THE ROLE OF AWARD AND VISIBILITY IN MAKING A DIFFERENCE

-


It's indeed auspicious that I started my blog in February. In February, 2015, I was in San Jose,  California, USA,  receiving the OWSD/Elsevier Foundation Award for Early Career Women Scientists.
Altogether, there were five of us, as follows:

 

(Left to Right)
  • Rabia Salihu Sa'id, PhD, Deputy Dean of Student Affairs, Bayero University, Kano
  • Mojisola Usikalu, PhD, Senior Lecturer in Physics, Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria
  • Nashwa Eassa, PhD, Assistant Professor of Physics, Al Neelain University, Khartoum
  • Mojisola Oluwyemisi Adeniyi, PhD, Head of the Atmospheric Physics/Meteorological Research Group, Department of Physics, University of Ibadan
  • Dang Thi Oanh, PhD, Head of the Division of Science, Thái Nguyên University of Information and Communications Technology
I was literally, thrown in to the international limelight. I had invitations for interviews, home and abroad. I was a keynote speaker at the annual event of the Visiola Foundation; a foundation working to provide opportunities for disadvantaged young women and girls to pursue an education in the STEM field by providing them with scholarships to start and complete university degrees. The organization had heard about me because of the visibility that the 2015 award gave me. Then the Peace Corp Nigeria Alumni Foundation contacted me. Albert Hanans contacted me and asked me to link up with my colleague, Professor M. B. Shittu to work on the Young Women Mentors Program.

Arewa24, a mainly Hausa TV program interviewed me in its feature program Tauraruwa (Star).  The interview has been well received and has been aired several times. Many young women have called me and expressed that they have been inspired and encouraged to go back or continue with school. Interestingly, many male viewers have also called to praise and to ask me to speak to their spouses and encourage them to go back to school or to give them advice on how to manage the home and school as I have done.

I am happy, we are getting there.

Click to follow my blog

Rabia S. Sa'id, PhD
Associate Professor of Physics
Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria
Personal Website: http://www.rabiasaid.org
Email: rabia at rabiasaid.org
Please remember to use the correct format of email, with the @ sign and no spaces. It was written this way to prevent those nasty spambots from harvesting the email address.
Ford Foundation International Fellow (2002)
Fellow of the African Scientific Institute (2013)
OWSD/ Elsevier Foundation Award in Physics (2015)

Comments

Post a comment

Popular posts from this blog

PLEASE JOIN MY BLOG

-
Image
My name is Dr. Rabia Said. From time to time, I will be writing on several topics that are aimed at encouraging and advancing opportunities for everyone, particularly the less-privileged. While I will be writing on general issues affecting us all today as we live our lives in a very challenging world, I will be focusing a lot on the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and how we can harness and preserve our scarce resources to expand opportunities for all, and improve our lives. I ask that you kindly join my blog by following it. Please visit often and drop any comments and suggestions you may have. I will surely appreciate your ideas. I thank you so much. Rabia S. Sa'id, PhD Associate Professor of Physics Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria Personal Website: http://www.rabiasaid.org Email: rabia at rabiasaid.org Please remember to use the correct format of email, with the @ sign and no spaces. It was written this way to prevent those n
Read more

American Generosity

-
Image
  I am delighted to give an account of what I have witnessed about American generosity. Introduction My first visit to the United States was in July 2003. I was visiting a Nigerian friend to spend the summer holidays with her in New Jersey, where she stayed with another Nigerian friend. During my one monyth stay from 1st through to the 31st July, we visited only diaspora Nigerians, so I did not meet Americans from per se. The generosity during that time was, therefore, taken for granted as the kind of generosity I would expect from Nigerians. My second visit in 2005 for another holiday with friends from New York to Denver to Las Vegas was pretty much the same, spending time with Nigerian Green Card holders. My third visit was in 2015, and I was coming to America to receive an award at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Jose, California. It was a short visit; just five days. An all-expense-paid trip and staying in a hotel with
Read more

Developing Countries Beware of Some Western Products: They are Not Eating Many of the Foods or Using Many of the Products They’re Dumping at Us the Same Time They’re Taking Some of Our Best: Part I

-
Image
It is not my purpose here to provoke an unnecessary hysteria regarding some imported products we might believe are luxury items simply because they are imported or are, thus, regarded as “big man’s” foods and products. However, I feel persuaded to bring to light certain issues that are negatively affecting our lives in Nigeria and other developing countries. My urge to proffer these suggestions does not only stem from what I have read in published data, but from my personal experience and observation, being a citizen and resident of Nigeria and having travelled widely around the world. I have been shocked as I saw how the “Oyinbos” live and contrasted it with how we, in the developing countries are living, and how our lives are being cut short while life in the West is elongating. Well, we all know that longevity is as a result of the interplay of many factors. Like I mentioned above, the Western countries are progressively experiencing a remarkable increase in their life expec
Read more