Jean-Luc Ayitou Launches Program for Underrepresented Minority Students
VISCUS to Inspire Students “to Explore the Unknown Frontier of Science”
TRANSCRIPT
The National Science Foundation CAREER Award is intended to stimulate or to encourage young faculty that are developing new or emerging research ideas. Part of the proposal was to work with the IIT community, the Bronzeville area—one of the towns in the South Side of Chicago—to work with the people in my community to explain to them the importance of STEM research. And also since the Bronzeville community, the IIT community has a larger population of African Americans, I felt like I needed to go out there and work with the parents and also other students and explain to them the importance of STEM research.
I came up with an outreach program, which stands for VISCUS, Vivifying Scientific Curiosity for Underrepresented Undergraduate Students, to guide them through the process. They can apply for grad school, be successful in grad school, and so I was very happy to see that my mentoring style was working.
It is important for me to go out there and help other scholars, other students, other minority students, and also invite them to practice STEM disciplines and to not be afraid to explore the unknown frontier of science.
