Aerospace Engineering, Celebrity Worship, and You

The past month at Ypsilanti High School has been successful and rewarding. At the beginning of the year, I did a couple of presentations about careers involving math and science, and a goal setting presentation. A student with an extreme interest in Aerospace Engineering approached me and asked if I could give him information that would guide him to work for NASA when he grew up. I researched the internet and University of Michigan's Aerospace Engineering program and printed out some light reading for the student to read. I then mentioned to another teaching fellow, Serge Badiane, that I had a student interested in Aerospace Engineering, and he was able to come and give a brief introduction explaining his research and the field of Aerospace Engineering. During one of the periods, he was even able to show the students videos of his research in small groups and they really enjoyed it! Even better, he was able to spend some one on one time with the student that expressed extreme interest in Aerospace from the beginning. It happened to be on the student's birthday, so that was a special treat.

In addition, I did another presentation "Celebrity Worship and You" Now this turned out to be pretty fun, although I want to expand on this topic with the students in future presentations. I think its interesting to discuss the effects of the media with the stduents. Espeically seeing that this is a time where they are experimenting and exploring their own identities which unfortunately may be heavily influenced by what they see on tv. I could see this was a topic of interest since such a large portion of students showed interest in pursuing performing arts (Musicians, actors/acresses, athletes) when we talked about careers. The media glamorizes these careers but does not put much emphasis at all on the education needed to succeed in these careers. Although many actors/actresses, athletes and musicians may not have college degrees, there are a surprising amount of them that do. Even better, there is handful that have or have pursued degrees in Math, Science or Engineering.

For the activity, I looked on the internet and found 20 - 25 celebrities that the students would recognize, printed their pictures and created a brief profile of who they are (i.e what movies they have been in, what team they are on, etc.). All of these celebrites have or have pursued college degrees in Math, Science or Engineering. I passed them out so that each student had one, and then gave them their task. Their task was to choose a leader/organizer and answer a few questions: 1)Which of these people do you think was the valedictorian of their highschool 2) Which of these people (up to three) do you think could help you with your math homework 3) Whcih of these people (up to three) do you think would be a good businessman/businesswoman. So they got about 10-12 minutes to debate adn discuss these questions and write their answers on the board. Meanwhile, Ms. Mills and I picked our own answers but we had a cheat sheet that listed the accomplishments of each individual.

It was very surprising that in each class, most of the students didn't know what a valedictorian was. It was not surprising that most of the students could not figure out the link between the celebrities, but that was the plan. There were a couple of students who had knowledge of a few of the celebrities educational background but very few. And when these students would speak up, it was interesting to see how they got shot down, because other students didn't believe them. Most of the students choices were based on what they perceive as the requirements needed for the celebrities' associated career, and even more surprising, how 'smart' the celebrities "looks". Montel Williams and Terrence Howard were a popular picks for "smart people", but Cindy Crawford wasn't even considered (although she was valedictorian of her high school and pursued a degree in chemical engineering).

After explaining that all of the celebrities despite their present careers have or have pursued college degrees, I passed out a table outlining the accompplishments of each celebrity for them to look over. This was a surprise to many of the students and a few of them started asking about other celebrities not on the list. It was rewarding that a couple of the students wanted to look into this further to see what other celebrities had other interests than what they see on tv. I urged the students to research the celebrities they like and to find out more about their career paths and how they really have been able to succeed as celebrities.