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TEDx Talks
Published: 2013-01-09
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLYMLt4MQ0Y
NTU so imagine a little fat math nerd in nineteen sixty two fifty years ago I just ended the ninth grade I was ready to do my math and it was going to be an exciting year I had no idea that with in that period a few months I'd be in church on Wednesday night not wanting to be there what kit was and my parents would placate
me by allowing me to use my math and do my math while I listen to the person's I'm in the back of the room doing my math and this man says if we can get children to March in this demonstration America will see that even its children know the difference between right and wrong and he said and as a result our children will get a chance
to go to the schools where they have more resources they will have to have hand me down books and I looked up and I said who is that guy and of course it was doctor king and so we got home that night and I said I'm gonna go I'm gonna go in the first thing my parents it was absolutely not absolutely not is that what you
mean you being hypocrites they said go to your room right because you can talk back in Paris go to Europe they did not say a word to me that night the next morning they came in and all of a sudden I could tell they've been crying and praying and they said if you want to go we put you in god's hands because you're doing the right
thing it wasn't that we don't trust you we just didn't trust the people who would be responsible for you well here's what happened all of a sudden I thought about the dogs in the fire hoses and and I I got scared I was really scared but at that point I kept thinking wow I can go to those of the schools so it wasn't that I was
so courageous rather it was that I saw the possibility for the first time that my wife didn't have to be at a second rate level because the world had said to me in the fifties and sixties out okay how smart you are in your community you aren't as good as that you can't go into took place to get bathroom you can't get water you can go
to the school and I wanted to see what was possible and so I ended up leading a group of children to March and then to jail it was it was as scary as anything I've ever had to do and when the police chief bull Connor looked down at me and said what do you want low negra I was so scared and I looked up and I
said we want to kneel and pray and he spat in my face and just back and pick me up and threw me into the police wagon and I'll never forget spinning that week there and I kept thinking what does all this mean well in the middle the week doctor king comes without parents outside he set this what you do this today will have an impact on
generations yet unborn we didn't understand the profundity at that moment but I knew it was a powerful statement fifty years later I could never have imagined when I was in that you could never imagine being president of UMBC a price what students one hundred fifty countries what is amazing about my institution is we are working to prepare kids of all races to excel in school at
a time when we need more educated Americans than ever before I always ask audiences the question how many do you like to read people raise their hands I asked them how many you love math people laughed at me all the time all the time some I don't always see how can you put love in map in the same sentence even right into if I ask you
a question how many of you in this audience right now knew by the time you in the eleventh grade that you we the math science type or history English that raise your hands if you know about a document eleven great right you think yeah I didn't know if I ask you how did you know you probably say I was better at the other area the challenge
we face in America is that we tell children at a very early age you can do math right now but it's really not for you you're set messages without even realizing it that only a few people are supposed to do math and science why am I concerned about this will first of all I'm concerned about getting more young people of all races who will be educated
across disciplines we know we need the humanities and social sciences and the arts they teach us what it means to be human they give us our values they help us to put history in perspective but we need to understand as a country that we must have a culture of hope wanted that marching do for me it told me we could have the hope and optimism to
believe the world could be better than it ever been that day so many people in our society in this country in a billion on are at the point of thinking there is no hope what gives me hope about this conference is that you're here because you want to figure out what can I do to make a difference so why is this them stuff so in point
you hear about stem all the time if you talk about healthcare you talk about solving diseases and curing diseases if you talk about the environment if you talk about energy if you talk about intelligence global terrorism all these areas route areas require strong math and science and engineering in addition to understanding what it means to be human and the problem we face is that only six
percent of America's twenty four year olds have degrees in natural sciences and engineering in Europe it's about double that in some other countries if many more than that and the question is what can we do about it well you know one answer is we've got to get more involved in tape to twelve we have to give teachers the support that they need we have to tell
mothers to stop American mothers to stop telling that daughters that they were not good in that give me a hand from other step in their daughters demand for that it's very important it's very important barren point we have to have fathers and mothers telling girls and boys you can do anything you decide to do if you work hard give me a hand for that too very
employed very important and here's here's the real challenge even when you talk about the fact that most of you raise your hand I know you would say well no I'm not a math science site on his fingers you went to college knowing you were not going to major in that believe I'm not even the young people who come to college to major in math and science
usually don't make it I just shared this big committee and we started off looking at under representation why well in SF the National Science Foundation says is a gap of about fifty thousand jobs a year when we don't have the people to fill the jobs and large numbers of those people are women because that the percentage of women of all races in computer science is the
major is under twenty percent twenty percent under twenty percent of all the computers as images of women women going to classes and they see one or two people if we are going to have many more women in computer science we have to find ways to focus on girls and technology and games detail girls they can do anything again give me half that for girls doing it
I think it's very important and it's about changing the culture the culture of a society the culture of the school of the university has to do with the questions that you ask in the ones you don't ask it has to do with the values that your whole it's how you believe who are you what's most important to you what I'm saying is that we as a
nation have to decide that we have the where with all the optimism and the brain power to help our children know all of these positions these jobs are possible and the key will be to look at not only keep two twelve but at the university I'm at a university that has really thought about how do we change the culture how many of you in this room
knew somebody who started college with an interest in pre med engineering to change the majors within the first year to its American for now it happens all the time half of you in this room I know I know just about that way you can laugh it's okay it's okay and the key is this believe it or not it doesn't surprise people that only twenty percent of
blacks and Hispanics who began with a major in science or engineering will graduate with a bachelor's in science and engineering what is shocking to people is that only thirty two percent of whites who began with a major in science and engineering will graduate with a major in science and engineering and only forty percent of Asian Americans so when you put it all together two thirds of
all of the young people who come to college excited about science and engineering leave it within the first year to now people will say well two things number one it's probably because they don't have a good background well listen to this the higher the essay cheese the larger the number AP credits and stem areas the more selected the university the greater the chance that person will
leave science within the first year now what usually happens is the person comes back home they've been valedictorian at this school they go off to big time place and all of us and they come back and people say what happening they say well I dislike something else better what if you get a a and another course and a C. intimacy obviously you like it better because
you got a date and that's exactly what happens most students get poor grades in those first classes why is that because we need to change the culture of science teaching and learning and I'm saying to my colleagues now that I'm old now that I'm over sixty years all get over it we gotta teach children how to do the work in math without we must change the
culture of science and teaching and that's what's exciting about U. N. B. C. because faculty decided let us look at how we might rethink the approach number one we teach kids in high school if you're smart you don't need in the body so what we work to do is to if you go to our website you'll see a chemistry discovery center what we do is we
don't give people the theories we have them two working groups using technology to collaborate to work to solve problems and figure out all these theories based on real life hands on problems from the bow tech companies on my campus we have eighty five companies about taking IT on campus Lotta sad if you're gonna be so we taking problems in real life bringing them into the classroom
having them working in groups how many of you know that children take to twelve and college students all boarding class raise your hands how big they are bored right so the challenge we face status quo with all these wonderful faculty in all of us is to think through how to use technology more effectively how to teach people working groups how to teach them how to collaborate
with each other how to teach them to ask the right questions you know I Robbie said that a Nobel laureate said that when he was growing up in New York all of his friends parents would ask them at the end of the day what did you learn in school today he said but not my Jewish mother my Jewish mother would say Izzy did you ask a
good question today and he said the practice of encouraging his curiosity made him the thinker he became and that's the point that we want to teach young people not just to sit there and take notes and that things put into their head sport to their heads but rather to push them to think and to ask questions and to learn to work effectively with each other it
has worked so well force in chemistry we moved over to physics and biology mathematics and now in the humanities and social sciences with doing innovation and rethinking the approach in such a way that students are empowered to take charge of their education do I think it's going to mean all online no not for a lot of students hands on working with people connecting all very important
blended instruction yes we don't have to lecture on everything in the book we need to see how much students can do by themselves and then let them struggle with it let him learn how to work together and then most important what they don't understand explicate through lecture and what that has done for us is to make us a major force in producing students in general the
other wary but we've gotten really good attention few minority kids excel in science and engineering in yet if you look at health disparities you know that if you die if you are Hispanic if you're black and you woman over fifty five great chance you gonna get diabetes we need people looking at how to cure these diseases and how to look at specific issues involving to particular
populations but that means they have to do so whether the undergrad level they can go to grad school I had I went around the country trying to find one place the good show me just five to ten black and Hispanic kids a year who were doing so well that they're going to get become him deviations could not find one place in the country twenty years ago
Bob Meyerhoff said what can I do to help we start working on it faculty work with this and we've focused on building community among young people getting researchers to take ownership of the students pulling them into the labs rethinking the course approach and then giving them this notion that they could be fearless but they could become the leaders in science regardless of race men and women
and that they one day my get the Nobel Prize in medicine just think about it just have that vision that that's a possibility what did it do I want you to know we become the leading institution in the country regardless of race ascending African Americans only get MD PhD is give me a big half of that big after that they can't do that again for that
you know there are two kinds of people in the world there are people who can suck every ounce the any out you Johnny about because he's so negative you know who they are you know exactly who they are to some of your friends sometimes right then other people who can elevate you because we have a passion and they could they lift you up when they tell
you it's possible because I don't get how hot the problem if you got the right attitude if you have the sense of optimism and hope that if you can see another way you just get out there and you try and amazingly those people elevate people all the time you were here today because you want to be those people who elevate to say it is possible for
children of all races boys and girls to seed in the arts to succeed in science and for America to do all they can to help the world through brain power and compassion you know Aristotle once said excellence is never an accident I love that statement excellence is never an accident it is the result of high intention it is the result of sincere effort it is the