Physicist Tells African American Children
that Science "Belongs to Them"

This week on WOL AM, Sylvester James Gates, John S. Toll Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, College Park, told a radio audience of African American children and their families that they should strive to find the playfulness in science and math, and to understand the role of physics in everything from cell phones to space travel.

"What I would like most for your audience to understand is that (science) belongs to them," said Gates during an interview on a radio program called Delta SEE Connection. "You see for me, all of the mathematics I know, and all of the physics that I understand and the equations that I deal with — for me this is like a basketball and a court. When I go out and do science, I am having fun. I'm doing the thing that's truest to being me. And as an African American I am not separated from this. This is so much a part of me that it's like my listening to music; it is like watching Michael Jordan play or watching Venus or Serena…"

To produce Delta SEE Connection, a weekly radio program, AAAS has joined forces with the nation's largest African American sorority, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., and the Delta Research and Educational Foundation (DREF).

"This initiative is opening for us a whole new medium for providing a window into the world of science for the African American community," says Shirley Malcom, director of the AAAS Directorate for Education and Human Resources and a commentator on the show. "In their stories, the scientists explain the importance of science in their lives, but also in the lives of everyday Americans."

WOL, 1450 AM, the Radio One station in Washington, DC, with the largest African American audience in the area, has become the first station to broadcast the interviews compiled for the project known as Delta SEE, for "Science and Everyday Experiences." The program can be heard every Saturday, from 5 to 6 p.m., through 18 October. In the coming weeks, the series will be distributed to Radio One stations nationwide, as well as to other radio stations in African American markets and to radio stations operated on the campuses of historically-black colleges and universities.

Listen to a clip from the most recent radio program, which was broadcast on Saturday, 21 June, from 5 to 6 p.m., or listen to the entire program in MP3 format (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4) or RealAudio (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4).

See also all past Delta SEE radio programs.

—Coimbra Sirica

1 July 2003