into reality.
After the construction was complete we were proud of our accomplishment. The lady called all the participants onto the stage to share what we had. Cheyenne, Cora and I went up to the front with all of the other forty nine participants. Judging by everyone else’s work, I personally feel that we put a lot more effort into our project compared to the college students. When we were up at the front of the room, Michelle told us to go in front and tell the guy with the microphone what we made and how it works. We walked over to the front after Cora convinced Cheyenne to come with us. Once we were there trying to talk with the guy, the guy said “so you all made something but can’t explain it?” I had an incident were I got stage fright and Cora told me to “get it together Mira,” as I laughed tremendously. When that was over, we were about to walk back to our table at the back of the room. Then we were told that we needed to stand in the front of the room still.
I was a little embarrassed but still laughing about it, while Cheyenne and Cora teased me. Our project had 3 designs that were incorporated instead of just one. The people that participated were put into a contest and had to leave their names on the instructions paper and leave it on stage underneath what they built. I have confidence that we are going to place, no doubt about it.
As we all left the stage, we got our stuff and walked to a local Mexican restaurant. The food was exquisite, I highly recommend it; if you would like to know the name of this fabulous eatery ask either Michelle or Cheyenne Holley because they suggested it. After becoming fat and happy with myself, I waddled back to the hotel to relax. After some tranquility Cora and I decided to hop in the indoor pool down stairs on the first floor. We were peacefully in the pool for about half an hour before Michelle and Cheyenne said they wanted to go out on the town. After going back up stairs and getting dressed we strolled down town Brick town. We played mini golf and went for a late night snack at Sonic before returning to the hotel.
The next day we relaxed in our hotel rooms until about 10:30 am before we went down stairs for breakfast. Now let me clue you in on something, if you ever come to Brick town’s Hampton Inn they have the best variety for breakfast foods and all of the food is scrumptious. Then we headed back upstairs to repose some more until about noon before we headed down to the college fair dressed all formal. When we were walking to the college fair my feet were hurting already and I knew it was definitely going to get worse.
When we walked into the college fair I was surprised at how ginormous the whole fair was. There was many aisles with rows upon rows of colleges, careers, insurance, scholarships and so forth. Now the guy with the microphone on the first day also mentioned if we talked with the people at each booth and made eye contact with them those people would give us tickets. The tickets meant that at the end of the day they would do a drawing and whoever got picked won really cool prizes. Either way I didn’t mind getting tickets or not because I was still going to talk with these people and gain more information about their programs. What I was disappointed about was that there wasn’t many medical programs for me to look at. I understand that it was basically for stem but I would like to definitely seen more medical opportunities to choose from.
I still had an amazing time after attending this college fair. There was many diverse stands that were wanting people to explore their programs.
(When you talk to people you always gain knowledge out of what questions you ask.) (Always be yourself, don’t be afraid of the mentors. They have been where we are and are here to guide us!) (We need to keep childlike curiosity. Ask questions when we need to know. Knowledge is everything here. Seek understanding. Look at the past and do better, honor the past but also focus on the future. Get involved. Professional dress, professional behavior, and participation. Make eye contact. Never look at Ur phone. Meet new people.) These sentences with parenthesis that I put I took to heart when I heard them. I can’t stop appreciating the experience that the Delaware tribe and all the sponsors allowed for me. I definitely hope I can do this next year with more people involved. I can honestly say that if more new people join they will enjoy themselves as much as I did.
Honestly at first I thought nothing of this at all. I didn’t want to come until my mother sat down next to me and wanted to talk about it. She told me “go, go with your sister on that trip.” I asked my mom “why should I go? I am most likely too young to do it.” My Mother’s reply was “do you know how well that would look on your resume? Collages everywhere would be impressed you tried to go somewhere, and looked.” This was honestly the only reason why I decided to come.
I came from West Virginia, on a plane to Charlotte, North Carolina we switched planes to fly into Oklahoma City. My sister Mira and I arrived at eleven thirty pm to twelve am. Our grandmother picked us up from the airport. Once we all walked in the hotel we were amazed to see the astounding place. Our mother only gave my sister and me twenty dollars to spend. I was furious to find out my sister and I only have twenty dollars apiece to spend on the entire trip. I soon let the thought go, I wasn’t going to let one thing ruin this opportunity. I grew a large appetite, my grandmother was nice enough to give Mira and I some change. I found a frozen television dinner in the hotel snack room. Once we found ourselves full I decided to clean myself up and rest for the next day.
When my alarm at six am woke me up, Michelle had sent a text message to Mira saying “Y’all don’t have to be ready eating breakfast until eight thirty since y’all came in so late.” My eyes were peeled, my mind was running a mile a minute. There was no way I could even think about sleeping now, although we all got only five hours of sleep. So I put on some makeup after I got dressed. I was starving as I headed downstairs to find myself eating ravenously. Michelle asked both my sister and I what exactly we expected. I replied “I have no idea, I feel like this either could be hands on or just sitting, listening and learning.”
All of us were dressed casually walking three blocks down to a conference building. It was about eighty degrees outside while raining on us. We were told this would be hosted in a ballroom, I was surprised, I didn’t think a Native American conference would be hosted inside of a ballroom. This place was enormous, each floor had fancy rugs and old fashioned wall paper. It smelt like dust and perfume, this was a three story ballroom. We rode the elevator up as we looked around to see fifty tables with chairs around each table. With rows of chairs, more than I could count. My only thoughts were this place is bigger than I could imagine, I grew very anxious to listen and find out more information about my possible future.
Michelle holly, her daughter Cheyenne, Mira and I all luckily found seats next to one another. A man in a suit and tie was upon the large stage in the front center of the room. He was a Native American man who called up about two or three groups of five members who sat on stage and talked about their motivation and experiences in their career. All of them gave very inspirational advice about stem. This was an American Indian science and engineering society. We all watched a couple of videos about why this program is good and how we could change the world.
After the videos a group of people went on stage and represented different regions of the United States. Each representative asked the audience to stand up from the region and make some noise!
So their region could win a spirit stick. Soon after that different awards were given out to the collages. There was several different regions and in those Michelle, Cheyenne, Mira, and I were a part of the forth region. It was super fun standing to scream, shout and clap really loud.
Although we may not have won it wasn’t quite fair either considering we were way out numbered, I still had fun.
The first Native American astronaut came on the stage talking about his wife who had died from cancer. She was the one who had given his three ways to make anything possible. These three things were passion, motivation, persistence, and in the end you have success. With these exact characteristics anything is mentally possible.
When the time became twelve pm the directors asked all the students to sit at the tables. I didn’t know a few of the people but I didn’t care, there was food! We got a plate of fancy looking white chocolates, Mira was about to pick one up to try it until Michelle had stopped her. The things were truly butter! Although salad came first, the desert was next. Sadly I ruined my salad by eating the delicious chocolate cake right after. Then a soup came for us, it was a creamy version of corn stew. I personally wasn’t a fan of it, but for Native Americans it is polite to eat even a couple of bites of what you are served. After that I pushed all my dirty dishes to the center of the table as everyone else did too, we stacked them so it would be easy for the staff to clean up. We were given one goody bag per table. When it was time to open it we found a microfiber cloth, safety glasses, sticky notes, a roll of packing tape, ear plugs and command hooks with band aids.
Everyone looked around the table wondering who team leader should be, we all agreed on Cheyenne holly. Although she soon went to the restroom, Mira threw out an idea which was a dam to conserve water. We all took it into consideration, we soon started using the materials we had to construct for a model of a dam. One of the elders looked at me and asked “so, how is this dam going to be powered?” I suggested a hydro water turbine to be connected to the dam to power it. I soon questioned myself thinking, what could we do with the left over water? It came to me, we could use a filter to clean the dirty water and turn it into drinking water for the world!
The man questioned me once more “How would this water filter be powered?” I answered confidently “solar power!”
We figured out we only had forty minutes to construct this water turbine powered dam to conserve water, use solar power and a water filter. We rushed as we grew closer to the end, we made it! One of the directors asked one person from each group to come share out project with the audience. I was having a hard time trying to convince Cheyenne holly to get confidence so we can get to the front to share. When she finally said fine. I rushed over with our project soon realizing we did more than any other group. We should’ve only done the dam but instead we did more. I felt very proud until we were handed the microphone. Cheyenne and Mira grew stage fright, knowing we are here standing with professors, and college students while they were looking right at us. I told Mira to get it together on stage while she started to laugh. Cheyenne laughed and we teased Mira. We started to walk back to our table thinking it’s over but Michelle turned us around saying “y’all aren’t done yet, get back up there!”
We soon found out this is a student orientation and there is a plan to all this which is call to order, prayer, with welcome and introductions. The Aises director of membership and communications is Lisa Paz. There were an opening of remarks from the United States navy lieutenant William L. Harber. He is a part of a diversity director navy recruiting command. He was telling us how we all need to keep our childlike curiosity. Ask questions when we need to know. Knowledge is everything here, we need to seek understanding. Look at the past and do better, honor the past but also focus on the future. Get involved, and meet new people, make new friends. This spoke to me loudly. I knew the navy or the military wasn’t for me and that’s okay.
Still this was true, and deeply meaningful to me. This has been all my life. How I would look at my family’s mistakes and I’d try to do better even when I didn’t know, how I’d just ask.
The meeting was over after that, we were all so hungry. We went to an authentic Mexican restaurant, where the food was absolutely divine. I had the chicken and cheese Quesada with a side of rice and beans. It was possibly the best Mexican food I’ve acquired. When we ate and got fat and happy we decided to walk back to the hotel. We all went to our rooms to do whatever it was we needed. Mira and I went down to the pool to take a swim, which was so much fun. We played water basketball, and found a beach ball then we played a bit of aquatic volleyball. I’m not very good at those two sports but I enjoyed spending time with my sister. Cheyenne and Michelle walked in on us playing around when she asked “do u girls want to get cleaned up and hit the town for a walk?” Mira and I looked at each other as we gladly replied with “Yes.” As we walked around looking for something fun to do we eventually came across mini gulf. Michelle was very nice and payed for both Mira and I. We had fun as we talked and laughed together.
When we finished our game we found the arcade. Michelle payed for us again! We played skee ball and threw balls at clowns to knock them over. We had a good time as we ate Sonic on our way back to the hotel.
I took my shower prepared for the next day and I was out like a light. When my alarm woke me again we got another text from Michelle saying we don’t have to be ready until twelve pm. So Mira and I took our time getting ready and eating breakfast. When we all met back at Michelle’s and Cheyenne’s room, they told us were going to a collage fair so be prepared to ask questions and take flyers, gain all the information. We walked there as Mira and I walked around asking almost all of the stands about their collages, companies or stems with what they had to offer.
When Mira and showed up I was ignored and even turned away by most of them considering how young I am. There was about two or three collages that took their time to actually talk with me and let me ask questions. I enjoyed those the most. I didn’t see much of medical although I do realize this is for science and engineering. When we were all worn out and done with the day we decided to go back to the hotel room after meeting with our grandmother to eat dinner. The next day we all packed up and now we are back home.
In all I enjoyed this program, I did have a lot of fun and I realize this is not just something you go to just to put on your resume. You are here to learn, listen and gain all the information you possibly can so you know just what to expect in the real world. I was blessed by the creator to be here and I thank everyone who helped me get here. I can’t imagine the boredom I would’ve went through this weekend if I hadn’t had come here. Everyone has so many opportunities that they don’t see and if you are able to take something this like I suggest anyone to go. This was truly amazing and it will be to anyone who comes along.
To have had the opportunity to attend the American Indian Science and Engineering Society National Conference was such an incredible and life-impacting experience. I made lifelong friends and mentors and acquired new knowledge for my education and career.
On the first day of the conference, Thursday, we attended the 3M luncheon. During the luncheon, they had us do a group activity with the people at our table. This in itself was an amazing opportunity to meet and interact with STEM professors and professionals from around the country. The objective of the activity was to build a model, out of multiple 3M products, that had to do with either water conservation, renewable energy, or sustainable energy. With the innovative ideas and guidance from our fellow teammates, we were able to build a model containing not just one, but all 3 elements. When we completed the project, we presented our model in front of the entire grand ballroom luncheon, with over 400 attendees, as one of the few high school groups there. The significance of this is the fact that the majority of the participants were college students from prominent colleges and universities around the country, as well as STEM professionals. Mira, Cora and I were the youngest to participate in the competition. The support that we received from our teammates gave us the confidence to present to the all these people.
On Friday, we attended the largest college and career fair I have ever attended with 1331 exhibitors at the Cox Convention Center. Native American organizations, such as the American Indian College Fund, Ivy League universities, such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton and hundreds of other universities from around the country were represented. A large number of employers from government agencies were also present, with their efforts focused on recruitment of Native American interns and employees. Throughout the event, I gained information regarding scholarship and internship opportunities, more knowledge about future universities and career paths, as well as an excellent opportunity to sharpen my networking skills. After stopping by every booth, we walked out with our bags heaping full of information to use for future reference in our education and career exploration.
Not only was this an incredible learning experience but it opened my eyes to all the various educational and career opportunities that are available to me and other Native American youth around the country. The knowledge I’ve obtained will assist me now and in years to come. I would like to say “Wanishi” to the Elder and Veterans committees of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, the Allegheny School of Science and Technology, the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, BancFirst and all the other donors who helped make this opportunity possible.
About the Conference
The Annual AISES National Conference is a one-of-kind, three-day event focusing on educational, professional and workforce development! Attendees include American Indian high school and college students, educators, professionals, tribal nations and tribal enterprises, universities, corporations, and government agencies.
The AISES National conference has become the premier event for American Indian Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) students and professionals attracting over 2,000 attendees from across the country. More information can be found at http://conference.aises.org.
D5 Creation