[BlindMath] [nfbcs] Science division reach its 2017 STEM scholarship goal

Wed May 10 02:42:57 UTC 2017

Hi William,

I am a sociologist who teaches in a College of Engineering.  My role is to promote inclusion, diversity and social-justice in engineering.  We have lots of social science data providing substantive evidence that students in STEM fields who are not part of the demographic majority (read, white males) face substantive disadvantages leveraged by members of the majority demographic.

I am a Principal Investigator on an NSF funded project to `Revolutionize Engineering Departments` in the directions noted above -- initially focusing on Computer Science.    NSF is obviously strongly in favor of attempting to reverse the damages to STEM fields by biases of the demographic majority in society and in that discipline.  

The field of Computer Science is now (finally) waking up to the fact that their innovations reflect the same biases that plague society in general.  The same Computer Scientists who are researching `algorithmic bias` and bias in machine learning technologies are also strong proponents of involving members of the social sciences and the humanities in their research, in order to take advantage of the real knowledge of social problems they have discovered and documented over several centuries.  I myself am working with one of our Data Scientists at Boise State University to write a proposal for funding combined social science and data science research to produce and prototype use of precision agriculture tools.

To be honest, I find your comment to reflect some of the problems that I and others are attempting to address in the sciences -- and in Computer Science in particular.  I hope you come to realize the influence you have on others in your field and begin to see the value of working to foster inclusive transdisciplinary partnerships across all the sciences, arts and humanities.

Incidentally, I taught myself FORTRAN, C and Lisp and use them when appropriate in my own activities.  Computer Science is not just for computer scientists.

PS: If you'd like to provide data to support your claim that humanities and social science graduates are unemployed at a rate higher than in the sciences, I'd be happy to see it.  My own reviews of those data show that engineering graduates are not employed at higher rates than other majors, and in fact in many engineering fields, job satisfaction drops precipitously with time.  Research on that latter phenomenon indicates that older workers are often seen as a liability in `high tech` and despite the fact that they were once the developers (perhaps now the maintainers) of our technological infrastructure, they report they are treated poorly in comparison to those in the youthful vanguard -- they feel the industry has cast them aside.  

Best wishes,

_don

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Don Winiecki, Ed.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Ethics & Morality in Professional Practice
Boise State University, College of Engineering
1910 University Drive, Boise, Idaho 83725-2070 USA
E-mail: dwiniecki at boisestate.edu
Telephone: (+01) 208 426 1899
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ipa

> On May 9, 2017, at 7:05 PM, William Grussenmeyer via BlindMath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Good.  I am tired of seeing all those scholarships going to people in
> majors like English, social work, and other humanities crap where they
> will never find a job.
> 
>> On 5/9/17, John Miller via nfbcs <nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> Thank you to everyone who has been a part of our successful effort to
>> collect donations for a 2017 NFB Science, Technology Engineering, and
>> Mathematics (STEM) Scholarship.
>> The STEM scholarship will be awarded in the amount of $3000 to a worthy
>> blind student at the 2017 NFB convention.
>> 
>> We have made significant progress towards raising funds for a 2018 STEM
>> scholarship as well.
>> I want to let you know that we started the 2017 fundraising effort with $940
>> in the scholarship fund in July 2016.
>> At this time we have raised $1565 towards a 2018 STEM scholarship.
>> I feel confident that working together we can again award the STEM
>> scholarship in 2018.
>> 
>> We know that blind professionals and students are succeeding in biology,
>> chemestry, and natural science.
>> We know that blind individuals are performing at a high level in
>> mathematics, physics, engineering, and related fields.
>> Donations came from blind individuals working in these fields, our friends,
>> and our family.
>> This year one corporate donation came from E.A.S.Y. LLC,
>> www.easytactilegraphics.com<http://www.easytactilegraphics.com>, an
>> organization committed to blind individuals creating technical drawings
>> independently.
>> 
>> I am so grateful to be part of an organization that has a belief in the
>> abilities of blind people and a commitment to helping the next generation of
>> blind students.
>> I am also so thankful to those who patiently listened to my pitch for the
>> scholarship and then generously made it happen.
>> 
>> Very Best,
>> John Miller, President
>> Science and Engineering Division
>> of the National Federation of the Blind
>> _______________________________________________
>> nfbcs mailing list
>> nfbcs at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfbcs_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> nfbcs:
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nfbcs_nfbnet.org/wdg31415%40gmail.com
> 
> 
> -- 
> William Grussenmeyer
> PhD Student, Computer Science
> University of Nevada, Reno
> NSF Fellow
> 
> _______________________________________________
> BlindMath mailing list
> BlindMath at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for BlindMath:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindmath_nfbnet.org/dwiniecki%40boisestate.edu
> BlindMath Gems can be found at <http://www.blindscience.org/blindmath-gems-home>