I am a child of immigrants.
Amma moved to America a few months before I was born, and Achan joined us shortly after. My parents wanted to make sure I was a US Citizen, to give me access to all of the opportunities that the land of the free afforded. Over the next eight years, two younger sisters were born. All the while, Amma was a stay-at-home mom and Achan worked as a welder trying to make enough money for a family of five.
I went to public school in the suburbs of Chicago, and there was never a moment I felt unsupported. My teachers, my advisors, the school administration all provided me with resources to better my education, but also to support my struggling family.
I am the person I am today because I was always afforded resources, even when I couldn’t afford them.
I often feel guilt and frustration when I look at the way the federal government treats immigrants. Amma and Achan were not seeking asylum, they weren’t in any danger. They were people of color who decided on the American dream, and I have seen success in my life because of that decision. So why are there children in the US today who are not being given the resources I was? And why are children of parents seeking asylum being mistreated in unthinkable ways?
With the reckoning of the Black Lives Matter movement, I’ve engrossed myself in issues of equity and equality in my life and community. More than ever, I recognize both the challenges of those without a voice in my community, and the absence of those who should be there but are not. The lack of cultural diversity in our community of experts at BDC 2020 was a reality check for me. I saw many instances where judges were thoughtful and brought in new perspectives (Indigenous, LGBTQ+, and Black), but these judges weren’t necessarily part of those communities. Their questions came from a learned place rather than a lived place (see BDC’s letter to our community about it).
Where are the BIPOC and marginalized students, educators, and leaders in biodesign? It is our community’s responsibility to ensure that we prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Within Biodesign Challenge, I have made it my personal mission to prioritize students who never considered biology, design, or biodesign as a career. I aim for BDC to provide resources for those students, just as my teachers, colleagues, and supporters did for me. We were lucky in 2020 to have BDC instructors who worked with marginalized students. We now have DREAMers among our alumni. We have high schoolers who hadn’t set foot in a lab before. We have students who are new to the English language. These students are excited about biodesign. They have amazing minds that would contribute to biotech if given the opportunity.
The pandemic has exacerbated the uncertain situation of the institutions meant to support these students. Many BDC instructors are seeing slashes to their budgets. They’ve had to devise creative ways to teach biodesign online or to postpone participation in the Challenge altogether. A quarter of instructors have already said that participation will not be feasible for their school for 2021. One instructor offered to teach on overload on her own. She was denied presumably because her department has prioritized internal triage over external education opportunities.
Among at least one of our existing teams, some students have stopped going to school altogether. Others who would have joined have left the country until they can be supported again through their school’s Migrant Education Program. At least in one case, a student has left school to earn an income while family members recover from coronavirus.
How do we help these instructors and students? How do we make sure that our resources reach them? And what can BDC do when the problems loom larger than an education program can address? BDC has always called itself a community, and during this time it has felt like one. We have served as a space where instructors have come together to not only share resources, but also to share stories and commiserate. This is a space where they could, and still can, support and rely on one another. I’m hoping we can expand this sense of community to our students and alumni, so they can feel comfortable enough to find ways to support and advocate for one another too. I see this as a first step.
The prompt for this essay was: “What are your hopes for the new presidency?” Let us once again see people of color and of marginalized groups leading our country. Let us have these leaders prioritize education in all communities. While the work is being done on the ground to support, educate, and provide opportunities to immigrants and people of color, let us have sweeping legislation that focuses on the underlying systemic issues.
Let these young people who have so much potential and so many world-changing ideas have all of the opportunities I did as a student and as a child of immigrants.
That is my hope for this presidency and for our country’s future.
Veena Vijayakumar is the Program Manager of the Biodesign Challenge. She made the best decision of her life by joining BDC in 2017 and has been inspired over and over by this community ever since. Veena studied Art History and Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and received an MA in Museum Studies from San Francisco State University.
She has focused on audience development and public programming at museums such as The Exploratorium and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her research, programs, and writing highlight the value of interdisciplinary education, namely its potential to make learning richer and more accessible to non-expert audiences.
Cite This Essay
Vijayakumar, Veena. “How Equity in Biodesign Became My Personal Mission.” Biodesigned: Issue 4, 23 November, 2020. Accessed [month, day, year].
