Carlotta Berry’s journey into engineering education began with exclusion: in her undergraduate years, the robots were too expensive to touch, and she seldom saw instructors or peers who looked like her. Now she is a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, where she leads open-source mobile-robot projects and outreach efforts aimed at diversifying STEM, tells IEEE Spectrum.
Her approach emphasizes three core pillars: hands-on interaction, community access, and representation. She designs modular, 3D-printed robots (such as “LilyBot”) that students build, wire, program, and test. Her outreach takes robots outside the lab, into libraries, schools, and public spaces, so that children aged as young as three can see, touch, and play with the technology.
Underserved audiences are at the center of this work. Berry remarks that even in 2020, graduate students reported the same isolation she felt 30 years earlier. To address this, she co-founded networks such as Black in Engineering and Black in Robotics, which focus on community, visibility, and mentorship.
The educational benefit is twofold. First, it flips the traditional “watch then do” model by giving learners direct access to hardware from day one. Second, it anchors robotics lessons in identity and belonging: when learners see themselves as creators, not just consumers, they gain confidence and persistence. For engineering writers and educators, this means identifying toolkits and generative frameworks that remove both cost and identity barriers. Berry’s model shows that designing for access, not just content, matters.
By democratizing robotic hardware and linking representation with experimentation, Berry is expanding the pipeline of STEM talent in a practical, tangible way.