Research Symposium

BIO

I am a sophomore currently attending Florida State University, majoring in Marketing. As a marketing major, I am enthusiastic about the method of appealing to the consumer and I am always looking at different ways of improving my sales performance, by participating in the American Marketing Association and Seminole Solution, a student-run marketing association at school. Some of my research goals when joining the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program were developing a good connection with my mentor and growing interests in a different field than my major. Therefore, I chose to research for the Black Men in Tech Program. This program is meant to recognize and solve the issue of
why there is a decreasing amount of African American College Students studying technology majors. During this program, I researched African American high schoolers interest in technology and if we could possibly increase it with specific programs educating them about different aspects of technology.

Black Men in Tech: Increasing Interest from High School to Career

Abstract

Technology is becoming more relied upon to find efficient solutions to challenging problems. While this is the case, specific students have struggled in being retained in some computing and technology majors. Compared to other groups, African American men are considered underrepresented in technology majors across the nation. One major reason for this is the lack of exposure to these majors in high school. At the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program, research is being conducted for these research questions: Does black high school men’s interest in technology change when we introduce hands-on activities pertaining to Web Design, Game design, and Videography? Also, how do these men’s parents view these technology aspects and does that relate to their child’s interest? To explore Black high school student’s technology engagement, Florida State University is partnering with four high schools in Leon County, with each a population of greater than 50% African American, in a program called “Black Men in Tech – the iHub experience”. This program engages Black high school students through information hubs and multimedia in videography, web design, and game design. These iHubs will allow educators to assist students and let them collaborate in IT-related projects using hands-on multimedia. In addition to this, the beliefs of guardians will also be explored to identify whether there are differences between parents’ perceptions of technology and their children. Findings will provide insight into the role of multimedia engagement on increasing the number of young Black men who are interested in pursuing majors in computing.

Keywords: Black Men in Tech