Science Online 2010: Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Session: Engaging Underrepresented Groups in Online Science Media
This post is part of my coverage of the Science Online 2010 conference.
Super-giga-kudos to Abel Pharmboy and Damond Nollan for addressing what has been a conscience-pinging aspect of attending Science Online each year: the fact that I spend Martin Luther King day blogging about the conference. The presentation focused on historic Durham, home of North Carolina Central University (NCCU), ranked number one among public Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), and Martin Luther King’s history of visiting the locale.
One personal difficulty I’ve had teaching our neighborhood kids about computer science is the incredible lack of prominent African Americans in Computer Science. Women are well-represented historically (if not presently), but African Americans make up a scant 0.25 percent of Computer Scientists according to one source. For this reason, I was thankful to be introduced to Dr. Marjorie Lee Brown (1914-1979), a mathematician at NCCU who acquired the first mainframe computer for a Historically Black College and University through a $60,000 grant from IBM in 1960. Dr. Brown is going into my slides next to Grace Hopper the next time I’m referencing Computer Science role models.
An interesting statistic that was brought up in the session was that, while minorities haven’t adopted personal computers as much as whites, they have outpaced whites in the adoption of cell-phone technologies:
Technology Adoption Among Ethnic Groups
Is this a potential in-road to bringing minorities into the online forum? This depends on the cell phone. As smartphones become more affordable and more prevalent, I am optimistic that these palm-computers will help connect minorities to the online community. However, organizations like The Kramden Institute, which provides refurbished computers to honors students in need, will continue to be the only substantive way of bridging the digital divide.
The presentation covered Dr. Martin Luther King’s many visits to the area, and introduced me to this variation of a Rabbi Hillel Silver quote Dr. King made:
Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values.
The two are not rivals. They are complementary.
Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism.
As someone who is beginning to lean toward spiritual naturalism over militant atheism, replacing the word “religion” with “spirituality” makes this quote, not just acceptable, but highly-enlightening.
Additional:
See coverage of the Casting a Wider Net: Promoting Gender and Ethnic Diversity in STEM session.
See the wiki for this session, which has links to additional resources.
You can see a PDF of my raw notes from this session here.
Thank you for the strong review of our session. It was fun and I learned a lot from the attendees. Thanks goes out to Abelpharmboy for inviting me to the conference.
As far as minorities in computer science, I understand how the lack of mentors in the field can affect numbers. In my life alone, I know the importance of strong mentors who have helped guide me in business and in IT.
For those that come behind us, we need to continue being positive role models.
Do understand, this recommendation is but one part of the whole solution. We need mentors, but we also need other answers as well.
Thanks for helping to keep the conversation going.
Comment by Damond Nollan — January 19, 2010 @ 10:06 am
Thank you for a very inspiring session!
Comment by ideonexus — January 19, 2010 @ 7:27 pm