Filed under: Careers, Dr. Boyce Money
While many of us know who the leading black basketball and football players happen to be, we are rarely exposed to the leading Computer Scientists, Mathematicians and Physicists. Most importantly, far too many of us don't know that there is an entire organization of African American male PhDs called "Brothers of the Academy" who do scholarly work in a multitude of important fields. The media would be quick to feature these men if they were committing crimes, busting rhymes or dunking basketballs, but black males should be more readily celebrated when we are hitting the books, working our butts off and establishing sustainable institutions within the African American community. They road to black liberation goes directly through a town called "Educationville," so our black scholars should assume an important role in courageous and meaningful African American leadership.
Ladies and gentleman, meet Professor Juan Gilbert. I've observed Juan as President of Brothers of the Academy for the past several years, and I can say with complete certainty that he is one of the most focused, dedicated, reliable and capable leaders in black America today. Juan not only runs BOTA, but he has also raised millions to fund his own computer science lab at Clemson University and at even before the age of 40, has served as the "academic father" for a large number of black Computer Science PhDs. He is one of the very best in his field and has created an independent infrastructure which allows him to be the captain of his own destiny. It is for that reason that Professor Juan Gilbert is today's Dr. Boyce Watkins Spotlight on AOL Black Voices:
My name is Dr. Juan E. Gilbert. I am a Professor and Chair of the Human-Centered Computing Division within the School of Computing at Clemson University where I direct the Human-Centered Computing Lab. Human-Centered Computing (HCC) is focused on understanding how to design, build and evaluate computational technologies as they relate to the human condition and how these technologies affect society. My research lab's motto is "We build innovative solutions to real world problems". We are a very applied research group that works on issues that have real world impact. For example, we have active research projects that address electronic voting, affirmative action, texting while driving, broadening participation in computing and culturally relevant learning and computing just to name a few.
I am also the President of Brothers of the Academy.
2) Tell us about BOTA and the mission of the organization.
The primary objective of Brothers of the Academy, is to nurture productive, yet collaborative scholarship particularly toward the desired end of promotion and tenure among the members in tenure track positions and to foster collegial networks and relationships among the members. BOTA accomplishes this by making connections between our members with respect to our shared research interests as well as our shared vision for uplifting African-American scholarship. BOTA is one of three components that make up our institute. BOTA is the collaborative research and mentoring component. The Center for African-American Research and Policy (CAARP), is the research component and the African-American Think Tank is the third component that brings the first two components together. The Think Tank is a meeting we host at various sites across the country to promote scholar activism. Scholar activism is the application of our research to the benefit of our communities. This is where research becomes practice.
3) Tell us about your scholarly work and your academic background.
I have a BS degree from Miami University in Systems Analysis, a MS and PhD in Computer Science from the University of Cincinnati. My scholarly work resides within the field of Human-Centered Computing (HCC). All of the work we do in my research lab integrates people, technology, and sometimes culture and policy. For example, Prime III is an electronic voting system we developed in my research lab. Prime III uses a multimodal user interface design to allow people to vote. People can vote by touching a touch screen and/or using their voice through a headset. This unique interaction design was developed in my research lab. Prime III is the worlds most accessible voting technology. People that can't see, hear, read and even people without arms can all privately and independently vote on the same machine as anyone else.
Another research project in my lab is the African-American Distributed Multiple Learning Styles System (AADMLSS, pronounced 'adam-less') uses culture to teach kids algebra. Specifically, AADMLSS defines culture as who we are are and what we do. "Who we are" is defined as the things or attributes about us that are not easily changed, i.e. race/ethnicity, gender, age, etc. "What we do" is defined as the things we regularly participate in or practice, i.e religion, video games, etc. When we did an analysis of a group of African-American kids in Chicago about their culture, we discovered they consume a great deal of video games and hip-hop music. Therefore, we made the decision to try to teach these kids algebra using hip-hop and video-game animations. You can see samples at this link. We tested our solutions with the kids and they loved them! The kids initially thought they couldn't do math and they didn't like math; however, after using our lessons, they said, "I would like math if it was taught this way" Another example of our research is called Applications Quest (AQ). Applications Quest is a data mining and analysis tool I created to address affirmative action. What? Yes, I developed software that has solved the debate on the use of race/ethnicity, gender, natural origin, etc. in university admissions and hiring. This software tool adheres to all judicial decisions on the use of race in admissions. In other words, AQ can produce a more holistically diverse admissions class in a fraction of the time as any hiring committee without giving preference to race. You can read about Applications Quest here.
You can see additional examples of our work here.
4) What are some of the challenges you've seen for African American scholars in predominantly white universities and HBCUs?
The challenges are mostly related to culture. I have seen many examples where we (African-American faculty) struggle with cultural differences. The biggest example is our research. If you do research on African-Americans, it's not as valued. This can hurt academics when tenure and promotion time comes. I think some of our non-Black colleagues don't appreciate the value of doing research on African-Americans and this can diminish our reputation within the department. I don't agree with the notion that research on African-Americans is not as valuable; however, it is what it is.
Another challenge I often see is that we (African-American scholars) haven't been trained to be researchers. It has been documented that African-Americans publish fewer articles in graduate school versus our White and Asian counterparts even at the same institutions within the same departments. I believe this occurs because we are trained to be "teachers" not "researchers". As such, when we get an academic job and we are expected to be researchers first and teachers second, we experience some difficulty in meeting the expectations of the tenure and promotion committee. There are other challenges, but these are the two that I encounter the most.
5) Do you have any advice for young people who want to follow in your footsteps?
Certainly! Follow your passion! Do what you love to do so that it doesn't feel like work, it feels like play. I love what I do and I love the direction of my research. It takes a lot of hard work, time and dedication to make it in the academy. If you are going to invest that amount of time and effort into something, you better love it. Make your work your passion and you can achieve all the things you desire.
6) Is there anything else you'd like to share with our AOL Black Voices audience?
Just keepin' it real, don't forget where you come from and better yet, don't forget who you are. I am not saying, you have to remain in the hood when you "make it", but I am saying don't act like you made it on your own, even if you did make it on your own, people went before you to make it a possibility for you to make it on your own. I hold all of my students accountable for more than research and teaching. All of them must have a social conscious. They all must care about other people and they must work towards making society better. I would encourage all of you to find your passion and find a way to help someone other than yourself.
Successful people take advantage of opportunities. Achievers create opportunities for others ... be an Achiever!
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and the author of the bookBlack American Money To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here. To suggest a subject for a Dr. Boyce Watkins Spotlight, please click here.