| 32 Days of Black History is a blogathon celebrating Black History Month hosted by Mamalicious! and Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast. We are joined by WhatTamiSaid; Inkognegro; and Chris repping SCSU in The Dawg House. Check them out. |
The theme for today is "Black to the Future: Ones to Watch." We hope to bring you some stories of people today who are poised to be featured in the history books of tomorrow. And once again for my 32Days entry I want to give some props to folks in the academy.
Every year since 2002 Diverse Issues in Higher Education has featured several "Emerging Scholars." This year's crop is, as always, composed of stellar individuals who are already making their marks in their respective fields and show great promise for continuing to do so. But DIHE makes the point that these folks are not notable for their achievements, but for who they are as human beings as evidenced by the paths they had to travel to get to this point:
Beyond the accolades, we always find compelling the personal stories of perseverance, resilience and dedication. Like the educational psychologist who was unprepared for the rigors of college but self-corrected his study skills in order to earn three degrees. And the political science professor who, as a boy during summer breaks, tilled the land with his farm-worker parents but also heeded the “get an education� message of parents who never made it past the sixth grade. And the Black woman physicist, who, lacking role models who looked like her, questioned whether she could succeed in a field dominated by White men but went on to become one of three women physicists of color at a top 100 research institution.
Also, catch up with the first group of emerging scholars to be featured here.
Also from DIHE was this recent story about robotics education at historically Black institutions:
When Dr. Andrew Williams began teaching at Spelman College three years ago, he had a hunch that science and engineering students at the all-female and private historically Black college would flock to the study of robotics not unlike the science and engineering students who gravitate to the growing field at the top research institutions. Not only did Williams guess right, it turns out that his teaching and research efforts in the subject would help spark a robotics education movement that now extends from the Atlanta-based women’s college to several historically Black colleges and universities.
Keep your eyes open for the young women of SpelBots, who became the first all-female and all-Black and all-undergraduate team to qualify for the International RoboCup Four-Legged Soccer Competition in Osaka, Japan (2005) and Bremen, Germany (2006). (Check out the website for ARTSI - Advancing Robotics Technology for Societal Impact.)
Posted by perry032 at February 3, 2008 12:01 AM