"Let’s Talk STEM" with Dr. Calvin Mackie

David and Christine Vernier, co-presidents of Vernier Science Education, one of America’s leading producers of STEM-related teaching technology from devices to instruments and software, said the nation’s schools in under-resourced communities need more role models (teachers) and resources to better engage students of color in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) learning.  Appearing on the new episode of the Let’s Talk STEM with Dr. Calvin Mackie podcast, Mr. Vernier says, “I think we all have to be part of the solution. To me it's a lack of role models.  There are not enough teachers of color in our schools. And, I think we all have to do whatever we can, like Dr. Mackie does, to reach out to teachers and help them bring underserved kids into the fold and get them interested in science.”

Further, Mr. Vernier notes the disproportionate resources in wealthy school districts versus those in under-resourced communities.  “It's also true that it's so unfair on this distribution of resources,” he says.  “We talk to schools that literally are throwing away two-year-old computers to get new ones and other schools that are using Apple IIs (1977) to this day. It's a very unfair world. And, of course, that's a lot associated with poverty and race. It's a difficult situation.”

Dr. Mackie, who founded STEM Global Action (SGA) and STEM NOLA to advance STEM education in under-resourced communities, says, “The inequities are absolutely real.”   He asserts that it’s “educational malpractice” when comparing resources at many schools in White neighborhoods to others in Black & Brown communities.   Dr. Mackie explains that SGA affiliates around the country bridge the gap and provide students and teachers with programs and materials to help engage students.

Mrs. Vernier says, “I think the whole Black Lives Matter has made all of us realize that it sort of takes a village. We all need to do what we can do to make lives better for underrepresented students. In our newsletter, we're publishing articles, thought articles, for black history month and for, native American heritage month, that highlight scientists of color who are doing things in STEM.  And hopefully those are passed on to students.”

Please listen to this engaging conversation.

Let’s Talk STEM with Dr. Calvin Mackie is a podcast series that features interviews with guests from all aspects of STEM – entrepreneurs, educators, corporate leaders, students – who will talk about the importance of STEM in their lives today. They are the mentors for the next generation of STEM leaders, models of success for others to follow. 

With two special guests from the Society of Actuaries (SOA), the new episode of the Let’s Talk STEM with Dr. Calvin Mackie podcast highlights the important role that actuaries and mathematics play in American society and the dire need to increase the number of Blacks in a profession that is a mystery to many people.
 
Joe Wurzburger, SOA Managing Director in Strategy and Innovation, and Jamala Arland, a former Chair of the SOA’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, explain how to become actuaries and their impact. Both are SOA Fellows, the highest designation earned through exams, training and other requirements. Arland acknowledges their diversity challenge: there are less than 250 Black actuaries around the world.

 Arland discusses SOA’s efforts to help members and candidates feel fully included and have equitable opportunities.  She also cites the rewarding experiences she enjoyed in the insurance industry. “I worked at insurance companies for the majority of my career,” she says.  “I've done a lot of really cool things. I've done things related to developing cool new, innovative insurance products. I've done things related to analysis of stock market increases. I've done analysis related to the impact of pandemics even before we were in the middle of a global pandemic.”
 
Wurzburger adds: “There is no one size fits all actuary, right? There are so many different kinds. Actuaries are business professionals who make or influence decisions affected by risk. The cool thing within that is for people who want to use math as a foundation to make a social impact. Those decisions often safeguard things in society that people value most.”

 The Let’s Talk STEM with Dr. Calvin Mackie podcast series features interviews with guests from all aspects of STEM – entrepreneurs, educators, corporate leaders, students – who talk about the importance of STEM in their lives today.  

This week's guest on the Let’s Talk STEM with Dr. Calvin Mackie podcast is Jan Morrison, Founder and CEO of the Teaching Institute for Excellence in STEM.  A global leader in STEM education, Jan established STEM Learning Ecosystems after it was clear to her that educational programs teaching science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) needed to be more effective.  STEM Ecosystems is a Global Community of Practice with extensive sharing of resources and expertise among leaders from education, business and industry, non-profits, philanthropy and others. The 94 communities selected from across the world compose a global partnership demonstrating that cross-sector collaborations can deliver rigorous, effective preK-16 instruction in STEM learning. 

 “It became evident really fast that programs were not being as effective as they could be,” Jan  tells Dr. Mackie during the podcast. “There wasn't an infrastructure to grab it, to leverage it, to support it, to love it, to make sure that the children and the families and the communities were connected and to make sure business and industry were connected…for everybody to understand what it was going to take to create STEM jobs and opportunity.”

Jan has served as the Senior Consultant for College Ready STEM Education as well as Post-Secondary Success for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Battelle Memorial Institute, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Innovate to Educate, S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, Senior STEM Education Consultant for the Ohio STEM Learning Network and many other statewide STEM networks, and served as an advisor with the White House and Department of Education for the past four administrations. 

Currently, Jan and TIES serve as the designer and lead for the National STEM Funders Network, a collaboration of more than twenty-eight STEM funders seeking to fund STEM for the USA with greater return on their investment and therefore for the nation’s students. Jan and TIES are co-designers of the STEM Learning Ecosystem Initiative of the STEM Funders Network and run its National Community of Practice, 54 STEM Learning Ecosystems current with 100 within three years.  Jan consults with MIT Center of Bits and Atoms, The Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Chevron, Siemens America, NASA, Virginia Tech, North Carolina New Schools Project, many state governments seeking to create statewide STEM networks, STEM platform schools, programs and many more STEM institutions.

"It is great to have a conversation about advancing STEM education with one of the world's most renowned experts on the subject," says Dr. Mackie.  "We have all learned from Jan Morrison and benefit from her work.   It was an honor to exchange ideas with her in this podcast."   

Let’s Talk STEM with Dr. Calvin Mackie is a podcast series that features interviews with guests from all aspects of STEM – entrepreneurs, educators, corporate leaders, students – who will talk about the importance of STEM in their lives today. They are the mentors for the next generation of STEM leaders, models of success for others to follow.

Dr. Calvin Mackie founded STEM NOLA in 2013. The New Orleans non-profit is committed to expanding STEM education particularly in communities of color. His goal is to make STEM education available in ALL communities. In July 2021, Dr. Mackie launched STEM Global Action (SGA), a campaign and network of affiliates that pursues STEM education for children, parents and communities across the U.S., and abroad. His initiatives have impacted more than 100,000 students, 20,000 families and 5,000 school.  SGA has an informative website at www.stemglobalaction.com with a data center, newsroom and newsletter.  
 

Appearing on the new episode of the Let’s Talk STEM with Dr. Calvin Mackie podcast, George Mason University President Gregory Washington provides insight on the challenges faced by America’s system of higher education. He proclaims that colleges and universities must transform to educate a higher volume of students and prepare workers for careers in the new knowledge based, digital economy.  Dr. Washington believes traditional higher education institutions aren’t currently structured to meet the nation’s future needs. “We're not structured to produce large numbers of graduates,” he says on the podcast. “We're structured to be highly selective and to produce outcomes from highly selective people.  Most universities in the country admit less than 40% of the students that apply.” 

He adds: "The best institutions in the future will be those institutions that are best positioned to educate everyone.  And we have to educate everyone for the right opportunities. We have 12 million unfilled jobs in the country. We have 10 million people unemployed, and those 10 million unemployed don't qualify for the 12 million job openings we have.  So how in the world do we have an unemployment problem and a labor shortage problem at the same time?  I don't remember a time in our history when we've had that issue. So that tells you that there's a fundamental problem with how we're educating and training.”

 At George Mason more than 70% of students graduate regardless of their race or ethnicity, including 73.7% of African Americans, compared to a national average of 44.7%, says Dr. Washington, who became president in July 2020.  Hispanic, White, Asian, and Black students at George Mason all graduate at rates between 69.2% and 73.7%. “This institution has put the mechanisms in place to ensure that everyone who comes here graduates and graduates at about the same rate,” Dr. Washington says.

Dr. Mackie, who has known Dr. Washington since they were students at different institutions more than 30 years ago, applauded his friend for the high graduate rates.  “George Mason is doing an amazing job,” Dr. Mackie says. “And I was blown away when you gave me those statistics because I really didn't believe they existed in a place called America.”

During the podcast, Dr. Washington, who like Dr. Mackie, has undergrad, graduate and doctorate degrees in engineering, discusses his humble upbringing, reveals that his mother was concerned because he kept taking apart his toys as a child, explains how he met Dr. Mackie and praises Dr. Mackie for advancing STEM education through STEM Global Action. 

- Monica Lee Foley,  Chief of Staff for the NASA Johnson Space Center, joined the Let’s Talk STEM with Dr. Calvin Mackie podcast and shared her incredible story: an African American woman from Baton Rouge, LA who became a rocket scientist, flight controller for the international space station, overseer of its electrical power systems and manager of U.S. and Russia negotiations on behalf of the space program. 

 As a senior leader in the space program, she is a technical integrator for human spaceflight programs and is currently applying her expertise to meet NASA’s bold mission of landing the first woman on the moon and the first humans on Mars.

 She is an avid STEM and STEAM advocate. 

“I've been at NASA for nearly 25 years,” she says during the conversation. “I started off as a flight controller for the international space station. I was there from the very beginning of the building or the assembly of the space station.  I was responsible for the electrical power systems where I earned three certifications in that area, which was unheard of at the time. I was the first human being to do so, not the first female, not the first African American, the first human to do so.”

 Monica has over two decades of low-Earth orbit human risk mitigation, operational and sustaining engineering experience.  She has executed over 3,000 hours in the Mission Control Center-Houston as an International Space Station flight controller where she specialized in the Electrical Power Systems and was the first to earn three electrical power flight controller certifications.  The purpose of space exploration, Monica says, is to better understand the universe so it can influence quality of life on earth. “That's the whole purpose and vision of NASA. That's why we're going back to the moon. That's why we're going to Mars,” she says, adding that space travel may help us improve disease treatments, grow crops with limited water and soil or create clean water.   

On the new episode of the Let’s Talk STEM with Dr. Calvin Mackie podcast, the host and his guest, Dr. Carlotta Berry, an Electrical and Computer Engineering professor, provide a peek behind the curtain at the challenges faced by African American engineering professors working at predominantly white higher education institutions.   The engaging conversation between the two highly acclaimed engineering professors provides a fresh and earnest perspective of being Black in academia in the age of Black Lives Matters and Generation X, and the joys and pressures that come with it.    

Further, Dr. Mackie and Dr. Berry discuss the importance of Black representation in higher academia, specifically, the ways we can use modern tools, practices and support groups to normalize the representation of Black professors, educators and scientists, and provide diverse students with the support needed to thrive. 

On the new episode of the Let’s Talk STEM with Dr. Calvin Mackie podcast, the founder of STEM Global Action (SGA) and Dr. Joyce Baynes, a lifelong educator, discuss actionable options for helping children of color overcome barriers that impede their learning of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills and becoming STEM professionals.  In an engaging conversation, they noted that parents must be more engaged in their children’s education, teachers need improved professional development, K-12 students should have STEM activities outside the classroom and parents should be guiding their children towards summer programs that can provide additional STEM learning opportunities. 

Dr. Mackie and Dr. Baynes acknowledged these measures are necessary because of the discrimination still rampant today that stigmatizes girls and minorities. “In the 12th grade, I took calculus as well as physics. The first day I went to my physics class I looked at the teacher, he looked at me, and he said, ‘I don’t think you belong here,’” recalled Dr. Baynes.  Similarly, Dr. Mackie described being confronted by a professor in a college thermodynamic class. “Are you in the right place?” the Black student was asked.

 Dr. Baynes is a nonprofit executive, retired school superintendent and mathematics educator from Teaneck, New Jersey. Thank you for joining us!

Special Guest: Dr. Brian Williams, who is a Clinical Professor and Director of the Alonzo A. Crim Center for Urban Educational Excellence at Georgia State University.   Dr. Mackie and Dr. Williams warn  that  all students aren’t being adequately taught science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills and are in danger of being left out of future jobs.  In an engaging conversation, Dr. Mackie and Dr. Williams raise concerns that while a 4th Industrial Revolution is spurring STEM jobs today and, in the future, not enough students of color are trained as the drivers and designers of the innovations. Instead, the two STEM education leaders said that too many students are on a path towards being the laborers, whose jobs may be threatened by automation and technology.        

Let’s Talk STEM with Dr. Calvin Mackie, a podcast series that features interviews with guests from all aspects of STEM – entrepreneurs, educators, corporate leaders, students – who will talk about the importance of STEM in their lives today.They are the mentors for the next generation of STEM leaders, models of success for others to follow.