<\/p>\n
When MIT mechanical engineering student Daphne Wang arrived for her internship at the Muscogee Creek Nation Department of Health in Tulsa, Oklahoma last summer, she expected to be writing code. To her surprise, she found herself analyzing tribal history and the implications for technical innovation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI learned so much that I think should be required curriculum for every single person in this country,\u201d says Wang. \u201cI think tech for good is genuinely getting out into communities and learning about people who aren’t you, creating worldly perspectives that you ultimately can take into everything else that you do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wang and fellow intern Lucy Sun, who is majoring in artificial intelligence and decision making, spent the summer supporting the development of the Muscogee Nation’s first Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) survey to capture maternal health data specific to Muscogee women. The project required completing literature reviews, analyzing datasets, and drafting survey questions, while considering issues of data sovereignty and governance structures specific to the Muscogee.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was this change of pace \u2014 180 [degrees] from MIT, completely,\u201d Wang reflects. At MIT, she says, course instructors routinely prepare students for big technical challenges, but there are fewer opportunities to \u201cwork with communities, [learn] how to think about the cultural and historical dimensions of the work, or how to consider the people who will be affected.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wang\u2019s supervisor, epidemiologist Breanna McNaughton-Long, was effusive about Wang and Sun\u2019s engagement. \u201cThey were instrumental. They did so much work that I don’t think we would have been able to do as quickly,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd they brought this sense that we were doing something that mattered.\u201d<\/p>\n
Experiential learning at the confluence of humanities and engineering\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Wang was one of 10 MIT undergraduates to participate in the\u00a0PKG Center for Social Impact\u2019s\u00a02026\u00a0Code.Tulsa program. Now in its second year, Code.Tulsa is made possible by support from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation and the George Kaiser Family Foundation.\u00a0<\/p>\n Students live at the University of Tulsa for the summer. They intern with the Muscogee and Cherokee nations, as well as local nonprofits Black Tech Street and Urban Coders Guild, completing AI, data science, and other technical projects.\u00a0<\/p>\n The PKG Center\u2019s assistant dean for community-based programs, Vippy Yee, complements students\u2019 professional experience with education on the historical and cultural significance of tech-based development in the Tulsa region from the perspective of local leaders.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAs with all PKG Center programming, our aim is to help students integrate an engineer\u2019s approach to problem-solving with a humanist lens on the nature of social challenges, and by extension interventions,\u201d says Alison Badgett, the PKG Center\u2019s director.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cGetting to speak to people who were either very educated on the issues or have experienced them has been a massive help in reshaping the way that I think about social issues,\u201d says Chenise Harper, an electrical engineering with computing major who interned with the Urban Coders Guild.\u00a0<\/p>\n Harper puts this dynamic candidly: \u201cI hated history, but I learned a lot about why it is useful for making social change and how to go about researching it. I now feel a lot more confident that I can make an impact.\u201d<\/p>\n A student\u2019s vision for increasing STEM access<\/strong><\/p>\n Code.Tulsa was the brainchild of sophomore Jack Carson, an electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) student who approached the PKG Center with the idea for Code.Tulsa as an incoming first-year student. Carson, who is from Tulsa and a member of the Cherokee Nation, saw firsthand that rural Native students who could benefit greatly from STEM education were unlikely to have access to it. Carson proposed developing a weeklong STEM camp for members of federally recognized tribes held at the University of Tulsa, with he and Code.Tulsa interns serving as instructors.\u00a0<\/p>\n Carson devised a nomination system to attract promising high school students, selecting 25 campers from 10 tribes out of 160 applications representing 25 Native nations.\u00a0<\/p>\n To develop the curriculum, Carson enlisted Harvard University student Allie Zong, whom he had met at Campus Preview Weekend. The\u00a0Tulsa Advanced Sciences Camp (TASC) offers intensive, interactive track time in AI engineering, DNA technology, physics, and chemistry and energy. This is complemented by philosophical workshops to help students think more ambitiously and deliberately about what they can and should achieve in the near and long term. As Zong explains, \u201cWe teach them not knowledge, but curiosity, and the skills to teach themselves.”<\/p>\n The TASC experience \u201ckind of propelled me to self-study calculus,\u201d says Alyssa Theofanidis, a rising high school senior from Houston who is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Theofanidis participated in the camp\u2019s first year, returning this summer as a teaching assistant. Like many TASC campers, Theofanidis is eager to use her developing STEM expertise to benefit her Native community.\u00a0<\/p>\n TASC \u201cgot us to think 1,000 times more ambitiously about the impact we could have,\u201d said another camper, who was inspired by guest speakers \u201clike the nuclear fusion person at the top of their field,\u201d referring to physicist Alexandra LeViness of\u00a0MIT spinout Commonwealth Fusion Systems, who helped develop TASC\u2019s chemistry and energy track. Campers were also inspired by \u201cthe different worldviews\u201d of MIT interns. \u201cI thought, maybe this is what MIT looks like,\u201d said one camper, with several expressing the intent to apply to MIT as a result of the camp.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. also delivered remarks at TASC, encouraging students as future leaders to take a public interest in technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTechnology can be used for good, or it can be used for harm. Your generation has the opportunity to bend that arc toward something good,\u201d Hoskin said. \u201cIt’s a very special relationship that the Cherokee Nation has with MIT. As we reach out a hand in friendship, we have a hand reaching back. We are thankful for Cherokee citizen Jack Carson, a former secretary for the Cherokee Nation tribal youth council, for his leadership role in organizing this effort.\u201d<\/p>\n Making a positive long-term social impact\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Like TASC campers, Code.Tulsa interns came away from the experience motivated to make a positive impact. While most MIT students won\u2019t go on to full-time professional roles traditionally associated with social impact, PKG Center programming like Code.Tulsa helps students recognize they can promote the public interest no matter their career. As Elvis Chipiro, a junior in computer science and engineering, reflected after interning with the Cherokee Nation, \u201cSocial impact is not separate from mainstream technology; rather, it is embedded in the choices engineers make every day \u2026 Ultimately, meaningful social change is not driven by technology alone, but by people willing to design systems with empathy, responsibility, and inclusion at the center.\u201d<\/p>\n For others, Code.Tulsa helps them reconnect with a sense of public purpose. \u201cRemembering that \u2026 I could use my MIT education to help others was a big reason I applied to MIT in the first place,\u201d says Harper. \u201cBut I forgot my own mission in the stress of school. Code.Tulsa really re-opened my eyes to why I am here.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When MIT mechanical engineering student Daphne Wang arrived for her internship at the Muscogee Creek Nation Department of Health in Tulsa, Oklahoma last summer, she expected to be writing code. To her surprise, she found herself analyzing tribal history and the implications for technical innovation.\u00a0 \u201cI learned so much that I think should be required […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4518,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}