Volume 01| Issue 01 | June 30, 2021
USC Viterbi K-12 STEM Center's
Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access Team
(IDEA)
Hello and Welcome!

This is an exciting moment for me, and I want to include you in the Center's first IDEA newsletter! To quickly address why you are receiving this: we either have met via Zoom, chatted over the phone, or you are a supporter of the STEM Center. Each month we will be sharing news, announcements, upcoming events, and opportunities with an emphasis on African American, Latinx, and female student engagement at the Center.

My name is Anne Areta and I am the Program Coordinator for African American Students at the K-12 STEM Center. This role has never existed before at the Center, so I feel I am in a special position to decide what success in this role looks like. By no means do I see myself solving racism in STEM in order to achieve Black student success, but I do see myself partnering with community organizations in order to share and provide opportunities to Los Angeles's K-12 Black youth who typically do not have access to resources without support.

This will be a newsletter to keep you up to date on the work that we are doing at the Center, and as well as a resource guide to share with other people who you feel would benefit from receiving the information shared. If you prefer not to receive it, you can unsubscribe at any time at the bottom of this email. If you are interested in getting to know more about me or the Center, please email me and let's chat!


Thank you and Fight on!
Anne

Anne Areta
Program Coordinator for African American Students - aareta@usc.edu
Current Projects
The STEM Center is helping USC Viterbi Professor Dr. Young Cho and USC Rossier Professor Dr. Melanie Brady apply for the Racial Equity in STEM Education (EHR Racial Equity) National Science Foundation grant. The technology Dr. Cho has created with Dr. Darin Gray is called APPEAR. You can learn more about APPEAR here.

The Center has partnered with Johnson C Smith University (JCSU), a Historical Black College and University (HBCU) located in Charlotte, North Carolina. JCSU will be the lead institution for this grant. The goal is for APPEAR to create a network of African American STEM tutors to mentor children at the Boys and Girls Club of Mar Vista Gardens in Culver City, as well as facilitate relationships between JCSU STEM students and USC African American STEM students such as:
  • JCSU students can connect with African American STEM professionals that are a part of the STEM Center's mentoring network.
  • The relationship with JCSU and USC has the potential to lead to student exchange programs and visiting professor programs.

Helping lead this effort is Living Advantage. Their expertise and experience working with youth in Los Angeles provides invaluable perspectives to achieving the goals for JCSU/USC and APPEAR: giving underrepresented minority students in STEM the knowledge, resources and ability to advocate for themselves to ensure they receive the support and/or opportunities they need for success.

If you are a STEM professional interested in mentoring and being a part of this work, please email me at aareta@usc.edu for more information about APPEAR and the mentoring network we are creating.
Mentor Mixer
This fall we will be hosting a mentor mixer for organizations who are interested in mentoring K-12 and USC Black students. We would love to bring together organizations such as:

We will be establishing a mentoring network to match Black students currently in our Center's programs with a mentor. Research has shown one of the most important factors for African American students to achieve success is having a network of professionals who can provide their guidance and opportunities such as internships that our students otherwise would not have knowledge of or access to on their own. With this mixer, I hope to bring together like-minded organizations who all share a common interest: success and advancement of African American students in STEM.
Partnerships
National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) Jr Clubs
Khali Cannad from Northrop Grumman and Kendall Work, a K-12 STEM Center student worker and NSBE member of USC’s chapter have shared and
discussed what NSBE’s current outreach efforts look like, as well as provide input for strategies about NSBE Jr and what creating new clubs could look across the Southern California region.
For more information on NSBE, click here.
Jacob Adams from STEM to the Future, a non-profit organization based in South LA and the Center recognize our shared values to provide quality STEM lessons and activities to Black and Latinx youth.
For more information on STEM to the Future, click here.

Boys 2 Gentleman (B2G)
was founded by Mr. Keith Linton, a retired LAPD police officer, in 2015. Currently, B2G partners with local elementary, middle, and high schools in the City of Los Angeles to build sustainable social-emotional learning programs that support inner-city youth. For more information on B2G, click here.
Living Advantage, Inc. (LA, Inc.)
Executive Director of LA, Inc., Pamela Clay's philanthropic focus has helped LA, Inc., hone-in and grow its mission. She chose to concentrate resources on education to prevent the cycle of homelessness and unemployment that plague at-risk youth as adults. She developed programs that highlight the importance of reaching appropriate grade level competency, as well as life-shaping introduction to technology and higher education. For more about the work that Living Advantage does, click on the link below.

Goalsetter is a smart money app for the whole family - from cradle to graduation, including parents, too. 
With Goalsetter, parents can save for everything from rainy day funds to college funds, while kids can save for robotics camp or a new 
computer.
Kids earn allowance and learn to spend smartly with the Cashola Debit Card. All family members take fun financial literacy 
quizzes that are mapped to national standards, but rooted in memes, gifs, and kid-relevant content. 

For more information, visit their website here.
Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science provides unique academic programs to expand the educational capacity of underrepresented youth to ensure their long-term success, health, and well-being. CDU's Pipeline Programs have been preparing underrepresented PK-12th-grade students for careers in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) activities for over 30 years. 

For more information, visit their website here.
My Team
I am currently building my African American Student Initiative Team.
Currently on the team we have Cameron Green, a third year Computer Science and Business major at USC. Joining him will be Ozabe Banks III, a Mechanical Engineering major currently attending Morehouse College. I am looking forward to working these bright young men, as they assist in establishing the mentoring network, as well as create and establish NSBE Jr clubs in Los Angeles. I am still filling out 2 more positions for the AA Student Initiative Team, and am currently looking to hire STEM students at JCSU to be a part of the work at the Center.

Next issue will include all the members of the IDEA team.
Objectives and Key Results
Outreach at the Center
Looking to increase engagement of African American students at the Center, we have been tracking the number of Black applicants for our Summer Programs this year compared to 2020.

We increased participation of African Americans by 54%​in our elementary, middle and high school summer engineering programs:
Suggested Reading
Teaching with Racism in Mind
Equitable Pre-College Engineering Education
"Engineering educators must consider how the cultural backgrounds of students coincide (or diverge) with the epistemological and ontological formation of an engineer. Hence, this work is presented as an exhortation to engineering educators, particularly in a pre-college context, to critically evaluate how race conscious pedagogies can be exerted in this field"

To read more about this article, click on the link below.
Journal of Diversity in Higher Education 
“It’s Systemic”: Environmental Racial Microaggressions Experienced by Black Undergraduates at a Predominantly White Institution
"Research has suggested that experiences of students of color at predominantly White institutions (PWIs)— colleges or universities in which the majority of enrolled students are non-Hispanic White—are notably different from the experiences of white students (Reason, 2009). Students of color at PWIs have reported experiences of subtle and overt racism, including racial microaggressions"

To read more about this article, click on the link below.
The Computer Science Teacher Landscape
Results from a Nationwide Teacher Survey
"The Kapor Center and CSTA surveyed 3,700 PreK-12 CS teachers across the nation last summer to examine the current CS teacher landscape. We are excited to share the full results with you. The report covers teachers' professional backgrounds, challenges to equitable classrooms, and the current state of culturally relevant teaching."

To read more about this article, click on the link below.
NAEP Science Scores Down for 4th Graders
Are Reading Challenges to Blame?
"All told, eighth- and 12th-graders both achieved the same average scores as similarly aged students did in 2015. Fourth-graders saw a three-point drop in average scores, from 154 in 2015 to 151 in 2019. The performance of both fourth- and eighth-graders this year was slightly higher than that of the same age groups in 2009, but high school seniors’ scores stayed the same."

To read more about this article, click on the link below.
Lastly, we at the Center want to give special thanks to Fiserv and Betty Lou Gross for their support of the STEM Center's efforts to increase engagement and outreach of African American students.
USC Viterbi K-12 STEM Center | University of Southern California | Website