Dr. Jessica Vaden graduated from Pitt with her PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering in 2024. Since then, Vaden has served as a Civic Science Fellow at The Franklin Institute, where she acts as a museum educator. Her fellowship project involves developing resources for middle school science teachers regarding the new Pennsylvania STEM standards (STEELS standards) and utilizes a place-based civic science lens. She is also working on The Air We Share Project (funded by ASTC and Sanofi), a public health air quality project developing activities to use both within and outside of the museum, educating the public on the impacts AQ has on health and communities and actions they can take to improve it. Besides this, Vaden continuously does workshops with youth programs both externally and internally, working on a new Earth Systems exhibit to open in 2027.
Before graduating from Pitt, Vaden was looking for nonacademic careers within education science and was connected to a mentor who recommended working at science museums. Vaden states that her dissertation work involving developing tools to bring inclusive teaching into engineering and air quality education for a girls’ school in Kenya at Pitt was what inspired her to combine her engineering and science education background within the role she now holds.
Vaden’s work on the greenhouse inventory in 2019 and 2020 as part of Dr. Bilec’s group equipped her with the skills necessary to communicate scientific information to lay audiences. She also worked with MCSI to provide energy retrofit for Allegheny Traditional Academy Middle School, which helped her realize that she could bring knowledge to students that compound with what they’re learning.
As an individual who never thought while pursuing her PhD that she would end up doing science museum work, a piece of advice she would provide current students and alumni is to continue to be open to learning and lead with curiosity.