The technology that connect us

I hope that I am not dating myself, but when I was in high school, the internet was just being introduced to the world and we were still figuring out how to use this new technology. I remember a few years ago, an adopted younger brother on mine, asked me "way back when you were in high school did you use the internet?". Yes, I used the internet and technology, but not to the extent that is used today and I am still learning all the different ways to incorporate technology into my life and business.

I consider myself a person that takes advantage of technology, I email using my computer and my PDA( the post office has definitely lost a lot of revenue because of email) and pay 90% of my bills online. I'm on facebook, linked in and just getting us to the blog thing. I am still overwhelmed by how this technology, a history lesson for you that was developed by an African-American male engineer, has truly changed how the world operates. I have a facebook friend who hasn't been in the United States in weeks, but yet we know how he is doing, back in the day you would have had to wait until he mailed you a postcard or got back in the country. There are newspapers and magazines that are going out of business because instead of buying a newspaper or magazine, we get our news online. Internet radio and podcasts expands our options for radio programming, i know everyday I listen to NPR from a NY radio station. Not to mention if you need to know anything at all you can simply look it up on www.GoodSearch.com (state that the charity you are supporting SEM Link) and find the answers to your questions. I'm wondering when team of engineers and computer scientists developed the internet or world wide web (www.) did they envision how it would connect us and create a global community.

As the executive director of an organization whose vision in the community is to "unveil potential through exposure", have I and my colleagues really exposed ourselves to all the technology that can connect us to the global community. Have I used all the possible methods of social networking to connect with those individuals that believe in our mission and may be willing to support us? Have I investigated all the possible methods of incorporating technology in our program curriculum? Have I investigated using technology to promote academic achievement and career exploration in math and science to K-12 students all over the world, not the ones we can gain access to here in Atlanta? How many technology professionals, computer scientists and engineers are in our volunteer pool; because we can't expose our kids to careers in those fields if they aren't a part of the SEM Link network?

There are so many questions to answers and many of them I have to get from the internet, my program assistant, board of directors, advisory board, younger cousins and others in my network. I just want to ensure that my vision for promoting student achievement and career exploration in math and science isn't too small.

The Mentoring Cycle

This morning, I received a text message from one of my mentors and had a phone conversation with another. I'm blessed to have several mentors, but these two particular men where instrumental in helping me become who I am as a professional, a person with a engineering degree that has devoted her career creating educational programs to help train and develop future scientists and engineers. In training future scientist and engineers, I developed a presentation on using mentoring to achieve your career goals and the presentation was based on my relationship with these two men and my strong desire and believe that if you should pour into others what has poured into you.
As I being mentored by these two men and several other mentors, I currently have a few mentees a received a text message from one and a phone call from another. In both conversations, I realized that the relationship these students have built with me over the years, have help shaped their career choices, just like my relationships with my mentors have shaped mine. I am very pleased to say that both of these students are pursuing stem careers and about 90% of the mentees I have picked up are doing so as well.

Dr. Dimandja, a world renowed scientist at Spelman, has a quote in which he says, "you are never too old to be mentored nor too young to mentor". That is the mentoring cycle as people a few steps ahead of you are teaching you what you need to know, connecting you with people you need to know and supporting you along the process; you are doing the same thing for those a few steps behind you.

Creating a Future STEM Pipeline through Exposure and Mentoring

These past few days, I spend time at a conference whose purpose was to expose high school and college students to biomedical and health professions. While at this conference I meet many bright young students that had an advantage over their peers, they were in an environment where they were learning about and meeting professionals in career paths of their interest.
As I was having conversations with some of my peers and colleagues who are stem professionals or have stem backgrounds and most of us realized that we had little or no exposure to people that were doing things that we were working in the fields we were interested in nor what a scientists, engineering, technology professional or mathematician really did. Although none of us regret our chosen career path, we realize that we may have made different decisions and how beneficial meeting and interacting with someone in our desired career path would have been.

Each day, we have an opportunity to meet and interact with K-12 students and college students. As you are having conversations with them about the things they are interested in, why don't you spend a few minutes talking about what you do and how you ended up doing it. Who knows, you may be having a conversation with a child that has an interest in pursuing a stem career. Or you may get a transform a child's mindset from pursuing a career in sports or entertainment to one that they can pursue by going to college and graduate school. When you meet those students, go ahead and give them your business card and tell them to feel free to contact you.

For those students who take you up on your offer to contact you after your initial conversation. Make time in your schedule to interact with them, listen to them and share your life experience. Many students need mentors, but aren't sure how to ask a person to be a mentor to them. So let the relationship form naturally over time and be a consistent older person in their life, that is vested in helping them grow , develop and succeed over time. If you thinking about it, we all are were we are today, because people who didn't have to invested and poured into our lives by being our mentors; so we owe it to those coming behind us to do the same thing for them.