Maxine (Natosha) Kennebrew Email & Phone Number

My work experience can be described as eclectic. I went to school for electrical engineering, but stopped short of my degree and instead completed my studies as an economics major. I went on to work at Chrysler in the early 2000s as a systems engineer coordinator, as a materials control supervisor, as a logistics coordinator. After the economic downturn at Chrysler I turned to teaching high school science and brought the relevance of my work experience coupled with my enormous creativity to the classroom. There are several class projects I am proud to say I implemented while teaching but one of my favorite was an end of the year chemistry cookoff, where students got a chance to demonstrate something they learned in chemistry and apply it to a Food Network worthy type of final exam. Winners were not only determined by the tastiness of their dishes but also by their ability to explain the science behind their creations. Another class project I am proud of is our school's hydroponic garden. Not a life science person, myself, I turned my class into an environmental engineering class. I set the entire class up like a factory and had student's apply for jobs; material control, growers, chemists, engineers. My students built the entire garden, managed product, and marketed the garden to the rest of the school. It is that creativity that earned me the honor of teacher of the year in 2020. I have since become integral in the launch of a robotics academy in Detroit where students in addition to their high school curriculum, can study coding and programming, robotics, autonomous vehicles, engineering principles, esports, computer architecture and so much more. My focus currently is computer science, artificial intelligence, 3D printing and making. I am working on my Master's in Computer Science with a concentration in Intelligent Systems at Lawrence Technological University I am fascinated by convolutional neural networks and the possibilities of what we can do with them to make life better. I am also committed to increasing access to "making" for underrepresented students. My dream is to create a workspace where I can pursue my professional aspirations while allowing students from all over a chance to come and "make".