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
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
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
[Music]
[Music]
gotta
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
thank you