Business Courier: UC dean honored for expanding access to STEM
Chamber awards Diversity by Design Award for leading change in community
Whitney Gaskins, PhD, Assistant Dean of Inclusive Excellence and Community Engagement at the University of Cincinnati was honored in the 2021 Cincinnati Lifts Inclusion and Minority Business Awards for her contributions toward ensuring a more diverse, inclusive and equitable Cincinnati community.
Whitney Gaskins, PhD, created the Gaskins Foundation in 2008 in response to her experiences as a Black women studying STEM. Photo/Provided.
The Cincinnati Business Courier and the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber host the annual CLIMB Awards to celebrate and elevate the individuals and organizations that help our region achieve greater success through building a diverse workforce, championing equitable policies and practices and developing inclusive cultures.
A three-time UC graduate and faculty member in the College of Engineering and Applied Science, Gaskins received a Diverse by Design Award, recognizing her for unparalleled leadership in diversity and inclusion. On and off campus, Gaskins is paving the way for local students to develop the skill sets needed to achieve their own vision of a brighter future.
The Gaskins Foundation, a nonprofit organization she established in 2008, continues to deliver on its mission: to prepare students of all ages and backgrounds to become leaders in STEM. That’s why she is dedicated to improving access to STEM education.
“I have a hard time believing it’s because of a lack of talent or ability,” Gaskins told the Courier. “It’s a lack of access and opportunity.”
The foundation’s nationally recognized centerpiece, the STEMulates program, provides free, year-round K-12 programming focused on building math and science skills. STEMulates serves 2,500 students in Cincinnati Public Schools, as well as other schools in the state.
A community- centered program, STEMulates is designed to increase the number of engineers and applied scientists in Cincinnati over the next 20 years.
“We can’t solve some of our world’s biggest problems if we don’t start diversifying the people who work on them,” Gaskins told the Courier.
Gaskins shares her journey from being one of the “lonely only” one of two Black women in her engineering classes in college, to changing the face of what education in the heavily male-dominated fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics looks like for future generations.
Read the story from Cincinnati Business Courier.
Featured image at top: UC College of Engineering and Applied Science assistant dean Whitney Gaskins speaks at GE Aviation in 2021. Photo/GE
Related Stories
Inflammation, not symptoms, found to disrupt sleep in IBD...
July 9, 2025
Impaired sleep architecture in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is primarily driven by inflammatory activity rather than symptomatic flares as previously thought, according to a study published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology. Sleep architecture is the structural organization of a normal sleep cycle, encompassing the progression and distribution of different stages of sleep throughout a typical night’s rest.
Study traces evolutionary origins of an important enzyme complex
July 9, 2025
MSN highlighted University of Cincinnati Cancer Center research published in Nature Communications that traced the evolutionary origins of the PRPS enzyme complex and learned more about how this complex functions and influences cellular biochemistry.
Hoxworth employees help pen latest edition of textbook widely...
July 8, 2025
Hoxworth Blood Center, University of Cincinnati, is proud to share that four apheresis employees are now published authors. Caroline Alquist, MD, Krystol Weidner, Kelly Anstead and Jamie Swafford helped write Principles of Apheresis Technology, Eighth Edition.