Dianea Phillips, BEd’85, was 40 years old when she experienced her first zero-gravity flight.
“I fell in love with aerospace,” recalls Phillips, a Certified Aerospace Educator. “If it spins or flies, I love it. If it changes matter, even better!”
Phillips’s zero-gravity flight was the culmination of her participation in the U.S. Space and Rocket Center’s 10-day Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, where she lived and trained like an astronaut alongside participants from around the world.
Space Camp was, in some ways, a dream come true. In elementary school, Phillips longed to study the sciences and math; in high school she wanted to be a pilot. But she grew up in a generation where those opportunities were most often reserved for boys.
“My yearning was for science, for math, but it seemed there was always a reason I couldn’t do something,” recalls Phillips.
That experience of lacking access stayed with her, and she’s built a career around sharing her love of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) with children who may not otherwise have access to these learning opportunities.
“If we don’t help them get inspired when they’re young, they become the children or young adults who are looking to the future with uncertainty,” says Phillips. “I want young people to know: You get to be the designer of what you want to be. You have every right – and you are deserving – to design and create your own path.”
Designing her own path – with students and science at the centre – is just what Phillips has done.
After graduating from McGill, she began her first teaching job in Nunavik in northern Quebec, where most of her students spoke neither French nor English. She learned how to be creative and develop hands-on learning approaches that transcended these language barriers. Following that, Phillips worked for 25 years as an educator with the Lester B. Pearson School Board, Quebec’s largest English school board, and led its Centre for Educational Excellence, a 10-year-long program that trained teachers and educated students in the sciences.
Today, Phillips is an entrepreneur and self-described “multiplatform professional,” drawing on her unique talents as an educator, storyteller, and youth life coach to engage students in inspiring STEM and space education projects both inside and outside of the classroom.
Phillips runs various informal education programs for children in and around Montreal, including Enchanting Tales Storytelling (for schools and libraries), as well as Science Yourself! No G’s About It! -STEM and STEAM Informal Education programs. In fall 2020, she launched an informal education "Space School" on the West Island of Montreal, featuring programs such as "STEMGENUITY" and NASA SPARX, a pilot initiative of NASA's Next-Gen STEM project that aims to engage homeschooled children and students from underrepresented and underserved groups in aerospace education.
Phillips – whose exceptional contributions to space education were recognized with the prestigious Cherri Brinley Outstanding Educator Award during this year’s Space Exploration Educators Conference at Space Center Houston – sees her different areas of expertise as closely intertwined, one building on the other to make students’ learning experiences more resonant and impactful.
“Storytelling can be brought into space work and vice versa; space work can be integrated into youth life coaching,” Phillips, a certified adult and youth coach, explains. “If we need examples of how to be strong, I can pull from a science experiment. If I need a kid to experience what strength is, we’ll use spaghetti noodles to build a tower. You see the power they feel constructing it; and when it falls, we learn about resilience, that we have to rebuild. It’s all intersected.”
When Phillips learned about the new McGill Black Mentorship Program – which pairs Black McGill students with Black McGill alumni, faculty or staff members to help them develop in their personal and professional goals – she saw mentoring as a natural extension of her vocation. It was also an opportunity to be the kind of role model she herself lacked during her academic journey.
“I didn’t have a Black mentor,” says Phillips, who was in her late 20s when she began her undergraduate studies in education at McGill. “To not see older Black women in positions of leadership – it’s tragic, because we need to see these people. We need to know they exist.”
Phillips is excited to see the mentorship program grow and hopes more members of McGill’s Black community will get involved to support Black students.
“Our youth need us. They need our experience, our wisdom, our stories, our ears,” says Phillips. “And more importantly, they need to know that there are people who are willing to do all of that for them.”