MINORITY AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
The Carver Recognition Day and Carver Science Fair
were not held in 2003-7 primarily for lack of adequate funding. The SCV
and CHAL cooperated as judges with local science fair project
Sciencepalooza at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds in February 200
The Synopsis Championship was held at the San Jose
Convention Center in March 2006 (both of which include a high
percentage of minority science and engineering students).
Howard Peters & George Lechner presented the ACS local section
awards of $600.00 were made to the winners on April 2 at the Science
Fair day at Paramount Great America in Santa Clara.
Two SCV members (Howard Peters and Roy Okuda) were
active and served as ACS judges for the Intel International Science and
Engineering Fair (www.sciserv.org/) for international high school
students, held in Albuquerque, NM from May 7-11, 2007. Expanded
local and national science fair involvement at the national and local
level is planned for 2008.
ACS Director-at-Large (and Local Section member) Dr.
Howard Peters had an informative discussion and with Dr Victor
McCrary, the new President of the National Organization of Black
Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE, www.nobcche.org ).
During the summer of 2005, Howard Peters,
Director-at-Large, was named an Ambassador for the ACS Board of
Directors to the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and native
Americans in Science (SACNAS, www.sacnas.org ) and attended their
annual meeting in Denver on October 2005 and in Tampa FL in October
2006 and in Kansas City MO in October 2007 . Dr. Peters was a
judge for several student oral and poster presentations.
In 2001 and 2002 ten SCV members organized a
Carver KidVention, a program to focus children (in this case 40-70
K-5th grade students) on invention and that you did not need to be a
rocket scientist to be an inventor.
Future cooperative projects for the partners include
having each of the 50 states declare a Carver Recognition Day each
January 5, having many Carver recognition events each January 5 around
the nation, expanding the Carver Scholars and Carver Science Fair
Programs throughout California and the nation, and encouraging the U.S.
Treasury to recognize the important contributions of African American
chemist Dr. George Washington Carver by issuing a new U.S. coin or U.S.
currency for general circulation honoring Dr. Carver.
Historical: Many ACS local sections have not yet
created a formal Committee on Minority Affairs to further the work
started in 1993 by ACS National. The Santa Clara Valley Section
has had a Committee since 1997, with Dr. Howard Peters, a Palo Alto
chemical patent attorney, as the first chair. Earlier work resulted in
a resolution in 1997 from the ACS Board and Council endorsing the
creation of an official State Day of Recognition in all states to
recognize the contributions of the renowned agricultural chemist, Dr.
George Washington Carver. By cooperating and partnering in the
Silicon Valley with the local African American directed Healing
Institute, the ACS Santa Clara Valley Section provided some documents
that were helpful in making California the tenth state to create a
State Day of Recognition to honor Dr. George Washington Carver.
Halim Mustafa, the community entrepreneur, Founder and Director of the
Healing Institute is a former policeman from East Palo Alto,
California.
After much planning and many volunteer hours, the
Healing Institute, in partnership with Intel Corporation, Applied
BioSciences, Cypress Semiconductor, the Santa Clara Alliance of
Black School Educators, members of SCV, the Division of Chemistry and
the Law , and others created the Carver Scholars with about 150 African
American grade- and high school students in the Silicon Valley. This
program won for the Healing Institute a special award in 1999 from the
U.S. Congress for the best public or private program to encourage
minority students in science and engineering.
On January 5, 2000, 2001 and 2002 the Healing
Institute and its ACS partners cooperated to hold the Carver Science
Fairs primarily for African American students at the Santa Clara
Convention Center in the Silicon Valley. Some 120-160
students participated. About half of the science fair judges were
local ACS volunteers. It is anticipated that many of these first
time exhibitors will now exhibit their science project in the local
mainstream science fairs.