Subsequent legs in her journey:

• Three years with in Kenya, where she did STAR work with Doreen Ruto, a from ��ݮ���� (EMU).
• Four years with the for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, where she studied under and then apprenticed with John Paul Lederach, founding director of .
• Beginning a PhD in expressive arts and conflict transformation from the .

It began here

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Mansfield was on the 18th floor of an office building in lower Manhattan when she noticed scraps of paper floating by her window. She and her colleagues evacuated the building and began walking rapidly northward to get away. She heard and then saw the collapse of the twin towers. Dozens of people from her home suburb of Garden City died in the attack.

“For over a year I couldn’t plan more than five days out,” Mansfield recalls. “A Somali friend later told me, ‘Now you know how we feel every day.’” Ultimately she quit her job at Goldman Sachs, traveled for a year, and found her way to teachers and mentors working in peace education and conflict transformation.

One of these teachers was , who co-facilitated Mansfield’s STAR cohort in 2010. Now they are working as a team, together with program associate and trainer . Zook Barge’s focus is on curriculum development and training; Mansfield’s is on administering the program, developing the STAR network (“learning community”), and producing communications.

STAR’s birth

In late 2001, STAR was born as a partnership between CJP-EMU and to provide resources for responding to trauma in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

“What began as a program to provide tools to pastors working with traumatized congregations in New York City and Washington,” says CJP executive director , “has blossomed into a valuable resource for peacebuilders from East Africa to the Middle East to Central America.”

STAR has trained over 5,000 people from 62 countries on five continents. The program has been a springboard for: , which deals with the wounds of racism; , addressing veterans’ re-entry; and , emerging from post-Hurricane Katrina work with teenagers.

“STAR is proof that even out of the most dreadful violence it is possible to grow life-giving and peace-supporting responses,” says , CJP’s program director.

Becoming the director

Mansfield was named director of STAR in early 2015, a position she will hold while continuing to pursue her doctoral studies focused on dance-based and movement-based healing, restorative justice and transforming the wounds of trauma. She succeeded Zook Barge, who had led the program as both its top administrator and chief instructor for eight years, until her requests for splitting the duties bore fruit.

Mansfield’s first job after earning a bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 1996 was at Goldman Sachs. She started as an analyst, then became an associate and finally a vice president in the investment management division. She spent four years in New York City and four years in London.

In STAR trainings, participants create a drawing called the “river of life.” Reflecting on the flow of her river, Mansfield says the powerlessness she experienced immediately after 9/11 set her on the path – and helped prepare her – for her new role with STAR.

One of those students, among the approximately 18 percent of women who will earn a computer and information science degree in the United States, is Jennifer Fawley, in the process of earning her second bachelor’s from EMU (her first is in environmental sustainability).

Weikle and Fawley together attended the October 2014 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Phoenix, Arizona, which attracted 7,500 women in STEM-related professions, particularly computer science.

At the convention, Fawley chose from a variety of sessions, workshops, and networking opportunities, from her particular interest of cybersecurity to data science, programming languages, cloud computing, wearable computing, hacking for social justice, and plenary sessions with technology executives from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Symantec, and Mozilla.

“Right now is a wonderful time for women in this profession,” Weikle said. “The field is changing so fast. If you’ve been out of the job market for a while, it’s OK, because, guess what? Everybody has to learn new things in this field.”

Weikle earned a PhD in computer science at the University of Virginia. She began her career journey with a bachelor’s of science in electrical engineering from Rice University. She subsequently worked as an engineer at Tracor Aerospace and then Motorola Semiconductor in Austin, Texas. In a mid-career shift, she focused at UVa on computer architecture with an emphasis on memory system analysis and design.

At EMU, she teaches a wide range of subjects, including Introduction to Computer Science, Computer Architecture and Operating Systems, and Analysis of Algorithms. She is currently involved in computer architecture research attempting to characterize parallel programs. In addition, she has conducted research on workload characterization for parallel programs, educational initiatives in computer science, and the effect of computing technology on society.

This article appeared in the , EMU’s alumni magazine. 

]]> /now/news/2014/professor-student-inspired-at-grace-hopper-celebration-of-women-in-computing/ Mon, 03 Nov 2014 16:34:28 +0000 http://emu.edu/now/news/?p=22417 In the male-dominated field of computer science, is used to being in the minority. The associate professor of at ��ݮ���� can name all of her female students majoring in the field on the fingers of one hand.

One of those students, among the approximately in the United States, is , in the process of earning her second bachelor’s from EMU (her first is in ).

If Fawley had any doubts about joining that minority, a recent weekend at the in Phoenix, Arizona, dispelled them.

“I am really enjoying the coursework and look forward to future possibilities,” she said. “It’s a really exciting field to be in right now.”

“The tide is changing slowly,” Weikle said, of a growing number of women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. “But Grace Hopper is special. Just that concept that there are 7,500 other women doing computer science and they’re all there in one place is amazing.”

Fawley, too, found it “energizing to be around other women” in the field. With Weikle’s encouragement, she had applied for and was named a Grace Hopper Scholar. The award covered all travel expenses and waived her registration fees.

At the convention, Fawley chose from a variety of sessions, workshops, and networking opportunities, from her particular interest of cybersecurity to data science, programming languages, cloud computing, wearable computing, hacking for social justice, and plenary sessions with technology executives from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Symantec, and Mozilla.

“I was able to find out what other women in the field liked and what they struggled with as well,” Fawley said. “It’s a good chance to learn more about technical fields in computer science that I haven’t necessarily been exposed to yet.”

EMU professor attended first conference

The conference, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this year, is named for the renowned computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. Grace Hopper was one of the first women to earn a doctorate in mathematics in the United States and went on to make significant contributions to computer development, programming languages and data processing. In 1969, Hopper was awarded – ironically – the inaugural Computer Sciences Man of the Year award from the Data Processing Management Association.

That same year, 20-year-old Anita Borg began her first processing job. Borg would emerge as one of the foremost promoters of women in technology. The Anita Borg Institute of Technology partners with the largest international society devoted to the field, the Association for Computing Machinery, to host the Grace Hopper Celebration.

Weikle attended the first Grace Hopper Celebration in 1994, when it was “small and intimate,” she says, with only around 500 attendees. Men have always been encouraged to attend – then and now (in conference parlance, these attendees are called “male allies”). During that first conference, her husband took care of their infant son while Weikle, a doctoral student at University of Virginia, presented a paper. In the audience that night was rising star Maria Klawe, then head of the computer science department at University of British Columbia. She later held baby Ricky at a banquet, a memory that still makes Weikle smile. Now president of Harvey Mudd College, Klawe was listed .

The conference attracts both academicians and tech executives, and often, like Klawe, those with connections to both worlds. Keynote speakers at the 2014 convention included the studio head of the Halo franchise, a lab director at EBay Research Labs, a founding member of Google, and the chief data scientist for Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign.

‘Great time’ for women in computing

Weikle says conferences like Grace Hopper help women see that choosing a STEM-related profession doesn’t require them to change who they are. Nor are women in the field stereotypically “nerdy,” serious, and incapable of completing domestic tasks.

“I’ve often had people ask me, ‘Do female engineers cook?’” she said. “And I say, ‘Some do and some don’t.’ I ask them, ‘Do male engineers cook?’ Some do and some don’t. Technical people are in fact just other people, and Grace Hopper does that for the women who go, and also for the men who go, because there are a lot of men who struggle with some similar stereotypes.”

Grace Hopper also celebrates successful women in a profession that is meeting new needs and creating new applications across the world. This is a message that Weikle especially wants to share with prospective computer science majors and minors, as well as re-entry students.

“There’s a big push in the industry to get women into these jobs,” Weikle said, “and very favorable hiring conditions.”

Computer science is one of the fastest growing fields in the United States, with , according to the U.S. Department of Labor. And because of the speed at which the field is changing, Weikle says it’s one of the most accessible to the recent graduate or the retooling job hunter.

“Right now is a wonderful time for women in this profession,” Weikle said. “The field is changing so fast. If you’ve been on the job market for a while, it’s OK, because, guess what? Everybody has to learn new things in this field. Being at a conference like this helps women imagine doing that and accomplishing that and not feeling like they need to be different to do that. They can still be who they are and do this work, and that is a wonderful vision.”