Photos: WIT\Wade Scholarship Program

(Palo Alto, CA) – Wade Institute of Technology (WIT), an experiential Silicon Valley-based college for students of African descent pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, announced that it is accepting applications for the 2025 Wade Scholarship Program (WSP).

To qualify for the scholarship, applicants must be admitted to a master’s degree program ranked within the U.S. News & World Report Top 30 U.S. graduate schools of engineering and/or the graduate engineering program of any of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

“There has been an alarming drop in the number of Black STEM professionals, who were
already woefully underrepresented in these fields,” said WIT Executive Director Booker T.
Wade, Jr. “This scholarship helps ease the financial burden that is often a contributing factor to
the drop-off of Black students in the educational pipeline. We are committed to the goal of
promoting increased diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM through expanded educational
opportunities.”

WSP Scholars receive up to $50,000 toward the cost of tuition, on-campus housing, food, and
other expenses or fees. Applicants must have a bachelor’s degree in a STEM discipline from an
accredited college or university in the U.S. or the equivalent from an international institution.

Minority Television Project Inc. (MTP), which owns and operates San Francisco Bay Area public
television station KMTP-TV 33, provides funding for the scholarship. Through its support of both
WIT and WSP, MTP is working to make transformative changes in the technology ecosystem.

There have been 26 WSP Scholars since the program launched in 2021. Applications for the
2025 scholarships are due no later than January 17, 2025. International students may apply but
must already have U.S. residential or visa status.

Prospective WSP Scholars will be evaluated on independent thought, purposeful leadership,
civic mindset, and undergraduate achievements. Additional information on requirements and a
link to the application portal can be found at wadescholarship.org/

About Wade Scholarship Program
The Wade Scholarship Program (WSP) was established to mitigate the underrepresentation of
people of African descent in STEM. WSP provides scholarships to Black scholars who are
admitted to an engineering master’s degree program ranked within the US News & World
Report Top 30 US graduate schools of engineering and HBCUs with graduate engineering
programs.

About Wade Institute of Technology
Founded in 2020, Wade Institute of Technology (WIT) is a private, non-profit 501(c)(3)
educational institution that provides a STEM course of studies for students of African descent.
Through an innovative mix of traditional instruction and experiential learning from top-tier
faculty and institutions, WIT positions its graduates to be visionary leaders in their disciplines at
a global level.

The post WIT Wade Scholarship Program Offers Black Students $50,000Toward A STEM Master’s Degree appeared first on Black Star News.

In 2019, many Black students scored at or below reading proficiency. This is why Austin Martin, founder of Rhymes with Reason, is passionate about helping Black students gain literacy. 
 
Rhymes with Reason uses lyrics from popular songs to help students increase their vocabulary and improve their comprehension.
 
The web-based app offers individual child and family e-learning subscriptions for use at home, to solutions for classrooms, schools, and youth organizations.
 
Sign-up for Rhymes with Reason and support a child’s literacy.
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VISIT THE WE BUY BLACK WEBSITE: https://wbbtoo.com/

The post ‘Rhymes with Reason’ App Changing How Black Students Learn appeared first on Black Star News.

Photo: Image source

Being black in a society that has a history of discriminating against black people is a challenging thing. Even though society is evolving and we may think that racism is not a thing anymore, in fact, it is. Some colleges accept a balanced number of students that come from different races, countries, continents, and so on. However, black students are being discriminated against, not only by their colleagues but by professors too. 

Discrimination is still very present in our society, no matter how much we would like to think it’s not like this. Those who discriminate against black students might not think that it comes with many negative effects on their mental health. Learning how to cope with discrimination when you are a black student is essential. 

Why? Because you will, unfortunately, meet many people who will discriminate against you along with your life. And knowing how to react to them and handle the emotional effect it comes with can help you survive this racist society. 

Discrimination Against Black Students 

When you are a student and young, your emotional brain is just developing. During adolescence, you feel all kinds of emotions and learn what they mean and how to handle them. You learn this all over your life, but these first years are especially important for your development. But when discrimination against black people is so rooted in today’s society, having a positive and happy life is challenging. Racism is one of the main problems nowadays societies have and it is highly important. 

As a black student, you have surely felt the effects of discrimination on your life and mental health. It seems that this discrimination has emotional effects that are similar to PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Black students who feel the effects of racism and discrimination tend to experience a higher level of chronic stress. Moreover, this leads to higher rates of mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety. But one of the things that happen the most is that they drop out of school and college. Getting an education and studying in university can be a great period where you make new friends and learn new things. However, as soon as black students are experiencing discrimination, they tend to give up their education. 

So, how to cope with this? 

Connect with Friends 

When you are a black student who is experiencing discrimination, you might feel unheard. Negative emotions can easily appear and they can make you feel guilty or ashamed. But you have nothing to be ashamed of. Racism and discrimination are still very present in our nowadays society and they should be eliminated. Unfortunately, there is still a lot to work on so black students need to find coping mechanisms. One of these is connecting with friends. 

The more you share your discrimination experiences with your friends and closest ones, the less stress you will feel. Stress can easily accumulate and it comes with more negative effects, so connecting with friends alike is important. You can work together on your college assignments, study together, or just spend quality time. Fortunately, all tools can be used by anyone no matter their race, gender, or country, as is the case of plagiarism checking. You can find an online plagiarism checker to check your essays and assignments that can be used by anyone, no matter their characteristics. 

Make Lists 

This advice might sound counterintuitive. People usually make lists when they want to make a decision, to not forget something, and so on. However, if you are a black student that is experiencing discrimination, this could be a coping mechanism. You can make a list of the stimuli, events, and words that trigger you and that are racist. Being aware of what disturbs you is important because it helps you find ways to cope with and handle them. 

After you have identified these, you can make a list of coping mechanisms. There is still a long way to go until we completely eliminate racism and discrimination from our society. And as a black student, knowing how to cope with these negative and unhappy events will help you survive this society and protect your mental health. 

Final Words 

Discrimination is, unfortunately, still very present in our society. The most discriminated against are black students because some people find them inferior. But this is not true at all. People who discriminate and are racist do not understand the effects of this. Racism comes with many negative effects on mental health, such as depression, anxiety, physical pain, and health problems. Finding ways to cope with these is essential and they can make this more bearable. 

Photo: source:

Bio lines: Vendy Adams is a content writer. Her articles focus on racism and discrimination. Vendy thinks that if we eliminate these from our societies, the world would be a better place.

The post Coping With the Discrimination Against Black Students 2021 appeared first on Black Star News.

As a first-year student at Brown University, twenty-five years ago, I was detained by campus security for trespassing. In my own dorm. In sock feet.

You see, I’d left my room to go to the bathroom and didn’t bring my college ID along. I guess I should have known better. As a Black student it was always an unstated expectation that I justify my presence on campus. Black students were a small minority on campus and we were often seen as interlopers, even after admission.

I was reminded of this incident during the past weeks as protests escalated at the University of Missouri (Mizzou) over a string of racist incidents there, culminating in the ouster of the state university System President Tim Wolfe. Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and using a wide range of tried-and-true and cutting edge tactics, Mizzou students won one of their main demands, something many observers had said was impossible.

This example of the power of protest was met with rightwing media ridicule, attack by the Missouri Lt. Governor and even death threats against students. Just a day after the jubilation at the resignation of Wolfe, fear of violence turned the campus into a ghost town.

Many White students, professors, community supporters and even the head of the country’s trade union movement all came out in support of the students. The hashtag #BlackOnCampus began documenting student experiences with racism around the country.

Missouri students were not alone. Students at Yale University were in motion as well in response to a racist incident on campus and reports of a “White girls only” fraternity party.

More joined the fight on Nov. 12, when the already planned Million Student March – demanding the elimination of all student debt (which has reached $1.2 trillion nationally), free college education for all, and $15 minimum wage for campus workers – stood in solidarity with besieged Mizzou students.

Racism on campuses both private and public is nothing new. Neither is student protest around the issues affecting their lives.

What is new is the national scope of the protest and the breadth of the support. Some 115 campuses took part in the protests. More than 1,000 students gathered at the University of California at Berkeley. It’s the kind of student action not seen in a generation.

Ultimately the protests at Mizzou and elsewhere are not so much about this administrator or that, as they are about demanding that institutions of higher learning create a space for students of color. It’s the same issue we were struggling with years ago.

When I was detained as a student it was not an isolated incident. Police harassment of Black students in particular was commonplace. There were also acts of bigotry against students of color by a few White students, reminders that to some we were unwelcome.

So it was no accident then that graduation rates for Black students lagged behind those of our peers. So we organized meetings, issued demands, and protested to make a change, just like students today. Unfortunately little has changed. Black enrollment and graduation rates at Mizzou and colleges around the country are disproportionately low.

Some commentators seem to think these students are protesting because they are young and naive or involved in an intellectual exercise. But students today – as always – are largely motivated to action by the pressing issues impacting their lives and educations.

They are fighting to learn and survive. It’s not academic.

Libero Della Piana is a senior organizer and digital director at Alliance for a Just Society. He lives in East Harlem, New York.

The post Right Wing Backlash Can’t Stop Anti-Racism Student Movement appeared first on Black Star News.

In the spring of 1954, like so many Black families, mine waited anxiously for the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. My father and I talked about it and what it would mean for my future and the future of millions of other Black children who were attending segregated but unequal Black schools. He died the week before Brown was decided. But I and many other children were able, in later years, to walk through the new and heavy doors that Brown slowly and painfully opened.

It was a transforming time that set into motion a spate of other challenges to Jim Crow laws and yet 60 years after that historic May decision the doors to true educational equality have never fully opened wide enough for millions of American children to walk through especially those living in poverty. The most recent findings from the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), called the “richest, fullest” collection so far measuring education access and equity in our nation’s public schools, show many children are still receiving an unequal education.

This is the unfinished work of the civil rights movement.

The new Office for Civil Rights data cover the 2011-2012 school year and are the first universal data collection since 2000, with information about all 97,000 schools in the nation’s 16,500 school districts serving 49 million students. Some information was collected for the first time, including one of the most startling findings: new data on preschool suspensions that show Black preschoolers are 18 percent of children enrolled in preschool programs in public schools, but 48 percent of children suspended more than once.

While the data show only six percent of the districts offering preschool in public schools reported that they had suspended preschoolers, there is something terribly wrong when we are suspending any children from preschool in the first place. We now know Black children are more likely to be pushed out of school before they’ve even made it to kindergarten, and other numbers in the recent OCR release confirm those disparities do not go away.

Overall, Black students are suspended and expelled at a rate three times greater than White students. Boys receive more than two out of three suspensions, but Black girls are suspended at higher rates than girls of any other race or ethnicity and higher rates than most boys. Students with disabilities (those served by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) also are more than twice as likely to receive an out-of-school suspension as students without disabilities. And inequities in school discipline continue right up through the most consequential responses: Black students represent 16 percent of student enrollment but make up 27 percent of students referred to law enforcement and 31 percent of school-related arrests.

These differences in discipline can’t be explained simply by differences in student behavior. The Equity Project at Indiana University has reviewed the research on the role of student behavior and characteristics in disparate suspension rates and found that in fact schools and districts that have taken seriously their responsibility to educate all of their students have seen significant improvements by adjusting the policies and practices of adults. Both Buffalo, New York Public Schools and Denver, Colorado Public Schools are heralded as examples of school systems’ ability to change to better serve students. The Children’s Defense Fund and AASA, the School Superintendents Association, have been funded by the Atlantic Philanthropies to work with ten school districts from Texas to Wisconsin to Pennsylvania whose leaders are committed to reforming their school discipline policies to reduce the use of exclusionary discipline and address racial disparities.

Children’s unequal chances in school go well beyond discipline. Black, Latino, American Indian, and Native Alaskan students have less access to experienced teachers than White students. While most teachers are certified, nearly half a million students nationwide attend schools where 60 percent or fewer teachers meet all state certification and licensure requirements, and racial disparities are particularly acute in schools where uncertified and unlicensed teachers are concentrated.

Black students are more than four times as likely and Latino students are twice as likely as White students to attend schools where 80 percent or fewer teachers meet these requirements. There are also teacher salary disparities: Nearly one in four districts with two or more high schools reports a teacher salary gap of more than $5,000 between high schools with the highest and the lowest Black and Latino student enrollments.

All students don’t have equal opportunities to take the most challenging courses to prepare them for college and career. While 81 percent of Asian American and 71 percent of White high school students attend high schools where the full range of math and science courses are offered (Algebra I, geometry, Algebra II, calculus, biology, chemistry, and physics), fewer than half of American Indian and Native Alaskan high school students have access to the full range in their schools, and Black students, Latino students, students with disabilities, and English language learner students also all have less access. Black and Latino students are also disproportionately less likely to be enrolled in at least one Advanced Placement (AP) course. The new data also show students with disabilities, English learners, and Black students are all more likely to be held back each year. Twelve percent of Black students were retained in ninth grade— about double the overall rate.

Six decades into the “post-Brown” era, will the doors of opportunity finally open wide or continue to stay half shut on our watch? Most students know the phrase “knowledge is power.” CDF is happy that the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is taking new steps to expand the range of data about inequalities that still exist in our nation’s schools. But now that we have more knowledge—what are we going to do with it? If you are interested in learning more and taking action, you can find out how the schools in your community are treating their students at the Civil Rights Data Collection’s website, and you can find new guidance on school discipline and positive alternatives to suspensions and other exclusionary discipline practices at the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments’ website.

It’s time to close the opportunity gap and fulfill the promise of education as a great equalizer and a strong pathway to opportunity for all of our nation’s children.

Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children’s Defense Fund and its Action Council whose Leave No Child Behind mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities.

Follow Marian Wright Edelman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ChildDefender

The post Our Nations Schools — Still Effectively Separate And Unequal appeared first on Black Star News.