Dr. Ashanti Pyrtle is an Assistant Professor at the College of Marine Science, University of South Florida (USF) and a Senior Scientist at the Institute for Broadening Participation. Her research areas, marine and geosciences, suffer from an extreme shortage of underrepresented minority (URM) professionals. She recognized the need to impact a large numbers of underrepresented students and provide them with coaching and mentoring, coupled with strategic professional development opportunities that are unavailable to most undergraduate and graduate students. Dr. Ashanti J. Pyrtle recognized the importance of effectively encouraging students to pursue careers in science, and has devoted substantial effort to mentoring.
Dr. Pyrtle has generated extraordinary programmatic support for her mentoring activities. She authored a unique program that focuses on creating a community of scientists that assists students' professional development with support from peers, senior mentors and professional organizations. Dr. Pyrtle has served as director of many programs important to mentoring at all educational levels; the Minorities Striving and Pursuing Higher Degrees of Success in Earth System Science Initiative, the USF College of Marine Science OCEANS GK-12 Fellowship Program and Georgia Tech's FACES program serving as a member of the US National Science Foundation Advisory Committee on Environmental Research and Education.
Dr. Pyrtle has made a significant contribution to addressing the need for a diverse, internationally competitive and globally engaged STEM workforce. She has developed and implemented a portable model that creates a community where members share relevant experiences essential to their success in STEM fields. This model can and should be used by other agencies to achieve the goal of increasing the number of competitive scientists in STEM careers.
