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Clemson part of a high-tech effort to break the cycle of poverty<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div> By Paul Alongi<\/strong> IN THE SUMMER OF 2018 on the edge of the North Charleston neighborhood of Chicora-Cherokee, Clemson School of Computing doctoral student Olivia Nche-Eyabi asked a classroom full of elementary-age children from the neighborhood what she would need to draw a square. THE NEIGHBORHOOD of about 5,000 residents covers about 2 square miles. Despite challenges that make it difficult for people to emerge from poverty, Chicora-Cherokee has some assets that other high-poverty communities don\u2019t. One is the setting of Nche-Eyabi\u2019s class: the Clemson University Zucker Family Graduate Education Center, a $21.5 million educational facility on the banks of the Cooper River. Another is Metanoia, a nonprofit organization that has invested in the community\u2019s people, institutions and homes for the past 16 years. Third, Chicora-Cherokee has two thriving companies in its own backyard \u2014 Boeing and Blackbaud \u2014 that believe in making a positive difference. CREATING OPPORTUNITIES<\/b> A PLACE OF POTENTIAL<\/b> \u201cBy working with the community as a place of potential and capacity, rather than just problems, you see things rise to the top.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div> ‘GOOD MORNING!’<\/b> COMMITTING TO A SHARED COMMUNITY<\/b> THINKING LIKE A COMPUTER<\/b> MATH-INTENSIVE SUMMER CAMP LAUNCHED<\/b> \u201cThere\u2019s an ongoing relationship now,\u201d Stanfield says. \u201cUltimately, what heals any community is relationships.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div> ROLE MODELS IN STEM<\/b>
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\n<\/b>Photography by Craig Mahaffey ’98<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div><\/p>\n
\nA few students responded with baffled looks until she made a drawing motion with her hand.
\n\u201cA pen!\u201d one of the students said.
\nOn a big, wall-mounted monitor, the students watched as Nche-Eyabi dragged the \u201cpen down\u201d command into their computer program.
\nThe session, part of a broader effort to break the cycle of poverty in the Chicora-Cherokee neighborhood, was part of a five-week summer camp called Coding for Kids, designed to introduce coding and computing to children in a neighborhood with one of the highest concentrations of child poverty in South Carolina.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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\nWorking together, they\u2019re offering programs designed to help the neighborhood\u2019s children build confidence and skills in science, technology, engineering and math \u2014 STEM \u2014 which employers say are in high demand and crucial to the future workforce.
\nStudents who once could only see the Zucker Family Graduate Education Center from outside \u2014 or didn\u2019t even know it existed \u2014 are now taking courses inside the building, says Elizabeth Colbert-Busch, who is based at the center as executive director of community and corporate development.
\n\u201cWe want to influence these children and help them realize they can do anything, even something that may seem intimidating at first, like science, because all of it is a lot of fun,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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\nThe coding camps are a form of medicine for neighborhoods with schools that have alarmingly high poverty rates. In state report cards, four elementary schools in the area report that more than 90 percent of their students live in poverty.
\nThe Zucker Family Graduate Education Center is a viaduct away from the residential section of the Chicora-Cherokee neighborhood. The distinctive steel and glass building opened in a former naval yard two years ago to serve the Charleston area\u2019s booming demand for master\u2019s and doctoral degrees in engineering and computer science. It has expansive views of the Lowcountry marshes, open spaces for collaboration, and naturally lit classrooms with video conferencing capabilities.
\nAnita Zucker, whose family funded the building, says the camps are a phenomenal use for the center at a time of year major classes are not taking place.
\n\u201cI think it\u2019s really awesome that Clemson professors as well as teachers are working together to provide these kids access to an innovative learning environment that they otherwise would never have,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s an opportunity to teach them STEM-related skills that are really critical to making them become successful in their lives. I think these could be future Clemson students.\u201d
\nCoding for Kids is part of Freedom Schools, a summer program offered Monday through Thursday by Metanoia to prevent learning loss, also known as \u201csummer slide.\u201d Supported by the Children\u2019s Defense Fund in partnership with schools, faith and community-based organizations, municipalities, colleges and universities, and social agencies, the Freedom Schools program provides literacy and cultural enrichment programming for children in communities where quality academic enrichment programming is limited, too expensive, or nonexistent.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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\nThe Rev. Bill Stanfield began Metanoia with his wife, Evelyn Oliveira, in 2002 shortly after he graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary. They were hired by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of South Carolina after a demographic study found that the state\u2019s highest concentration of child poverty was in the Chicora-Cherokee area.
\nStanfield took a year to listen to the community, then assembled a board of directors from the neighborhood and began Metanoia with an after-school program. Several programs have since been added, including Freedom School and a housing initiative that has helped to rehabilitate 150 homes, he says.
\nStanfield\u2019s philosophy is to focus on the community\u2019s assets, including its people and churches, and build on them. \u201cBy working with the community as a place of potential and capacity, rather than just problems, you see things rise to the top,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can invest in them, and they begin to generate a return for the community.\u201d
\nStanfield says a good example of that philosophy in action is LaShay Norton, a reading coach at Mary Ford Elementary. She grew up in Chicora-Cherokee and stays in touch through the church she attends. Her two children are involved with Metanoia, including daughter Makenzie, a Coding for Kids student.
\nNorton began as a teaching assistant in Coding for Kids in its inaugural year in 2017 and returned in 2018 as an assistant lecturer.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s allowing students to have an awareness of opportunities other than what they see day to day,\u201d she says. \u201cIf they have exposure to it, they can dream even bigger. I like the idea of exposing kids to that kind of activity.\u201d
\nMakenzie\u2019s take on the camp? \u201cAwesome,\u201d she says.
\nMakenzie says she learned, \u201cYou always have to have a variable. You have to be exact with it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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\nMetanoia invited Clemson World to observe the second day of Freedom School in summer 2018. The day began in the Chicora Elementary cafeteria with breakfast and \u201charambe,\u201d a high-energy assembly named for the Swahili word that roughly translates to \u201cpull together.\u201d
\nAbout 100 students gathered around a stage at one end of the cafeteria as guest reader Asiah Thomas took a seat on a step with the book City Green in her hands.
\n\u201cGood morning!\u201d she says. The students responded with not just a simple greeting but by spelling in a rhythmic chant: \u201cG-O-O-D M-O-R-N-I-N-G. Good morning! Good morning!\u201d
\nWhen Thomas finished reading the book, the students formed a giant circle. They joined their teachers for about 15 minutes of inspirational chants, music and dancing before heading to the classrooms. The rest of the morning was devoted to reading and other literacy exercises.
\nAll the Freedom School students are at Chicora Elementary in the mornings. After lunch, half of the eligible students go to the Zucker center for Coding for Kids on Mondays and Wednesdays, and half go on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Students who stay at Chicora Elementary participate in other activities, such as karate and cooking classes.
\nCoding for Kids is open to rising third-, fourth- and fifth-graders. It enrolls 40 students each year. Boeing and Blackbaud have been instrumental in supporting the program. Boeing assembles 787 Dreamliners and has IT, engineering, and advanced research and development facilities about 10 minutes from the neighborhood. Blackbaud, the world\u2019s leading cloud software company powering social good, is headquartered in Charleston.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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\nJessica Jackson, director of global engagement in Boeing\u2019s southeast region, says the company invested in Coding for Kids because it was a way to give back to the community while inspiring and engaging underrepresented youth in STEM, one of the company\u2019s priorities in charitable giving.
\nThe company liked that Coding for Kids brought together several collaborators, is sustainable, will result in evidence-based outcomes and has the potential to be offered on a larger scale.
\n\u201cThis could expand beyond Chicora and could be replicated in other neighborhoods in the North Charleston community and beyond,\u201d she says. \u201cBeing able to make an impact on our future workforce is really important. We\u2019re excited to be a part of this community and this program, which is making a positive impact on these kids\u2019 lives.\u201d
\nMary Beth Westmoreland, chief technology officer of Blackbaud, says the program reaches children at a critical age for them to think about careers in engineering and science. It also allows students to hone their skills, learn something new and build their confidence in the engineering discipline while keeping them active over the summer so they don\u2019t lose a step academically.
\n\u201cWe need more of what Clemson is doing,\u201d Westmoreland says. \u201cWhen leaders in academia and business commit to their shared community, the result is something magical. Clemson is bringing together top thinkers and innovators across Charleston to inspire children, demonstrate just how brilliant and creative they are and get them excited about careers in engineering.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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\nSeventeen students, including Makenzie, took a five-minute bus ride from Chicora Elementary to the Zucker Family Graduate Education Center on the second day of Freedom School. Eight Charleston-area educators who serve as camp coordinators were waiting in a classroom to help guide them.
\nThe students took an assessment with pencils and paper to measure their abilities, and then Nche-Eyabi began to introduce them to \u201cSnap!\u201d The program allows students to drag and drop color-coded computer commands, helping teach them about coding and computer science. Even if students have trouble reading words, they can still do the coding.
\nThrough the program, students learn to think like a computer. In one exercise, they program the computer to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It might be a no-brainer for a human to grab a knife before spreading the ingredients, but students learn that computers need to be told every small step: pick up the knife, open the jar of peanut butter, put the knife in the jar and so on until the tasty sandwich is completed.
\nBeyond the \u201cSnap!\u201d experience, the students interact with professionals from the community, such as engineers and a virtual-reality expert, who help them connect what they learn in the classroom to how it can be used in the real world.
\nThis year, students also learned with \u201cCode Tracesure,\u201d a new computer game created by Clemson scholars especially for the class. Students walk around a maze and find bonus questions. To exit a level, they have to find and answer all the bonus questions. Each bonus question has a small command they have to interpret. If they get it right, they get extra points, explains Victor Zordan, chair of visual computing in the School of Computing at Clemson; he\u2019s the principal investigator for Coding for Kids and a program organizer.
\n\u201cThey get a number of stars at the end of each level,\u201d Zordan says. \u201cThe idea for us is that they will continue to play each level until they\u2019ve got the full set of stars, which means they are practicing again and again and again with these questions. It\u2019s set up to incentivize them reading little snippets of code.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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\nAlso new this year is Clemson University Women in Numbers, a math-intensive summer camp for middle school girls sponsored by Clemson\u2019s PEER and WISE (Programs for Educational Enrichment and Retention and Women in Science and Engineering). A grant from the Engineering
\nInformation Foundation and funding from Cummins Turbo Technologies helped pay for the camp.
\nThe idea behind the camp is to increase girls\u2019 confidence in math and other STEM topics to help close the gender gap in STEM professions. Organizers believe that if the girls are comfortable with math, they will be more likely to do well in Calculus I, a crucial class that can make or break a student\u2019s drive to become an engineer.
\nStudents in the camp learned mathematical concepts and participated in hands-on activities that applied theory to real-world situations. The curriculum was created by Rhoda Latimer, a former middle school math teacher and a doctoral student at Clemson in curriculum and instruction and mathematics education. Maya Rucks, a graduate assistant in PEER and WISE, coordinated the program.
\nClemson undergraduate and graduate students in engineering and science education taught the classes and served as role models for the girls. The camp also included field trips to Boeing and Cummins and the chance to learn from women working in STEM careers.
\n\u201cThese young ladies have somebody close up \u2014 the actual instructors themselves \u2014 coming from the industry,\u201d says Serita Acker, the director of PEER and WISE. \u201cAll of those folks are role models. The girls may look up and say, \u2018I wouldn\u2019t mind being an engineer.\u2019 I think that\u2019s key.\u201d
\nGirls in the camp also gained a global perspective by trading videos with students who are in a similar program in the West African nation of Ghana.
\nLynn Clegg, the K-12 STEM coordinator in the Charleston County School District, collaborated on the camp as part of the district\u2019s Liberty Hill K-12 STEM initiative. The district identified 20 scholars to attend the camp, coordinated the Ghana exchange and provided busing, breakfasts and lunches, she says.
\nThe inaugural year went well, and organizers are looking for ways to expand it next year.
\n\u201cThe girls loved it,\u201d Clegg says. \u201cThey had a great time and learned a lot. They built a lot of confidence in themselves, which was one of the main goals of the program.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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\nIt will be several years before anyone knows whether the camps are inspiring the students to go to college and become engineers or computer scientists. In the meantime, organizers are seeing highly promising anecdotal evidence that the students are fully engaged.
\nZordan says the students are gaining confidence in technology. \u201cI think that\u2019s a very qualitative measure, but I do think we saw that in spades,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I anticipate we\u2019ll see that again. The main thing is that this exposure is really influencing them.\u201d
\nEven if students don\u2019t become programmers, they will be better prepared for a computer-assisted world, where even dishwashers run on computer programs, says Zordan, who also directs Clemson\u2019s digital production arts program.
\nMeanwhile, organizers are looking for ways to expand offerings in the community. Several organizers suggested expanding Coding for Kids into the school year so that students get a refresher between summers. Zucker says she would like to see the programs extend through high school.
\n\u201cThese are the kids we need to capture,\u201d she says. \u201cWe can\u2019t lose them when we do the coding camp. We need to keep them in a pipeline every summer until we can get them ready for their next steps.\u201d
\nStanfield is working on a $12 million renovation of the old Chicora Elementary, turning it into an early childhood education center with space for artists. Clemson architecture students have been doing some of the early design work.
\nIt\u2019s another connection between Metanoia and Clemson.
\n\u201cThere\u2019s an ongoing relationship now,\u201d Stanfield says. \u201cUltimately, what heals any community is relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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