VT College of Science Magazine Annual 2014 | Page 24

“Cool” is a word that makes frequent appearances in any conversation with Chelsea Cook, of Newport News, Virginia, a
senior majoring in physics. It doesn’t matter whether the
topic is the circumstances of her birth, seeing the moon, or
discovering an advantage she has over her sighted counterparts.

have a problem with this course because of this; and we can do this;
and we can find a solution to this…’ It was cool because people
didn’t see me because of my disability; they were more like, ‘Oh, you
have a brain and you want to do physics and you just happen to take
input differently. We can totally work with that.’ And that’s been a
great experience.”

“The coolest thing that’s ever happened to me was that I was born
in Germany, but I wasn’t supposed to be,” said Cook. Born at just 24
weeks, the doctors told her parents their girl might be blind. “My
parents’ reaction was kind of, ‘that’s it? She’ll make it? That’s great,’”
Cook explained.

Another great experience for Cook came when she was invited to
speak at TEDx in 2013. She was initially worried about having to
memorize a speech to keep in line with the organization rules about
not having cards, but after hearing her practice delivery, organizers decided to let her do it her way. “My parents explained it to me
when I was young that when sighted people read they have to look
down; but because I’m reading [Braille] with my fingers I can look
out at the audience the whole time while still reading my speech, so
that was really cool.”

Feeding off that parental optimism, some light perception, and
peripheral vision in her left eye, Cook developed an interest in
astronomy when she was 5 after her mother woke her up in the
middle of the night. “There was a really big full moon right outside
the window and I was able to see it. That was kind of cool and I got
interested in astronomy at that point. A few years later, I received
a book by Noreen Grice, who writes Braille astronomy books with
tactile graphics, and there was a forward by the first blind radio
astronomer. To a 10-year old, that was very cool, and I was hooked
on astronomy and space in general.”

Like any student getting ready for her final year, Cook doesn’t know
exactly what she wants to do next – a career, or graduate school
perhaps, but which one and studying what? Regardless of what the
future holds, it’s a good bet that when you ask her about it, she’ll
say it’s pretty cool.

In high school, Cook found a physics teacher with the
sort of strict, military-style personality she liked, having
grown up in an Army family. “He recognized I was a normal kid who could do physics, but I just needed accommodations, and he was good at developing those on the
fly.” She also met a blind graduate student in chemistry
with a research interest in access to the sciences for people with blindness or low vision. “His thesis was making
lab equipment available to blind students and I was all
over that,” Cook said.

See Chelsea’s TEDx Talk by visiting:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr2wFIFft2w
&index=12&list=PLsRNoUx8w3rN_iBaICtEXbKnSP6ywY8vB

Before graduating high school, Cook’s mother dragged
her out to visit Virginia Tech, where she met Beate
Schmittmann, then chair of the physics department.
“She talked to all of us in various presentations and told
us about the Ladies of Robeson, a women’s physics group,
so I got a sense of community very early on from everyone, including Professor [John] Simonetti, who reviewed
the entire astronomy minor with me and said, ‘You won’t
Chelsea uses braille text as part of her
study of physics and other subjects.

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WOMEN in SCIENCE

COLLEGE OF SCIENCE ANNUAL