Keynote Speakers

Keith Besterman is a Project Director in the Office of Undergraduate STEM Education at the American Association of Colleges and Universities. Besterman received his BS in Technology, Engineering, and Design Education from North Carolina State University; MAEd in Integrative STEM Education from Virginia Tech; and Ph.D. in Integrative STEM Education from Virginia Tech. His research areas include integrative learning, STEM education, and English Language Learners.

I am from Chicago, born into U.S. citizenship because my birth mother came to America as an unwed student carrying me in her belly.
I am from Vermont where I joined my adopted parents who were Nisei, a tiny part of an entire generation forever traumatized by their concentration camps.
I am from Partridge, Kansas, where I started school where no one looked like me and where my father was the only minister of the only church in a town too small to have paved roads.
I am from Maui where, in the sixth grade, nearly every kid looked like me but hardly anyone could spell like me.
I am from public high school and Boy Scouts adventures and basketball games played in slippers on hot asphalt and summers working in the pineapple cannery, now shuttered.
I am from an undergraduate science curriculum that emphasized knowing instead of thinking, and getting “the right answer” instead of discovery.
I am from Students For Equity where, in my senior year in college, I learned that an injustice to one is injustice to all.
I am from serving students and faculty as a professor and department head at a large public research university and a small liberal arts college.
I am from a private philanthropy whose science education programs encouraged colleges and universities to create a culture of equity and inclusion to ensure that all students, regardless of where they come from and where they are going, feel that they belong and can be successful. 
I am from a legacy of resistance, awakened again.

(Inspired by Where I’m From by George Ella Lyon) 

Robin S. Broughton is the former Senior Science Education Fellow at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, where she helped to shape, implement, and evaluate institutional and individual science education initiatives. Prior to joining HHMI, Robin was a Program Officer in the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health. During her tenure at NIH, Robin also served as a Program Officer in the Division of Training, Workforce Development and Diversity and as a AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the National Cancer Institute, while also managing the Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement Program and other initiatives focused on diversifying the biomedical workforce. Before her transition to NIH, Robin was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Meharry Medical College. While there, she also served as Science Deputy for the then newly established Center for AIDS Health Disparities Research. Robin has a bachelor’s degree in Microbiology from North Carolina State University and a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

Kamau Bobb is the founding Senior Director of the Constellations Center for Education in Computing at Georgia Tech. He is the former Director of STEM Education Strategy and Research at Google and a former Program Officer at the National Science Foundation in the Directorate of Computer and Information Science and Engineering. During his federal service, he served on President Obama’s MBK STEM Taskforce. Prior to his appointment, Dr. Bobb was the Director of the STEM Initiative for the University System of Georgia. Kamau holds a Ph.D. in Science and Technology Policy from Georgia Tech and M.S. and B.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.