Giving Compass' Take:

• The 74 profiles Michele Yatchmeneff, the University of Alaska's first Native American engineering professor, who came from a humble, rural upbringing and is now a mentor to young STEM students.

• How can we support others like Yatchmeneff? One way is to fund initiatives such as the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program (ANSEP), which provides education, mentoring, networking opportunities, and scholarships for students from middle school to the doctorate level. Yatchmeneff credits ANSEP for helping her higher ed pursuits.

• Here are three more ways you can support women in STEM.

For as long as she can remember, people have been telling Michele Yatchmeneff that she wouldn’t succeed.

When she wanted to take high-level math and science courses in high school, some people advised her against it. The discrimination — because she was a girl and an Alaska Native — would continue long beyond high school. Even years later, while earning her doctorate at Purdue University, some people still treated her like a “minority quota.”

Yatchmeneff went on to become the University of Alaska’s first female Native engineering professor in 2015. She is dedicating her research to giving back to her community, offering encouragement to young Native STEM enthusiasts and a sense of “belonging” she was often denied. She was recently awarded a $500,000 research grant from the National Science Foundation to identify the characteristics Alaska Native high school students associate with belonging and how those characteristics influence their decisions to pursue higher-level math and science classes. She defines belonging as a classroom atmosphere in which students feel “whole” and confident being themselves. Her goal is to share that information with teachers through professional development in order to help them guide Alaska Native students to success in STEM education and careers.

Read the full article about the University of Alaska's first female engineering professor by Laura Fay at The 74.