News

aNASA Astronaut and MIT Graduate Ronald McNair (1950-1986) Remembered

 

It has been 25 years since NASA astronaut and MIT graduate Ronald McNair (PhD ’77) died, along with six other crew members, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. Their vehicle disintegrated 73 seconds after liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  

In the video below, astronaut Jerry Hoffman, who is MIT Professor of the Practice in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, remembers his colleague.

Watch.

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 News Video: RRTN Interns Make Presentation to Brockton City Council

Last month, RRTN  interns and Brockton High School students Bolutife Anifowose, Loic Assombo, Tou Herr, Adriel Mingo and Ishtyaq Nazim made a presentation to the Brockton City Council. They told the local elected officials about a number of RRTN intiatives, including the Taylor Venture, Taylor Lab and a proposed RRTN and Brockton collaboration. The meeting resulted in an official endorsement by the City Council of Brockton.

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Tuskegee Architecture School Named for R.R. Taylor; University Appoints MIT Alumnus as New President
 
 

When Tuskegee University upgraded its department of architecture to a full-fledged school recently, it named the new school of architecture for Robert R. Taylor, the first black graduate of MIT and the man who helped Booker T. Washington build Tuskegee.
 
And when the iconic Alabama institution picked a new university president in November, it chose Gilbert L. Rochon, a graduate of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning (PhD ’99, urban studies and planning).
Rochon was a senior research scientist at the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing at Purdue University and director of the Purdue Terrestrial Observatory. The Indiana observatory is a satellite ground station for interdisciplinary multi-sensor remote sensing. He was also associate vice president for collaborative research and engagement.
Tuskegee Institute, the forerunner of today’s university, was Taylor’s professional home not long after he graduated from MIT, in 1892. He was recruited by founder Booker T. Washington to help plan and build much of the campus between Montgomery and Auburn.
 
He died there, in 1942, while attending services in Tuskegee Chapel, the building he considered his outstanding achievement as an architect.
                                    
Tuskegee had just five presidents in its 129-year history. Rochon is now the sixth, succeeding the retiring Benjamin Payton. Dr. Payton was president for 28 years. 
 
Tuskegee Institute began offering certificates in architecture in the division of mechanical industries in 1893. A four-year curriculum in architecture leading to the BS degree began in 1957. A six-year, professional program started in 1965.  
 

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 RRTN Taking Part in Senegal World Festival

The Robert R. Taylor Network will join hundreds of others from around the world in December to participate at the Senegal World Festival.

The government-sponsored festival in Dakar, Senegal, runs from Dec. 10 through 31 and is to have a heavy international presence, including a team from the Robert R. Taylor Network (RRTN).

 The nonprofit RRTN is named for the first black graduate of MIT and works to highlight the contribution of blacks in the fields of architecture, science, technology, engineering and math (ASTEM).

 The two- or three-person festival team will be led by RRTN chief Darian Hendricks of Somerville and possibly two of the group’s high-school or college interns, many of whom are from Brockton.

 “One of the tracks of celebration in the festival is science and technology,” Hendricks said. “RRTN has been asked by the festival to leverage our research and timeline of black ASTEM milestones into a multimedia exhibit celebrating black culture’s contribution to science and technology.”

Hendricks, a 1989 MIT graduate, is to address a festival architectural symposium between Dec. 11 and 20. He said RRTN’s festival work is being done in collaboration with Senegalese Professors Ahmadou Wague and Chiekh Mbacke Diop. Hendricks met with festival officials and Prof. Wague during a July visit to Dakar.

 For more information, visit the festival Web site.

 One of the goals of the festival is to inspire youth to want to go into science and technology, Hendricks said.

 The RRTN multimedia timeline of black science accomplishments will be a traveling, portable graphic and interactive timeline (in web, kiosk, and mobile cell-phone mode) that will highlight significant moments in the history of blacks in science and technology.  A prototype of this timeline is viewable at the website www.adias.org where we feature black history at MIT.

 Some 25 black contributors to science fields worldwide will be featured in the exhibit, Hendricks said. A prototype of this timeline is viewable at the website www.adias.org.

Advisors to the RRTN Festival contribution are Prof. Kenneth Manning, Prof. Sekazi Mtingwa, Prof. Cardinal Warde and  Michelle Baildon, of the MIT libraries, Hendricks said.

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RRTN Intern and Former Brockton High Student Wins IPad in Business-Skills Competition

 Adriel Mingo, 17, ann RRTN intern from the Brockton, Ma., a city of about 94, 000 people south of Boston,  is sporting a new, 16-gigabyte wi-fi IPad after winning a business- and entrepreneurial-skills competition in a talent-search program at Brockton High School.

Mingo, the son of Rev. Dennis and Janice Mingo, won the popular portable computer by creating a winning presentation in a workshop run by TERI, The Education Resources Institute, as part of a federally funded after-school enrichment program.

 The competition, which Mingo called Sharktank, capped the six-week summer student workshop and had some ten youths present competing plans for proposed businesses. He created plans for a health-care organization.

 “He did the best pitch and the best start-up plan. He’s on a great journey,“ said Rose Seals, director of the voluntary program.

 “Part of what I did this summer was create an entrepreneurship program to get students thinking about starting their own business,” said Seals. She is local program director for the non-profit TERI and the Brockton Talent Search program. The program encourages students to aim for college.

 Mingo honed his professional skills in Brockton and, since June, in Cambridge as a five-day-a-week intern at the Robert R. Taylor Network (RRTN).

 He spends time on things like writing and running, coding and updating websites. Mingo said what he learned at RRTN helped shape his winning presentation. 

 “I’ve already started using the IPad to help me with my stuff at RRTN,” Mingo said.  “There are many useful apps, like Digitas, that allows me to schedule all my tasks and synch all my contacts from my email account,” he said. “I downloaded an app that lets me work on websites. And I use it for NFL2010, Word Search and Scrabble.”

 The tall, rangy 17-year-old came to Brockton some two years ago with his family from Georgetown in the South American nation of Guyana, once called British Guyana. He has a brother, 12, and a sister, 10. His father is a Seventh Day Adventist pastor.

 With a slightly Caribbean lilt to his speech, he notes that Guyana is the only English-speaking South American country.

 Mingo said the Thursday workshop taught students how to find their strengths, weaknesses and interests.

 “And after doing so, we were allowed to come up with our business ideas. We spent time ironing out our business plans, doing mock pitches, creating websites for our businesses and listening to additional tips and methods.”

 The June grad of Brockton High School transferred to Brockton from St. Joseph High School in Georgetown.  He was on the honor roll for much of his time at BHS and played varsity tennis, track and intramural ping pong.

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Spelman Students Win National Mobile App Comptetition

 

In his first news conference after his midterm losses, President Obama reminded his audience that the important battle for the U.S. is remaining on top of global competition. If he’s looking for a model, he need look no further than Spelman College in Atlanta — the private, independent, historically black school for women — and its strong science, technology, engineering and math program (STEM).

Read the full story here.