Cold weather arrives
2008 World AIDS Day
Canine Christmas
Commentary
Sky's the limit at Central State science camp
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
WILBERFORCE — Being poor shouldn't stop you. Being black shouldn't stop you. Being from a single-parent home shouldn't stop you.
After starting life with all those factors potentially holding him down, Bernard Harris literally flew about as high as a man can get. In 1995, the Mayo Clinic-trained physician became the first black man ever to walk in space during a space shuttle mission to the Russian space station.
Extras
On Thursday, June 19, Harris will visit Central State University to tell his story to a group of middle-school summer campers, mostly black children from Dayton, to encourage them to pursue technical and science careers.
Harris, the son of an alcoholic father, said he thinks all the time about the people he knew while growing up in Texas who never escaped — the ones who drank too much, who got in trouble with the law, who left school too early.
"That's why I'm so passionate about what I do," Harris said. "I know somebody who didn't have all the advantage can still make it. It's important for me as a black man to be able to stand up in front of minority kids and show them that somebody who looks like them can do anything."
Exxon Mobil and Harris' own foundation started funding the Bernard Harris Summer Science Camps in his home state of Texas about 10 years ago, and Central State University won a grant to run one of the camps in Wilberforce for the first time this year, according to Kaye Jeter, executive director of Central's institute of urban education.
Jeter said 48 students arrived on campus Sunday and will live at the college for two weeks for an intensive program highlighting careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Jeter said Central State for years has been involved in summer science and engineering programs targeting high school students, but the Exxon Mobil-Harris grant is the first time the college has been able to work with students entering the sixth, seventh and eighth grades.
"The foundation for a career in science has to start early," Jeter said. "We have to get them thinking about algebra now. High school can be too late."
She said the students started the week working on launching rockets under the tutelage of Kent Wallace, director of the physics lab at Fiske University.
"Kent is a 32-year-old black man with dreadlocks who told the kids he wasn't the best student in his class in high school," Jeter said. "You could see their eyes opening up. This could be them in 20 years. They could be the one working on a NASA contract to develop jet fuels."
Harris said he started organizing summer camps for minority youth because he was frightened by the statistics. He said 90 percent of careers in the near future will require some scientific, mathematical or engineering training, while dropout rates for minorities run about 50 percent.
"This is my part in seeing if we can alter that," Harris said.
Harris said his mother divorced his father when he was 6 years old, and she moved with him to a Navajo community where she took a job as a teacher.
"My mom was always committed to education," Harris said. "She's the one who gave me my opportunities.
"The young people who come to our camps are really bright. When they start, they don't know much about careers in science, but it's amazing what you can accomplish with a bunch of intelligent kids in two weeks."
