Mining graduate breaks blows and borders – Mini Newsroom

By Cynthia Barnes, special for Mines magazine

There is no dispute that the hip-hop is electric-but not often connected to electrical engineering. However, engineers are nothing if they are not inventive.

After dismissal in 2019, he put the brakes in her technology career, Le’Oya Garland ’04 – which played on the field on the Orediggers Softball List while receiving his diploma in electrical engineering – completely rediscovering his professional life, turning the career curve a home -made Running. She is now a co-owner of the Breaking School, which offers hip-hop dance education and art in Aurora, Colorado.

Growing on military advanced before her family settled in Denver, Garland was attracted to hip-hop dance, but remote places were lacking. Hip-hop dance, like Engineering, has an ethos “Make it work with what you have,” but “You can’t learn to break from a book,” she said with a laugh. “I tried.”

In 2014, she enrolled her young son in the classes at the Break School, waiting in the lobby before at last to dare to hit the floor. Now the co-owner and manager of school operations, Garland, also known as the B-Girl Tweezy, credit her age in mines, preparing it for success.

“At first, I was not very sure how my technical experience and college education would be useful at a school that deals with arts and culture,” Garland said. “But there are all kinds of things that I must be responsible for learning and mastering. I took the concepts of analysis and troubleshooting, which are a huge part of engineering and applied it to learn how to do all the features that are within the business. I always felt as if I was really good at troubleshooting and I am very oriented towards the solution. And this set of skills and thinking are very useful in the fact that I am running a business today. “

Garland credits the Mines multicultural engineering program to promote the sense of belonging that it works to create others today. “It was an important part of my choice to go to mines because I felt it was a school that was actually interested in my attendance and my participation and me that I was a student there,” she said. “Before my freshman, there was a week of learning and social activities for students who were part of the minority engineering program. It was very useful for making the transition to a college student and to be in a space where our numbers were small. I didn’t feel so scary and I wasn’t so alarmed to start after I went through this summer program. “

This support and encouragement inspire her efforts to make the school to break a welcoming environment for everyone. For example, the diversity of hip-hop has not always expanded to the gender, and the Garland school hosts sessions to encourage more girls to try to break.

“Sometimes all we need is to be around people who believe in us and encourage us to move in our own way, at our own pace,” Garland said. “I am often in spaces where I am the only person who looks like me-I am in technology, like a black woman, I am a woman in hip-hop culture. It is important to me, I lead an organization that I maintain awareness about it and do everything I can, so others will know that their presence is desirable and that this is a safe space for them. This is part of the work in which we do as a school – not only for women or girls, but for everyone. Hip-hop is a culture for everyone. His values ​​are peace, love, unity and fun. And although it was created by black -brown young people in the seventies in New York, it is intended to be a space for anyone who shares these values, to participate and to maintain these cultural responsibilities. “

Breaking-which debuted as an Olympic sport in 2024-and hip-hop culture already existed for more than 50 years, expanding from music, graffiti and dancing to cover values ​​such as health, well-being and education. The school plans to expand and, by adding more programs and researching larger places.

“This is a challenge,” Garland admitted. “But I felt very ready to deal with all the challenges of life after I graduated from the mini.”