By Spurgeon Thomas
Hours before graduating from her Joint Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership at CSUSM/UCSD, Jasmine L. Sadler stands with her parents and statue at the San Diego Fleet Science Center’s Monumental Women in STEM exhibit. As an infant, family friends announced she was special. Engineering and Arts were always embedded in Jasmine’s childhood. At 6-years-old, Jasmine first debuted as a ballerina at the YWCA. Years later, she manually kept score for her father’s bowling league. Relocated from a Black-owned, Christian-centered private school in Detroit to a gifted program in the suburbs, Jasmine has always been a problem-solving superhero.
Jasmine was privileged with her mom preparing a daily breakfast and high expectations from both parents specializing in Information Technology as they invested money into an Education Trust for her to attend Michigan’s Aerospace Engineering program. Struggling with breaking corporate glass ceilings, her academic pursuits expanded to an MBA at Point Loma Nazarene University while dancing at Bayview Baptist Church as a worship artist. She is grateful for her entrepreneurial start at the Elementary Institute of Science where she coached an all-girls robotics team. Jasmine now bridges informal education gaps with her organization, The STEAM Collaborative.
Now, Dr. Jasmine Johnson bids farewell to San Diego as she relocates to Japan as a Marine wife where her vision of a STEAM University extends to Military families around the world. Jasmine’s parents expect her to do anything she puts her mind to. They advise, “to raise a rocket scientist, you must put God first.”
