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PrintAn MU engineering professor hopes a proposed community center in the First Ward will offer a way to get disadvantaged kids interested in math and science.
Satish Nair, an electrical and computer engineering professor, said he has long been interested in expanding the Engineering Fellows Project beyond the eight Boone County schools it serves.
The project provides schools with Lego robotics kits, and MU graduate students train teachers in their use. Nair has formed a partnership with Positive Regional Impact! Diversified Enterprise, or PRIDE, to create a similar program at the proposed community center.
PRIDE formed in December 2004 and hopes to build a $4 million community center in the central city that will be free to all patrons.
Nair has been involved in the First Ward in the past. He helped start Tech-4-U in October 2001, which aims to improve access and understanding of computers for the most economically disadvantaged members of Columbia.
Nair said it is important for children to become interested in math and science at a young age.
The fellows program in the schools tries to pique this interest by offering hands-on activities with robotics.
While all middle school students in Columbia potentially have the opportunity to work with these programs through their schools, Nair said, disadvantaged students need special opportunities for this type of enrichment.
“There are very few of these programs for disadvantaged youth,” Nair said. “But these are the kids that need the enrichment most.”
Ellen Wiss, co-founder of PRIDE, said the partnership with Nair would be a way to expand children’s offerings at the center.
“The program is not just geared to help kids get an engineering degree and then go work for Boeing,” Wiss said. “It offers the educational background that fosters an entrepreneurial spirit that teaches them things like how to create things themselves.”
“There is really no limit to what they can accomplish with that kind of background,” he said.
Nair said he has wanted to offer enrichment programs in math, science and technology to youth outside the schools for a while, but the task of finding the right children and organizing logistics was always too daunting.
“The reason we often partner with the public schools is because they provide the infrastructure to organize it,” Nair said. “PRIDE fills in that void very nicely on the community side.”
Nair said he’s focused on PRIDE’s mission to give kids a place to go and something positive to do. But he said he thinks adding the robotics program will help the center’s offerings go above and beyond typical community centers.
“We’re not challenging our kids to be technologically literate,” Nair said. “This is especially true for disadvantaged youth.”
The hands-on element of the robotics program helps engage children, Nair said.
Tracy Edwards, a First Ward ambassador and PRIDE member, said the robotics program will offer at-risk kids opportunities that many have never been exposed to before.
“Any other way to try to reach kids is a plus, and this offers them a way to use their minds,” Edwards said. “Sometimes kids can’t be reached in the school setting. Things like this also show them that outside help is out there and others care.”
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