DSU women show how to break STEM glass ceiling

March 9, 2023

This paid piece is sponsored by Dakota State University.

Women make up 51 percent of the workforce in the U.S. population, according to a 2021 study.

Yet in STEM fields, only 35 percent of the jobs are held by women.

Dakota State University graduate student Janessa Palmieri is well aware of these statistics. She is proactively addressing the issue, driven by the examples of female role models she has seen at Dakota State. Two women in particular have excelled in STEM fields and broken the glass ceilings for themselves, the field and the institution.

President José-Marie Griffiths came to DSU in 2015 and has used her experience and national connections to position Dakota State as a world cyber powerhouse.

Dr. Ashley Podhradsky, vice president for research and economic development, is the first woman to earn a doctoral degree at DSU and has since been a trailblazer in cybersecurity and digital forensics.

“President Griffiths and Dr. Podhradsky have inspired me to persevere and be tenacious in my career,” Palmieri said. “I hope to be a role model someday as they have been to me.”

Palmieri is already putting that goal into action. As an undergraduate, she has volunteered with the DSU outreach program CybHER, an effort designed to motivate and inspire young women to consider cyber careers and encourage others to be allies for these young women.

This initiative has been incredibly successful, with more than 35,500 children participating in almost 300 events and various programs since its inception in 2013. Nearly 300 volunteers — DSU female and male students — participate in fun and engaging programs, which include coding camps, summer camps and after-school clubs.

CybHER also provides mentoring opportunities for college students and professional development resources for women in the industry with scholarship opportunities and the resources to attend national conferences such as Women in Cyber Security, or WiCyS.

Palmieri also has helped with DSU GenCyber summer camps, which teach middle and high school students about the opportunities in cyber. That’s how she learned about DSU and the careers available in technology fields. A native of New Hampshire, she traveled halfway across the country as a high school student to attend a GenCyber summer camp and then enrolled at DSU.

She received her cyber operations bachelor’s degree in 2022, and after she earns her master’s degree in cyber defense, she plans to take a job with a government agency.

By joining the workforce, she will help increase the percentage of women in STEM careers and help fill the workforce gap in cyber fields.

Dakota State is seeing success in bringing women into jobs and leadership roles, including on the President’s Cabinet.

Since Griffiths joined the university, the Cabinet has grown from 30 percent women to 55 percent, including:

  • Rebecca Hoey, provost and vice president for academic affairs.
  • Dr. Ashley Podhradsky, vice president for research and economic development.
  • Amy Crissinger, vice president for student affairs and enrollment management.
  • Deb Roach, vice president for human resources.
  • Kelli Koepsell, director of marketing.

Female leaders across campus include College of Business and Information Systems dean Dr. Dorine Bennett, director of the Karl Mundt Library Dr. Mary Francis and many department heads and supervisors.

Dakota State also is seeing growth in the number of women studying for a career in cyber, with a 5 percent increase in female students enrolling in the programs of DSU’s Beacom College of Computer and Cyber Sciences from fall 2014 to fall 2022. These students can help bring diversity to the workforce and fill some of the estimated 770,000 jobs open in cyber fields.

“I hope to see 50 percent of cybersecurity jobs held by women before the end of my career,” Palmieri said.

DSU also has an initiative to bring workforce opportunities to South Dakota. With Griffiths’ experience in higher education and service on national boards and committees, she has created a visionary plan to create STEM jobs in the state.

Through public-private partnerships, she has gathered support and resources of more than $150 million to drive a cyber-research initiative for DSU and South Dakota.

This includes three directives: to grow the number of cyber graduates at DSU to fill the workforce gaps, to introduce cyber fields to high school students across the state through the Governor’s Cyber Academy and to create and expand a modern cyber innovation hub facilitating research in two locations in South Dakota: one in DSU’s home base of Madison and another in Sioux Falls. This initiative builds on a foundation that brings quality education, research, industry and high-paying jobs to future decades of South Dakotans.

“At Dakota State, we have a shared vision of our future to help people learn, discover, create and innovate so that their lives can be purposeful and consequential,” Griffiths said recently. “We find ways to deal with any barriers we encounter, and we innovate new pathways to reach and exceed our bold goals.”

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DSU women show how to break STEM glass ceiling

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