Nebraska Women in STEM talked to UNL’s Dr. Angela Pannier about expressing individuality while pursuing excellence and navigating challenges.
“I lived for a long time thinking that artists are born artists and musicians are born musicians, but people in math and science– and especially in engineering– they’re also born that, too,” reflects Dr. Angela Pannier, the Swarts Family Chair of Biological Systems Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL).
As a Fremont native, Dr. Pannier remembers that her childhood was marked by a desire to take things apart and see how they worked. Growing up, she excelled in math and science in school and would play pretend scientists with her younger sister. The adults in her life– most notably her female high school physics teacher– noticed her aptitude for engineering and supported her by encouraging her to attend an engineering camp when she was in high school.
She credits her career as an engineer to the external support she received from parents and teachers, and to her innate interest and intelligence. When talking about why she pursued a STEM career, she says, “Honestly, I like to do hard things. People were telling me that engineering is really challenging and not a lot of women go into it. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.”
Not only did she want to defy the expectation that women could not excel in STEM careers, but also the notion that to be an engineer meant sacrificing your femininity. “They had this joke that went, ‘you know I’m a woman engineer because I have boots in the back of my car,’ implying that you’d use those to go out to a site visit. And I wanted to say, ‘you know I’m a women engineer because I’m kicking everyone’s butt at math, but I have high heels in the back seat.’”