North Carolina A&T held its fifth annual Urban Education Institute March 7-9. The theme for the convention was Improving STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) Success in Communities of Color. The three-day event drew educators from universities such as Harvard, Rutgers and Howard as well as more than 100 high school students from all over North Carolina to discuss strategies for drawing more minorities into STEM-related fields of study.
After two days of sitting in plenary sessions with experts like Penn State’s Jose Fuentes and Syracuse’s George M. Langford, the students took center stage as the program drew to a close. Six students, ranging from a high school freshman to second-year graduate school students, spoke about their experiences in STEM studies and shed some light on where they felt the future of their field might be headed.
High school senior Gerrell Bynum’s initiation into STEM studies came out of a desire to know how the video games he loved worked.
“I wanted to know how we made those work, but not how to just play them,” he said. “It’s all about knowing what you want to do as soon as possible, and then striving to achieve that goal.”
A&T’s Phillip Thomas wasn’t as clear on what he wanted to do when he arrived on the Greensboro, N.C., campus. The junior biology major said an interaction with a high school student during his time as a research intern at Johns Hopkins really opened his eyes to how important it is to identify STEM as a career early on.
“If I would have known about these things earlier, things probably could have went a lot smoother,” Thomas said. “Developing that passion at a young age is really important because there are a lot of things you can accomplish along the way.”
The panelists were also asked to speak about what kind of advice they would give to students potentially interested in pursuing a STEM-related career path.
