As Dartmouth High School alum Ann-Marie Silvia stood on the UMass Amherst stage for her doctoral hooding in kinesiology, she thought of the little girl who was made to believe she didn’t belong in STEM. 

“As a child, I was very inquisitive and interested in all things science,” Silvia said. “But then, like many little girls today, I got knocked out of STEM in middle school … by a teacher who made me feel that girls couldn’t be scientists.”

That experience pushed her away from science for years. Though she understood the material, she stopped putting in the effort, leading to poor grades. After graduating Dartmouth High School in the 1990s, she did what she thought was expected: took a retail job, got married and raised her two children.

But then she said one day, she woke up and realized: “I’m more than just a wife or a mother.”

She returned to school at age 41, starting with an associate’s degree from Bristol Community College. From there, she earned a full scholarship to Bridgewater State, where she completed a bachelor’s and a master’s in exercise science. 

She said while raising her kids, she found her passion for fitness and healthy eating, losing 100 pounds and running her first marathon at age of 39.

Not one to stop there, Silvia entered the kinesiology Ph.D. program at UMass Amherst. While working on her doctorate, she also earned a second master’s in public health and epidemiology. 

During the commencement ceremony, Silvia had the honor of giving an address, which reflected the twists and turns of her unconventional journey, but her message was clear: failure, growth and change are all necessary parts of success. 

At age 52, she now holds a faculty position in UMass Amherst’s Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, where she’ll focus her research on physical activity as medicine — particularly for neurodivergent populations.

She plans to open her own lab, the Silvia Lab, with a mission to explore the intersection of exercise and public health and to promote wellness through movement for neurodivergent individuals.

“I don’t look like a scientist. I don’t talk like a scientist,” Silvia said. “I’m fashionable. I will walk into class wearing a hot pink suit and high heels. I want to show young women that they can look exactly how they look and still be whatever it is they want.”

Growing up in Dartmouth, Silvia is the daughter of Lori-Ann Miller, a member of the town’s Planning Board. Silvia has since lived in New Bedford, where she raised her two children — her son, Owen, who works for Gold Medal in Fall River, and her daughter, Emma, a steam engineer at UMass Dartmouth.

Silvia’s research is driven in part by a commitment to equity in health and education. She points to studies showing that while boys and girls express equal interest in science through age 11, girls’ interest drops sharply in middle school — a pattern that mirrors her own experience.

“It’s such a disparity,” she said.

Even in her professional field, she’s seen the subtle ways women are still treated differently — especially at conferences. “I want to give permission to women to pursue what it is they want,” she said.

In her speech, Silvia urged graduates to celebrate not only their degrees but the resilience it took to earn them.

“At the very moment that you get hooded today, I want you to stop, take a breath, and solidify a core memory of your achievement,” she told her fellow graduates. “A core memory to represent that you can do hard things!”