{"id":19120,"date":"2018-06-14T12:30:32","date_gmt":"2018-06-14T16:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/?p=19120"},"modified":"2018-06-14T12:30:32","modified_gmt":"2018-06-14T16:30:32","slug":"tolbert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/tolbert\/","title":{"rendered":"STEM Trailblazer: Wayne Tolbert '83"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

According to Wayne Tolbert, <\/span>earning an engineering degree was probably the most difficult thing he\u2019s ever done. But then Tolbert doesn\u2019t like to take credit for the strides he took to make sure minority students felt included in campus life during the 1980s, a change that made a positive impact on Clemson students past, present and future.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere were approximately 300 American-American students on campus at that time. There were a couple of older native African students in the ceramic engineering program, but I didn\u2019t have anyone like me in my classes,\u201d remembers Tolbert.<\/span><\/p>\n

During his junior year, Tolbert joined 23 other students to found the Clemson University chapter of the Society of Black Engineers (CUSBE). Tolbert was elected president.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI remember going to the national convention in Atlanta and seeing other [African-American] engineering students and thinking, \u2018There are others going through the same thing!\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Tolbert continued to bring awareness to minorities in the workplace through his work as a systems engineer on Department of Defense military contracts. Last year, Tolbert received the Science Spectrum Trailblazer Award at the 2017 Black Engineer of the Year Awards Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) conference. The award is given on behalf of Career Communications Group\u2019s U.S. Black Engineer and Information Technology<\/i> magazine, the Council of Engineering Deans of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Lockheed Martin Corporation. Tolbert was nominated by his employer, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). The award recognizes engineers who, among their many talents, possess the ingenuity to open career doors for others.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty amazing to be honored with this award. I believe I received it in part because I\u2019m able to get along with a variety of personalities,\u201d Tolbert says. \u201cI think it goes back to my days at Clemson being the CUSBE president and a part of many other organizations on campus. There\u2019s something in me that strives to pull people together to succeed; I think they [the awards committee] appreciated that, especially since the typical impression of an engineer is someone buried away in a cubicle or laboratory.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Tolbert admits it\u2019s clich\u00e9, but the advice he shares with others from his time in college and beyond is to never give up: \u201cThere\u2019s a reason you are here on this earth. Find it and don\u2019t stop doing it until you\u2019ve blazed your own trail.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to Wayne Tolbert, earning an engineering degree was probably the most difficult thing he\u2019s ever done. But then Tolbert doesn\u2019t like to take credit for the strides he took to make sure minority students felt included in campus life during the 1980s, a change that made a positive impact on Clemson students past, present […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":19169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[21],"tags":[1096,2730,2770,2772],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-19120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumniprofiles","tag-engineering","tag-stem","tag-summer-2018","tag-summer-2018-alumni-profiles"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2018\/06\/Wayne-Tolbert_Profile.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19120"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=19120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}