Dear Pratt Community,
My name is Keena and I’m a current senior studying mechanical engineering at Duke. As a senior, I’m the director of an awesome microgranting community initiative, Durham Community Incubator (joindci.com), president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the director of the DEIC Mural you are hopefully looking at. However, my sophomore year in engineering, I was not doing as well in classes as I had hoped. Even when I did have some wins (and I definitely did have some great luck in there), I felt major imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is informally defined as an inability to believe that one’s success is deserved or has legitimately been achieved as a result of one’s effort and/or skills.
In the midst of feeling this way, I applied for a grant called the Maclin Community Connections Grant to create a mural to represent engineers from diverse backgrounds. I believed that there had to be other people in engineering who felt like they didn’t belong but that there should be some kind of community through engineering. The mural aims to represent engineers from diverse backgrounds and to encourage future generations of diverse engineers through building community at the Pratt School of Engineering/Duke.
Things I learned from creating this mural:
- It takes a lot of work behind the scenes to make something look easy
- This could not have been possible without help from Alexa Bolin Santiago who worked nights and weekends alongside me to paint the mural and to create an actionable vision for the mural.
- To coordinate and direct a big project, it will take countless emails and follow-ups to those emails(a.k.a. the tedious work no one else wants to do). However, it is worth it to see the original vision up on the wall!
- If you celebrate the little victories, it will be harder for you to give up.
- I applied for the mural sophomore spring and finished it senior fall. This process was long and I had my moments where I was discouraged but talking to my friends about the small steps and victories along the way made me all the more motivated to finish what I started.
- Nothing is perfect on the first try but it will get there eventually.
- In engineering, you learn to iterate over and over to make a design better but the same is true for art. My original design was rejected by the Pratt Art Committee but the addition of alumni into the design and the work of Grace Williams, our incredible artist who created the final design, have made it an incredible finished piece that I never would have dreamed of.
- Through interviewing several professors, I realized that a video of professors from diverse backgrounds could help inspire a lot of young engineers. I am extremely grateful to Rachel Yu for executing this vision and creating an amazing video to accompany the mural.
I am so thankful for the support of my friends and family along the way and for the help of Quiana Tyson, Karis Boyd-Sinkler and Miranda Volborth. I’m grateful to all the alumni featured in the mural for collaborating with us to produce their likeness and for paving the way for younger engineers from diverse backgrounds. I’m grateful to Jules Odenahl James for her tireless support of the arts community and to various other muralists in Durham for providing their feedback on initial versions. I’m also thankful to all the incredible professors interviewed for the video including Sophia Santillan, Rebecca Simmons, and Aaron Kyle for their support and work towards making engineering an inclusive community. Lastly, I’m deeply grateful for all the inspiring strong female role models in my life including Weilie Ma, Catherine Rielly, and the late Lisa Cox for teaching me how to not only follow my dreams but execute on them.
A special thanks to everyone in the community for cheering us on while we painted and for making the Pratt School of Engineering a truly special place 🙂
Keena
Mural Director
