MINORITY AFFAIRS
COMMITTEE
The Carver Recognition Day and Carver Science Fair
in the Silicon Valley of California were not held between 2003 and 2010
for lack of adequate funding. Instead the Santa Clara
Valley (SCV) Local Section cooperated with the Division of Chemistry
and the Law (CHAL) to provide volunteer judges with local science fair
project "SciencePalooza" at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds in March
2010. The East Side Union School District of San
José is one of the most diverse school districts in the area.
The Synopsis Championship was held at the San Jose
Convention Center in March, 2010 (which also includes a large number of
diverse science and engineering students). Howard Peters and Bruce Raby
were the SCV volunteer judges. Howard presented the SCV Local
Section awards for a total of $1,000.00 to the student winners on April
3at the INTEL - Science Fair day at Paramount Great America in Santa
Clara.
Two SCV members (Dr. Howard Peters and Dr. Roy
Okuda) were active and served as ACS judges for the INTEL International
Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) (www.scienceforsociety.org)
for international high school students, held in San José,
California in May, 2010. Expanded local and international science fair
involvement at the national and local levels are planned for
2011. Specifically, Howard Peters and Roy Okuda are also on the
local Board of Directors for the INTEL ISEF 2010 event, which was held
May 9-14, 2010 in San José.
About
1500 high school winners from 54 countries competed for over
$4,000,000.00 in awards.
In October 2009, Howard Peters received the Special
President Award from SACNAS. Howard, formerly a national
Director-at-Large, and Ambassador from the ACS Board of Directors to
the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in
Science (SACNAS (www.sacnas.org),
which is headquartered in nearby Santa Cruz, California) was unable to
attend their annual meeting in Dallas in October 2009. Dr. Peters
had in prior years met with officers and members of the Board of
Directors of SACNAS and was a volunteer judge for several student oral
and poster presentations.
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
new U.S. coins or U.S. currency for general circulation.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
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 now retired 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.
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 to emphasize that
you did not need to be a rocket scientist to be an inventor.
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 120-160students
participated. About half of the science fair judges were local ACS
member volunteers. Many of these first time exhibitors next exhibited
their science project in the local mainstream science fairs.
Howard M. Peters, Chair