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07.08
Banneker
Institute Steers African-American Youngsters
Toward STEM Education and Careers
By Chris McManes
When Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.),
majority whip of the House of Representatives,
was a schoolteacher in east Charleston, S.C., he
witnessed firsthand the hardships many black
youngsters encountered in school. As the keynote
speaker at a recent event for those interested
in increasing the number of African Americans
working in high-tech careers, he shared some of
those stories.
“I learned very early what it
was like to see a child come to school and try
to study, try to perform well and be hungry,”
Clyburn said. “Or see them at their third- or
fourth-period class, knowing full well that all
they had for breakfast was a Pepsi Cola, or
something of that sort that had enough caffeine
in it to give them the energy they needed to get
through the day. I learned that watching those
young people.
“But in that school, in a number
of those classes, there were young people there
that I knew if they’d got the opportunity, would
make significant contributions to this great
world of ours.”
Clyburn’s remarks came at a
Capitol Hill event organized by the Benjamin
Banneker Institute for Science and Technology in
the Rayburn House Office Building on 3 June. The
six-hour gathering of more than 60 included
engineers, scientists, college professors,
military personnel, entrepreneurs, association
and industry representatives, a school
superintendent and two teachers from McKinley
Technology High School, a Washington, D.C.,
public school, among others.
Like Clyburn, event organizers
want to provide opportunities for black children
that put them on the path to a successful
career. The Banneker Institute is most
interested in steering youngsters toward careers
in science, technology, engineering and
mathematics (STEM).
“The Decade of Blacks in
Science”
The Banneker Institute was
established under congressional mandate in 2003
and receives federal funds. Its mission is to
serve as a catalyst in the pursuit of increased
African-American participation in STEM careers.
In 2007, it declared “The Decade of Blacks in
Science,” a national effort to promote STEM
outreach activities at the local level.
One of the key elements of “The
Decade of Blacks in Science” is its Network of
Networks, through which, “Black science
membership organizations will work with
educators to increase the quality of science and
math education available in educationally
disadvantaged K-12 classrooms. In addition, it
will mobilize Black scientists to add their
voices, their unique perspectives and their
creativity to the national conversation
surrounding important science policy issues like
national competitiveness, alternative energy,
and global warming.”
Claudia Pharis, president of the
Banneker Institute, is quick to point out that
although African-American science organizations
would be expected to have a natural affinity and
interest in the effort, she welcomes the
participation of all science and engineering
associations.
“We can wait for national action
on this issue, [but] what’s the possibility
we’re going to have school-finance equity in the
next 10 years,” Pharis said. “Or we can mobilize
the 500,000 African-American STEM professionals
and rescue our children ourselves.”
Reaching Out to Help Children
Clyburn, just the second African
American to hold the House majority whip
position, told event participants about a couple
of youngsters he helped to free from the
misfortune of life in east Charleston. His pride
in their achievements was evident in his voice
and on his face. One young man, John Brooks,
whom Clyburn had just received an e-mail from
that day, is now a physician in Chesapeake, Va.
“He was not supposed to
succeed,” said Clyburn, adding that in the
e-mail Brooks told him how proud he was of
Clyburn, not for what he was doing, “but I am so
proud of having been taught by you.”
Clyburn next spoke about one of
Brooks’ classmates, Ralph Dawson.
“I knew when he sat in my class
that this was a young man who needed the kind of
assistance that would be necessary for him to be
successful,” he said. “He lived in what we
called in those days, ‘the projects,’ on Jackson
Street on Charleston’s east side. Today, he is a
very successful Wall Street lawyer.”
Dawson, who attended Yale
University and was a roommate of Democratic
National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, is a
Democratic superdelegate. Soon after he left
teaching, Clyburn recalled receiving word that
Dawson had been expelled from school.
“I got in my car, went to the
school and I talked to the teacher,” Clyburn
said. “And she told me, yes, she kicked him out.
I told her I understood why and I believed she
was justified. I said, ‘But we can’t lose Ralph.
If he doesn’t get back in school, he’s just
going to be out there with the group that calls
themselves the ‘Jackson Street Panthers,’ which
was a gang — and every one of them ended up in
prison.”
Clyburn said the teacher told
him that if he brought Dawson back to school and
he apologized in front of the class, she would
reinstate him. Dawson didn’t like the idea, so
Clyburn had to use a little friendly persuasion
“I explained to him — and you
could explain things a little differently in
those days — I told him, ‘You’re going to get in
this car and you’re going back to stand in front
of the class and you’re going to apologize to
the teacher, or else,” Clyburn recalled among
laughter. “Of course, he wanted to know what ‘or
else’ meant. And I splained to him — from
the vernacular — what he was going to have to do
if he didn’t get in the car. He didn’t want to
run that risk and I’m glad he didn’t.
“We went back and he did
apologize. He did finish high school, he did go
on to college, he did get a scholarship to Yale
University, and he is a very successful lawyer
today.”
A Role for Technology
The Network of Networks’ first
event was the 3 June roundtable. Attendees were
split into seven groups to discuss the many
aspects of increasing African-American STEM
participation. Each group gave a brief summary
of its vision to the larger gathering. The ideas
were collected and are available as
conference proceedings [1].
Other featured speakers included
Vice Admiral Adam Robinson, the surgeon general
of the Navy; and David Owens, an IEEE member and
vice president of the Edison Electric Institute.
“If we [the United States] are
to maintain our worldwide competitiveness, it’s
all going to be about technology,” Owens said.
“It’s going to be mobilizing our young people to
get into these very significant fields.”
Owens, who served as emcee, also
read a statement from Dr. John Brooks Slaughter,
president and CEO of the National Action Council
for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) and former
chancellor of the University of Maryland,
College Park.
Slaughter, an IEEE Life Fellow,
was unable to attend because of recent surgery.
“Modern technology offers us the
opportunity to pursue shared objectives in a
manner that in years past would have been very
difficult or nearly impossible,” Slaughter
wrote. “The Internet is being used to mobilize
people, resources and information in
unprecedented ways, suggesting that Internet
space represents the next level of social
organization. The point of this gathering is to
align our community in a manner that enables us
to access the power of the 21st century, to pool
our efforts so that there are shared benefits
for ourselves and for our progeny.
“The Network of Networks is
being promoted by the Banneker Institute in an
effort to draw the African-American community
into the Internet Age.”
African-American STEM
Participation Lags Behind
While college is a virtual
necessity for enjoying a STEM career, blacks
continue to be under-represented in STEM
degrees. In engineering, for example, statistics
gathered by the American Association of
Engineering Societies showing the percentages of
U.S. engineering degrees awarded to U.S.
citizens, point to a relatively low black
achievement rate.
Although African Americans make
up about 13 percent of the U.S. population, they
earned just 5.2 percent (3,673) of the
engineering degrees awarded to U.S. citizens
(70,749) in 2006. Asian Americans, by contrast,
make up a little more than 4 percent of the
population, but received 13.7 percent (9,719) of
those degrees. Hispanic Americans, representing
about 14 percent of people in the United States,
earned approximately 7 percent (4,957) of
engineering degrees.
The Commission on Professionals
in Science & Technology published an analysis of
minority employment in STEM occupations from
1994 to 2004 and concluded that the percentage
of blacks in STEM occupations in 2004 was 6.2
percent. This was down one percentage point from
its high of 7.2 percent in 2000, but up from
1994, when it stood at 5.5 percent.
Representation in engineering occupations
mirrored the 2006 degree stats: 5.5 percent in
2000 and 5.1 percent in 2004.
The half a million African
Americans working as scientists, engineers,
mathematicians and other high-tech professionals
contribute to the U.S. black community’s
enormous wealth. NACME’s Slaughter said the
community’s combined GDP would rank it as the
16th-largest economy in the world.
“In spite of this wealth of
resources, in spite of all the brain trust that
we have in this room, in spite of all the
renowned African-American scientists that we
have, we have problems in our community,”
Slaughter wrote. “Our children languish at the
bottom of the educational ladders in this
society and therefore, at the bottom of the
ranks of the future STEM stars.”
In addition to the Networks of
Networks, “The Decade of Blacks in Science”
includes five other programmatic components:
opening 10 National Association of Black
Engineers junior chapters around the country;
holding a biennial regional strategy session to
help develop local outreach programs; convening
an annual strategy session with science
membership organizations; launching media
campaigns; and hosting an annual awards
ceremony.
“We also know that we have a
very long way to go before we achieve
educational equity in this country,” Slaughter
wrote. “Now, and this is the point of the
Network of Networks, we can sit around and wait
for that to happen and risk losing yet another
generation of children, or we can take advantage
of the technological tools available to us and
step in and rescue our children for ourselves.
“I vote for the latter
strategy.”
To learn more about the Benjamin
Banneker Institute for Science & Technology and
what you can do to promote its initiatives, go
to
www.thebannekerinstitute.org.
Reference
-
Network of
Networks roundtable conference proceedings:
www.thebannekerinstitute.org
Chris McManes is IEEE-USA's
public relations manager.
Comments may
be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.
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