REFLECTIONS
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
By Stacy Branham
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
By Stacy Branham
When I tell a new acquaintance I’m a professor, they ask: What do you teach? When I tell a new colleague I’m a professor, they ask: What do you research? No one ever asks about my service. For research professors, work has three aims: research, teaching and service, usually in that order. For me, though, it’s always been service first.
Growing up with one parent in the military and the other in healthcare, I learned the importance of serving others at a very young age. As an eager 6-year-old, I translated this value into action by showing up at our neighbors’ garages, rolling up my sleeves and digging into spring cleaning, as if I was one of their own children. “You’re sure she’s not bothering you?” my mother always asked.
As I grew, so did the impulse to serve. For decades, as a student and now as a professor, I have dedicated myself to making higher education – and especially STEM – somewhere women, people with disabilities and everyone belongs, through building community, creating systemic change and fostering partnerships.
When I began as a computer science major at Virginia Tech, I was shocked to be one of only four women in a course with 96 men. I thought: “No one looks like me” and “Everyone’s looking at me.” But I ignored the Association for Women in Computing student organization, thinking it irrelevant. Two years later, I was thriving academically, on track to graduate early – but miserable. In most of my classes, I was the only woman. I felt deep unbelonging and isolation.
I finally attended an AWC meeting and found the cultural support system I needed. The following semester, I was AWC president, with seven members and $2,000 in the bank. When my successor took over two years later, we had over 40 members and a $20,000 annual budget. I didn’t want anyone else to feel that isolated, so I volunteered hundreds of hours giving talks, running workshops and organizing professional social events, earning me the computer science department’s Senior Service Award. Through service, I built community among girls and women and confirmed that they did, indeed, belong in computing.
I was jolted again when I began my postdoctoral studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, sharing a cubicle with a blind software engineer. I had the life-altering revelation that my community-building efforts had omitted people with disabilities, the largest minority group in the world.
WHAT MATTERS TO ME ...and Why
In this installment of What Matters to Me and Why, Stacy Branham shares the values, motivations, and experiences that shape her work and life. Through personal stories and reflections, she offers insight into what drives her passion for accessibility, inclusion, and meaningful change. Watch to learn more about the principles that guide her journey.
Women in computing may experience cultural isolation, but people with disabilities are often denied basic physical (and digital) access. So when I joined the faculty at UC Irvine, I rolled up my sleeves again. I implemented a process to make thousands of computer science research papers accessible to blind students. Here at UCI, I contributed arguments to our strategic plan about addressing accessibility challenges for students, employees and visitors.
More recently, I chaired a task force assessing the need for a disability cultural center on campus. We engaged over 150 disabled students in a listening campaign. Its No. 1 finding? Disabled students feel that there is no place on campus for them to belong. Ultimately, we recommended that UC Irvine establish a disability cultural center with a physically accessible space where disabled students can gather and participate in accessible events. It just secured its first two years of funding.
In addition to building community, these service projects make systemic change: Even after I move on, the structures I put in place will continue to make computing – and, more generally, higher education – a more welcoming place for people of all backgrounds and abilities.
Early last year, a teacher of the visually impaired from a local high school met an acquaintance who asked, “Do you know Stacy Branham?” Subsequently, I received an email from that teacher’s colleague, asking how he could prepare his blind students to succeed in college. Just 34 percent of visually impaired students enter four-year colleges (compared to 40 percent for nondisabled peers). Of that 34 percent, barely 40 percent graduate (52 percent for nondisabled peers). Rates are even worse for STEM majors.
I had the life-altering revelation that my community-building efforts had omitted people with disabilities, the largest minority group in the world.
Over the next year, I gathered a team of UCI students and staff, local teachers of the visually impaired, blind high schoolers and their parents to collaboratively identify ways to address this problem. We scraped up funding and ran a half-day, 80-person workshop for our growing community called “Accessing STEM in Higher Education.” Since then, we have raised funds to host three local blind high schoolers at UCI as research scholars; initiated novel research applying generative AI to prepare blind students for college; and taught 12 blind high schoolers how to write successful college applications. My service is not just about building community and making systemic change; it also involves fostering partnerships with the community to catalyze larger-scale bridges between the public and the university.
Nearly 35 years after my garage days, I still see service as essentially being a good neighbor. Though distance and our identities – gender, ability, racial/ethnic and more – divide us, our neighborly ties compel us to ask “Can I help?” This is a perspective our world needs more and more these days, and universities offer a unique space to cultivate the service mindset.
In fact, when land-grant universities like UC Irvine were established, they were given a responsibility to work hand in hand with surrounding communities, through “cooperative extension,” to co-create and share knowledge. I feel extremely fortunate to be a professor at UCI, with license to follow paths from my childhood.
In keeping with my history of serendipitous connections, try thinking of me as your neighbor. Come by my garage – there’s a lot of work to do. Let’s build communities, foster partnerships and make higher education accessible for everyone.
Branham is associate professor of informatics.
UC Irvine Magazine is produced by the Office of Strategic Communications & Public Affairs.
To contact the editor, email ucimagazine@uci.edu.