Angela DeHart - Founder/ CEO of STEM Impressionist Program
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am a retired secondary teacher turned Founder and CEO of the STEM Impressionists Program (SIP). During my 12-year teaching career, I taught middle school FACS also known as Home Economics. Later, I started a career teaching STEM with Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS). I graduated from the College of Wooster with a Bachelor of Science in Sociology and from Johns Hopkins University with a Master in Organizational Development & Effectiveness. My innovative nature, steadfast dedication to continuous learning, and passion for STEM inspired me to create a number of STEM opportunities for students, such as a Girls Coding Club, a week of student-directed activities focused on promoting the Hour of Code, and the STEM Impressionists Program.
The STEM Impressionists Program is a hands-on participatory opportunity for students interested in STEM to engage in opportunities that develop their leadership and entrepreneurial skills. The accomplishments of the 7-year program include students using their creativity and coding skills to become one of the 100 finalist in a youth-based international problem-solving competition; winning awards at the Robert H. Herndon Memorial Science Competition; presenting their solution for the NASA Parachuting onto Mars STEM Challenge; teaching their self-created robotics curriculum at George Mason University’s summer FOCUS STEM Camp two years in a row; being invited to present at MIT’s Scratch Conference; presenting at ITEEA’s national conference; being state and national NCWIT winners, being chosen as a Coca-Cola scholarship winner; and delivering a live stream, 10-week Scratch class to students in New Delhi, India.
Why is diversity in STEM important?
The world is shrinking and the boarders that use to separate humans from each other are falling away. Zoom has given us the ability to travel to another country with the press of a keystroke. Machines are going to start doing the mundane, repetitive labor that used to be completed by unskilled labor. Machines can work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and be replaced without a new labor contract. The 4th Industrial Revolution is here. But what does that mean to humanity?
Artificial Intelligence helps us pick our movies on Netflix, listen to favorite songs, and it is going to help us create designer drugs that will cure diseases that we have not yet found a way to defeat; but it is also going to amalgamate the negative side of humanity: racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerances. Is the invention and use of artificial intelligence is going to make the systematic discrimination against underrepresented populations “the law of the land”? Are computers being weaponized and used to facilitate discriminatory policy/practices in the blink of a human eye?
As artificial intelligence is used to determine the length of prison sentences, the amount of credit a person is qualified for, etc. the discriminatory data collected from our past is being used to teach computers how to make decisions. The bias inherent to humans is already baked into the data yet people think that computers are neutral. What affect is computer-driven “decisions” going to make in our society? How should we be preparing for the affect the 4th industrial revolution is going to have on our society? We know that diversity makes for better decisions – isn’t this the time to put that attribute to work? I believe that it is an imperative that “everybody is in the room” – talking and making the decisions that will define the future of humanity and the societies that we live in over the next 100 years. The issues represented in the documentary Coded Bias need to be discussed upfront and by every segment of society – especially the K12 population.
What is your greatest career accomplishment?
"Listening to myself. When I figured out what I wanted to do for my last career I looked back at my life and realized that I had always been teaching someone something. When I babysat, I listened to kids (they are amazing) and I taught them about the world. The part of my corporate career that I always liked was training – but I didn’t want to fly all over the country/world, so I choose to become K-12 teacher. The choice to become a teacher allowed me to realize an anomaly that had always affected my career choices. Indeed, going back to school helped me figure out why I had not liked the jobs I had before teaching – I was an engineer! What! My father was an engineer how did I not know this! But it was true, I had missed my calling so decided to use my energy to be “the best teacher I could be,” expose underrepresented students to STEM throughout my class and make sure that other girls would not spend a lifetime searching for their muse only to miss it because they were not recognized as a STEM girl!
As a result of my realization, my greatest career accomplishment is starting the STEM Impressionists program with my students. It has changed my life – and theirs."
What advice would you give to youth interested in your career field?
"I think that education needs creative, independent, brown people doing what the current system doesn’t – teach underrepresented population what they need to know to succeed.
Being a teacher and helping kids who were failing in school taught me more about the education system from multiple perspectives. With that experience in mind, my recommendation for Black teachers is as follow:
1. Get trained. Learn how to write grants. Win as many grants as you can.
2. Teach for 5-6 years then….
a. Go into corporate America as an educational facilitator and support schools through the company’s efforts to give back/support their community
b. Create an after school/summer “side hustle” training business until it takes off and can pay you your salary
c. Work for a progressive school system
d. Leave the formal school system and open-up your own nonprofit organization that support Black and Brown students through their educational careers. The STEM Impressionists is a model that works. I would love for it to be a legacy for the advancement of other children. The program is a great deal of work, but it changes children’s lives and that is why I wanted to teach – to make a difference in the lives of children who look like me. Not only was I able to realize my professional objectives I changed the lives of the students that I touched – and they will continue to do the same for others. Black and Brown people need to take the educational tiger by the tail and create the path to success for our children. The system was not set up to support non-white people and will not give your children their due unless you supplement or take over the entire process.
e. If you don’t want to be a teacher – whatever you do, especially if you are a STEM profession, please give back to your community by being a guest speaker, judge, etc. for STEM competitions, your local school, or support others who are doing the work. “It (really does) takes a village to raise a child.”
Connect with Angela on social media:
Website: http://stemimpressionists.org/
Twitter: dehartSTEM
LinkedIn: dehartstem