2021 EngineerGirl Ambassador Nichola Wells interviewed NAE Member Sharon Nunes as part of the Ambassadors program in 2022.
Sharon Nunes retired in 2012 from her position as the Vice President of Big Green Innovations for IBM Corporation. She was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame in 2009.
0:08 – Can you introduce yourself and briefly describe your engineering background?
I’m Sharon Nunes. My engineering background was kind of an accident. I started as an undergraduate in a chemistry program … and a professor, basically, suggested, as I was in my senior year, that I might want to look into a new program that was underway at the University of Connecticut in polymer science and engineering. I … applied to that and got in and got my PhD in materials science and engineering. It was a couple people, I guess, along the way that saw something in me that I wasn’t even thinking about. It’s nice to have someone who keeps an eye out for students who might have potential and maybe aren’t thinking about a course that could be a good career. …
1:19 – What was the STEM program like at the University of Connecticut?
Well, we’re talking the late 70s and early 80s. There were a couple professors who were really encouraging [of women in the field] and a couple who weren’t. There were a few women in the program, too. … I was the first PhD female to graduate from that program in the engineering school, which I didn’t know until about five or six years ago. … We had a camaraderie with the women who were in the group so we kind of supported each other and stayed together. We had a really really good group of people, both male and female. There wasn’t a lot of guidance, you were kind of on your own, and it was graduate school so you were expected to be a little more independent as well.
2:24 – So you studied material sciences, can you explain what that is and what drew you to it?
My undergraduate chemistry degree was focusing on synthetic materials, mostly textiles, it was focusing on the polymers you would use to make clothes … The professor who recommended I look into this program at UConn had studied that and he said, “ya know, you might enjoy that program. It’s a little bit broader than what we do here.” So the program was material science and engineering. It had a combination of chemistry classes and engineering classes in polymers and, if you chose, I chose the polymers program, you could also do metallurgy or ceramics. … It was interesting ‘cause it exposed me to a much broader view of material science than just the polymer piece I was studying.
3:46 – What is your favorite thing about being an engineer?
It’s a way of thinking, of analyzing things, and planning, and thinking about the possibilities, thinking how to fix things. It allows you to step into many different careers; a lot of my colleagues might have had engineering or computer science backgrounds but they were doing mathematical problems. … I had friends who were involved in social engineering and looking at technology that would help either deaf people or blind people. So it’s the foundation of how you think about things [and] how you solve problems. One of the fun things I always thought from my career, I worked at IBM my whole career, was thinking about the future. … How do you create new technologies to solve some of the world's problems? And that, that’s a lot of fun. Takes a lot of brainstorming and a lot of collaboration and trying out different ideas, so that, to me, was really exciting – thinking about where does the future of technology go?
5:16 – I read about your [work with] Managing Idaho’s Landscapes for Ecosystems [MILES], can you elaborate on how STEM interacts with environmental advocacy?
I retired from IBM in 2012 and that year a professor that I had met from Idaho, I had met him at a conference, called me and asked if I’d consider being on an advisory panel for that program. I didn’t know anything about MILES at the time and did a lot of reading and was on the advisory panel there … [it] was fascinating because it’s a combination of science, technology, engineering, math, and combining it with social issues which means you have to be thinking about policy and lobbying because you need to change some of the policies. The whole MILES program was about the social-ecological systems. If you think about it, an ecological system is something that, from an environmental perspective, is one that provides a service.
So they were looking at these services … and [thinking] about the services that water supplied, with providing resources for plants, providing fresh, clean water for people, and for animals. Think about soil and the fact that it can help you to stabilize landscapes in many areas so if you get a lot of rain, you want to be sure you have a method to prevent your soil from eroding. You want some of the plant species there to hold onto it. So that’s the environmental aspect to it. Think about how, if you’ve got a city that’s growing 10-15% a year, and I know a lot of the southern states are seeing a lot of population explosion, well what happens with your resources? If you have an understanding of the science and the benefit that the resources provide from an environmental scientific perspective, then you can have a better argument with people who are making policy decisions about change that may or may not benefit the population with this kind of social interaction.
So the Idaho project did a lot of communicating with the local people through sometimes through the public radio, the TV station, the public radio, that did a lot of external messaging. … A lot of people who are in government positions, whether it’s local, state, or national level, don’t understand the science and engineering and so, if you can explain it to them in a way that’s understandable … they’ll be much more apt to consider it and … become one of the supporters of it. So you know, it’s this interesting mix of whatever you do from the science area that affects your environment whether it’s a real environment, meaning a natural environment, or a man-made environment, it’s important to translate the benefits of that environment into something that everyday people can understand. … That social understanding is very intimately connected with some of the environmental things that are going on.
11:25 – Speaking on women in engineering, what changes do you think that companies, employers, or maybe even the government could make to improve conditions and numbers and all of that?
I’ve seen a huge difference in the last … ten to fifteen years now. The dean of the school and the president have really said “this is important to us”. It has to be a concerted effort to encourage people and give people opportunities to succeed … A lot of companies now are looking for women in their programs. Depending on the company, it’s not always easy. It depends on the culture of the company, how well they carry out their programs, and whether women feel comfortable there. I had mentored a lot of people while working at IBM. Some people had great experiences and others had managers that … didn’t value them or didn’t respect them. … You’ve got to look at the leadership at the top … and believe that if the people at the top believe what they’re saying as far as equity and inclusion then it should be a place where you can succeed.
13:21 – Thank you so much, all those answers were amazing, especially the intersection between the social sides and engineering.
… If you’ve got the engineering foundation, you can go into some of the soft sciences and have an impact. You can go into design and have an impact. You can have an impact in teaching other students if you like the academic side. Creating strong support systems for yourself and, as you grow into your career, for the people coming behind you as well.