The 2023 Women of UD

Camryn Justice

 

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT / ELECTRONIC AND COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY MAJOR  / CLASS OF 2023

“So everything that I do is driven to make sure that everyone feels heard, or that I’m representing people in the right way, to make sure that everyone feels accounted for. 

I’m the Director of Academic Affairs for the Student Government Association. A big part of that is making sure that students, when it comes to academics, are being represented accordingly. I sit on a lot of committees and I’m talking to like, President Spina, board of trustees, directors… and in a lot of these meetings, in all these meetings, I am the only student. 

One committee that I sit on, I literally have my professors on there! But my professors are real cool. It’s scary to disagree, but that's my job. I’m very grateful to be in these conversations…students might know this is happening, but without my position, students wouldn’t be in the conversation at all. At a lot of universities that doesn’t happen; students are not a part of the initial phase when they’re still brainstorming.

It keeps me crazy busy but I really really enjoy it. I think I discovered that my voice has power, and potential, and also to just not be afraid to speak my mind. I do have power in my voice, especially since the student body elected me to be in this position, I have to honor it. 

Now that I have the taste of speaking out, making sure voices get heard, I don’t want to stop.

I got rejected by my dream school and I was put on the waitlist, so for all intents and purposes I was going to transfer after a year. I ended up staying at UD because I really like my engineering program. I really love the MEC community…and the Women’s Center is a place that will welcome me… I find that so unique here. So I was like, why go, when I’ve found so many great opportunities? 

I ran for Student Government my Sophomore year, and I got it and ended up loving it. I was like ‘I know I don’t want to be a representative that just sits on one committee, I want to sit on ALL the committees’. So I ran and I ended up getting it. It's such an eye opener.

My dream would be like, I want every student to have a home at UD, I want students to be able to go abroad... I specifically want students of color and other minority students to be able to feel that. I’m really lucky that a lot of donors have funded my education. Not every student gets donor funded scholarships. Experiential learning costs money. I want minority students to grow and to feel safe here. And casual racism, casual homophobia, like damaging the spectrum house, or moving to a different table… I do bring that stuff up in my committees because I know when students experience bias that affects their academics.

So like, I LOVE ETHOS! We work with nonprofits for engineering work to solve problems. What I love so much about Ethos is that we don't bring anything with us. You use what’s there so the community itself can sustain it. 

I just got back from South Carolina, and we installed garden irrigations for community gardens. We were right at the heart of Gullah Geechee culture, which was so empowering, especially just as a black woman it was very empowering.

I went to Guatemala for the week and we installed solar panels in impoverished neighborhoods. They are paying like 90% of their income to power companies just to sustain like 4 lightbulbs. So we gave them solar panels and power generators with a conservation system so when it was dark they could still have power from it being conserved all day. They could run it all without paying the power company, and they pay a very very small fee that’s just to help the nonprofit help another family. I was the only electrical engineer there, so I was directing my team, and there were little girls following me. They've never seen a woman doing manual work, and directing a team of guys on top of that. Maybe they will go into STEM or something more. It was cool enough to help this family, but the little girls looking at me, that was the icing on the cake.

I could rave about ETHOS all day. I wouldn’t have been able to go on that trip if someone else didn’t help fund me. What if I didn’t have that life changing experience? I want everyone to have that experience.”