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.

The importance of worker bees for the survival of non profits

On yesterday, I was having a wonderful breakfast meeting with a talented and brilliant professional just a few years my senior. As we were discussing the status of SEM Link and other non profits, we decided that in order for non profits to survive and achieve its mission, it is important that staff have worker bees to do the work that will help them achieve their mission. Ever non profit organization has support from two groups of people, doer and donors, both are equally important. The donors provide the resources that the organization needs for its program and operations. But it is the worker bees that do the work for the organization such as serving on the board, being an active and committed volunteers to provide program and administrative support. As you are determining how to serve your community and what organizations you will devote your time and talents to, please do some serious evaluation of your motives for making a commitment to the organization. Not profits can't afford people to serve so they can add a section to their resume or be a conversation topic for people in your network. For our survival, non profits needs donors and doers (worker bees). No matter what your commitment to the organization besure that if you decide to be a donor, honor your pledge commitments and be sure to mail that check as well as encourage people in your network that have the resources to be donors to make a contribution as well. If you are a doer (worker bee), it is important that every task that you sign up to complete that you follow through and complete it. Don't use life or a busy schedule as an excuse not to complete the task because we all have life issues and have busy schedules. When you make a commitment, follow through on it because more than likely the non profit can't complete the task with out your support. So that you can increase the amount of worker bees on the organization team, encourage people in your network to volunteer to help the organization achieve it mission.

The achievement of any organization's mission is based on its support team of volunteers and board members that are committed to doing whatever they can to help the organization achieve its mission.

Using your talents and expertise to make a difference in the lives of a child

In the past few days, I have been in conversation with a few wonderful individuals that are volunteering their time and expertise to help SEM Link achieve our mission. What was so wonderful was these individual were not our typical volunteers, which are science, engineering and mathematics professionals. These individuals were graphic designers, web developers and a team of MBA's that are marketing experts. Although these professional don't have the expertise to provide direct assistance with our programs, these individuals are just as valuable in helping us achieving our mission.

As a non profit organization, we can't just worry about the programs, but we have to be concerned with the operations of our organization. It is these takes that allow us to be able to support our programs, which is the bread of butter of who we are as organizations. These graphic designer, web developer and the team of MBA's help us promote our programs to the community as well as to other individuals and corporations that will be willing to make a financial contribution to the organization or donate their time and expertise to the organization.

So I encourage you if you are a person that is interested in volunteering, think about the behind the scenes things you can do to help an organization achieve its mission.

Not passing on fear about job insecurity to our children

Every day you can turn on the television and see the bleak news of the bad economy and record number of job losses. Our economy has been losing jobs for years, but now that the job losses have moved to the educated workforce everyone has begun to panic. Our children can see that sense of panic and anxiety even if they don't understand fully what is going on. We have to find a way not to let the temporary circumstances of our economy (the economy flows is a cycle of growth and lost) make our children feel uncertain about their future.

Ghandi has a quote, that is one of my favorite quote, "The future depends on what we do it the present. So what can we do to ensure that our children have a bright future. The first thing is not to let our anxieties become their anxieties, skill allow them to be children and not be concerned about adult issues. Spend time with your children, so they can learn that relationships not things are important. Finally encourage your children to use education as a key to building a bright future but do it from a different perspective. Instead of telling them, get good grades, go to college, get a good job, get a house, etc, but tell them to chart their career path based on their passion and aptitude. Please pay attention to the subject areas your children enjoy and excel at and do your best to expose them to activities that can develop that interest. Our organization has plenty of programs for those children that have an interest in math and science.

What this current recession has taught us is that the "traditional" paths to success and security aren't secure anymore. We must empower our children to chart their own path and give them the tools and exposure they need to do so while in grades K-12, so they can have a successful and happy career path inspite of the "economic woes" that may or may not exist when they enter the workforce.

SEM Link 2008-09 Programs Closing Events

The 2008-09 program year is coming to a close and we are in the stage of planning our final two events. This year has been another year of defining who we are as a organization, building new relationships and most importantly exposing more youth to our programs. The final two events for the year are a Science Cafe on HIV co-sponsored by the CDC on Wednesday, April 8 from 6-7 pm at the Southwest Regional Library of the Atlanta Fulton Library System. This is an interactive discussion lead by Dr. Keri Norris of the CDC to discuss a disease affects so many communities in our nation and the world.

The final event for our program year is our 2nd Annual Science, Engineering and Mathematics Career Fair and Exhibition on Saturday, May 2 from 1-4 pm at Georgia State University. This event is free and open to the public and is set up similar to a job fair where we expose K-12 students to careers in these disciplines.

It is very exciting to close another successful program year and we are looking forward to the 2009-10 Program Year