Power of Diversity Music in STEM

[Applause]

[Music]

let’s go

me and math really haven’t been friends

we really

haven’t been friends but can i tell ya

that’s not how this story ends

so how does this story end well

in order to answer that question i have

to take you on a journey

that explains how i even got to the

point of singing about my relationship

with math in a song this journey is

going to unearth the power of

diversity and music in stem science

technology engineering and math

and it all starts with my love of

airplanes

you see i grew up fascinated with

airplanes and

flight i still am to this day and we’d

go to the airport to pick up family

members and i’d be excited to see them

but

i’d always be watching planes take off

and land and then we’d get home and i’d

rush to the dining room table

as a child and begin to draw all these

airplanes and show them to my parents

and as i grew older that continued but

then i got to the point where i said you

know what

mom and pops what career could you do to

design airplanes for a living

and though they weren’t a part of the

stem world they figured out a way to say

roy t you would want to do aeronautical

or aerospace engineering

and once i had that terminology once i

had that career path i said that’s what

i’m going to do and i did not look

back so i was pretty self-determined and

with the support of my parents

i persevered through the advanced math

and science courses in high school

and eventually earned my bachelor’s

degree in aerospace engineering with a

minor in mathematics

and currently right now i’m fulfilling

that childhood dream of designing

airplanes

for a living now you might be thinking

wow that was a really quick journey how

you got into the

aerospace stem industry but

what does that have to do with the power

of diversity and music

in stem well

i happen to be half black a quarter

puerto rican and a quarter mexican i

know

it’s the best of three worlds good food

good music

good culture good culture

and i say this to say that although i’m

an engineer right now

the journey to becoming one really

showed me the lack of diversity in stem

matter of fact i was always one of the

few black or latino students

in my engineering courses and even in

industry right now

that same experience still exists

according to the pew research center

black professionals only make up

nine percent and latino professionals

only make up seven percent

of the u.s stem workforce now these

percentages are considerably lower than

the overall black and latino

percentages within the overall u.s

workforce of 12.6

and 17.5 respectively

this is compared to white professionals

that hold 69 percent

of all the u.s stem workforce and have

an overall share of 77.6

of the overall u.s workforce and asian

professionals they make up

only 13 of the u.s stem workforce

however that percentage is considerably

higher than their overall

percentage in the overall u.s workforce

of 6.3 percent

i know i know that’s a lot of statistics

to be thrown out to you you’re probably

like what is going on but

the overwhelming truth in those numbers

is that there’s

not enough black or latino professionals

in stem

and this further underscores the need

for

diversity in this industry and really

begins to reveal the power that it can

bring

for one having a diverse workforce

brings together people with different

backgrounds and experiences

and begins to produce those creative

unique

and just overall better solutions to the

problems within our industry

but that’s kind of the typical way we

think about diversity within the

industry right

however if you dig a little deeper

i like to think about the advancements

in technology happening right now

so many are occurring and who’s behind

those advancements

for instance let’s take facial

recognition we have it on our phones

robots use it

who’s coding the software behind that

and how does it impact

the black and latino community when

there are no or very few black and

latino professionals in stem

a part of that software development

process

the final thing i want to highlight in

regards to the power of diversity in

stem

is something that we really don’t think

about that often and that’s

economic wealth being produced in the

black and latino community

because we have more black and latinos

that could be

in stem according to the pew research

center

u.s stem professionals they make on

average

up to 75 000 a year annually and that’s

compared to

non-stem professionals making 55 000 a

year

on average annually and these are just

averages

and so when i think about that i think

about if black and latino professionals

were earning

that type of a salary those finances

trickled down

into the black and latino communities

creating that wealth

now i could just give you data on data

on data but you’re actually looking at

living proof right in front of your eyes

you see i grew up from humble beginnings

as a black and latino kid

and by the grace of god earned

scholarships and took out some student

loans

and got to go to college and earn my

engineering degree but

much like many diverse college students

i struggled through it financially

at one point i didn’t even know if i was

going to be able to come back to college

for my sophomore semester because i

didn’t have

the funds but

i made it through by the grace of god

and got my engineering degree

and guess what two weeks later after

graduating

i started working as a professional

engineer earning a salary with a number

attached to it that i had

never seen before

this

this was life changing so when i think

about

the power of diversity in stem i’m

thinking about how

black and latino communities could have

this access to wealth

and what could they do with that well

maybe that’s the capital they could use

to start a new business

or the money that could actually pay off

student loans

or the bonuses that you might get in the

stem industry and you can share with

your family but

ultimately it’s creating wealth for the

next generation within the black and

latino community

and that’s powerful now

clearly you can see i’m passionate about

diversity in stem

and trying to create more of it and so

while i was in

college i participated in the national

society of black engineers very heavily

and served in many roles to

meet the mission which is to increase

the number of culturally responsible

black engineers who excel academically

succeed professionally and positively

impact the community

shout out to all my nesbitty family out

there would not have made it through

college without nsbe

i also work for seeds the science and

engineering educational development for

students and had the opportunity to

introduce stem

to wichita public school students

through hands-on stem

activities after i graduated college i

joined the non-profit

real men real heroes as a volunteer

serving as a mentor and i continued this

introduction of stem to underrepresented

students

now you might be saying this is a lot of

talk on diversity

when does the music come in i’m glad you

asked

while working in real men real heroes

and volunteering my time

i wanted to come up with a math activity

for my future heroes

our mentees and so i said how can i make

it creative

how can i make it engaging how can i try

to take the fear away from

the math that that usually comes into

play in the communities i represent

and so i began to brainstorm and during

that brainstorming process i was like

oh wow i had a memory and this memory

was me

being a sophomore in college in a class

called materials

of engineering and we were talking about

the deformation of materials

crack growth crack propagation and creep

within a material

a lot of vocabulary words and i’m like

how am i going to remember all of this

for the test that’s coming up

so what did i do i did what i know how

to do best

i started jamming out to the r b group

tlc

oh

what do i mean by that i remixed their

song creep

to have lyrics all about this test on

material deformation it went a little

something like this

so i creep yeah

crack growth along the grain boundary

deforming material permanently

that’s my jam for real and guess what it

worked

i got an a on that test and an idea was

born you see music is powerful

it’s emotional it’s engaging it helps us

remember things and

it attaches us to life experiences

according to a research article titled

can music foster learning by janine

lehmann and tina zoifert

they mentioned that students actually

have a better overall understanding

and higher levels of comprehension when

learning about a topic

through song but we don’t need a

research article to tell us that

if i say to you right now a b c d

e f g and say what comes next you are

most likely going to say

h i j k l m n o p we learned our abcs

through a song y’all

and i can even remember as a kid

learning the books of the bible matthew

mark luke and john ask the letters of

the romans

music it’s so powerful even when i think

about

the top tier fast food companies that

are coming after our pockets

with their marketing jingles y’all know

which one i’m talking about

i’m loving it

that’s the big mac sauce on that note

right there

but for real there is so much power in

music and so i said that’s what i’m

going to do so with that math

activity with my students back in 2016 i

took a song that was very popular at the

time called

watch me whip and watch me nae nae by

silento and i changed the lyrics to

watch me solve this equation

watch me solve solve this equation and

the students

loved it they were so excited about

doing math

young black and brown boys from 3rd

grade to 5th grade running up to the

whiteboard to solve for x the lyrics in

the song

that i remixed were all about solving

algebraic equations solving for x

and it blew my mind i said wow

look at how this is changing the

narrative of math in the eyes of these

students

so i said i have to do something with

this i must

and so i did however

took a little bit of time a couple of

years actually i was battling with

insecurities like

are you really the person to combine

music and stem you really don’t even

love math like that

you really don’t even love engineering

like that yes you work in the industry

you got a degree in it

but is that really for you

but through the encouragement of a good

friend and a challenge to myself to just

write one song

about stem i took on that challenge and

i began to see my purpose come into view

you see i was at an intersection of my

talents gifts and abilities

i’ve been working in the industry at the

time for over four years as an engineer

i got my degree in stem aerospace

engineering been working with kids for

over 10 plus

years and i sang a little bit wrote some

songs i was pretty good at performing

music

so finally in the beginning of 2019 i

wrote and recorded a theme song titled

we call it stem music

and y’all i fell in love i was so

excited about this music and said

i gotta do something with this so on

november 1st of 2019

i officially launched the company stem

music llc

with a mission to inspire the next

generation of multicultural

students multicultural professionals

with engaging and entertaining

music since our launch we’ve had the

opportunity to impact

hundreds of students within the wichita

public schools through our partnerships

with

arts partners and the non-profit story

time village

we’ve also had the chance to impact

thousands of students

across the country with some of the

events we participated in with the usa

science and engineering festival

it’s so cool to see the power of music

in stem through these songs that i’ve

written and performed

all about different stem topics but i

thought to myself

what if these black and latino kids i’m

trying to reach with this music actually

want to do something in stem

they need a road map so then i created

the stem music podcast

where we highlight multicultural stem

professionals

and the music they love you see

i understood the power that a role model

can have on you

as i stated earlier i was very

self-driven but

once i met mr derrick morgan the first

black aerospace engineer that i had ever

seen before

it changed everything up to that point i

believed that i could be an aerospace

engineer

but after meeting mr morgan i

knew that i could be an aerospace

engineer

and so as you can see there’s so much

power

in diversity and music infusing it into

the stem world and changing it

for something much better with these two

topics

lives in the black and latino community

can be transformed

and an industry can be changed for the

better

so how does the story end well

i’m pretty sure you know by now but

i can show you better than i can tell

you

let’s go

that’s not how this story ends no

see calculations are needed in this life

yeah

like when i’m at the store i need to pay

the right price so

i count it up one two three i multiply

just to see

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work it forwards work it backwards often

check for the error

so that you can dodge them and don’t you

worry

it doesn’t have to be scary in fact it

can be imaginary

like the square root or negative one i

am doing

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gotta

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thank you