All-Female Spelman College Ranks No. 2 in Sending Black Graduates On to Ph.D.s in Science and Math
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Wheeling-Based Program Helps Students Succeed in Science Through Hands-on Education
WOWK--Story By Linda Harris-- If you think learning about math and the sciences is boring and formulaic, you probably haven't been in a class taught by Darryl Baynes. Baynes is founder and president of Minority Aviation Education Association and its Interactive Science Programs, the nation's largest science and math outreach company owned and operated by African-Americans.
Based in Wheeling, the non-profit's mission is to connect science to everyday life and, in the process, to get young people interested in career opportunities in fields that are largely ignored by today's college-bound crowd. Baynes does it with the aid of attention-getting, hands-on experiments that demonstrate scientific and mathematical principles to his young audiences, accompanied by down-to-earth explanations of what is happening, and why.
Too often, he said, adults try to explain scientific occurrences to kids in terms they can't begin to understand.
"You can't go into an elementary school and talk to kids about 'entropies' -- that's the randomness of systems -- and expect them to understand," he said. "But if you explain to them that as things get hot they move a little faster and as they get cold they move slower, it's easier for them to understand that same concept of randomness."