#nsbeprofessionals

On February 27th, the NSBE Professional Chapter of Memphis hosted the NSBE AWFE (A Walk For Education) community outreach event at the historical Orange Mound Community Center. 

A Walk for Education, established in 2002, is an annual program held in many cities across the country. This program is part of an international effort by NSBE to increase the pipeline of qualified minorities into STEM disciplines. 

The purpose of AWFE is to increase awareness of the opportunities available through education, particularly in the STEM fields, and to increase African American participation in math, science, engineering, and other technological careers. This is a grassroots effort in which NSBE members walk door-to-door in an underserved community and disseminate information about post-secondary educational opportunities in the area, scholarships, SAT/ACT preparation, NSBE, GED programs, enrollment/acceptance information for local colleges, financial aid applications, and the benefits of majoring in STEM disciplines.

This year, the first annual AWFE Memphis, sponsored by AllWorld Project Management, took place in the Orange Mound community. NSBE members and volunteers walked through this community from 9:30AM to noon, handing out educational materials and brand new backpacks to students who were interested in engineering and sciences. Following the walk, students, families, and neighbors were invited to the Orange Mound Community Center for a complimentary lunch and college fair. Students in 3rd through 12th grades had the opportunity to speak with local engineers and engage in hands-on engineering activities.

From the University of Memphis NSBE Chapter, David Oppong (Engineering Council Liaison), Rachel Alexander (Treasurer), Lara Bollock (Vice President), and I (Public Relations Chair), volunteered at the event. General members of NSBE, Aaliyah Jatta (Civil Engineering Major), and William Ray Ross (Engineering Technology Major), also took time out to volunteer and support the cause by help setting up tables, serving food, and walking in the neighborhoods, passing out pamphlets and other valuable information about STEM programs. 

At the event, there were demonstrations performed by different student organizations from the University of Memphis. The Society of Physics Students did a demonstration based on inertia. The Biomedical Engineering Society/ Society For Biomaterials did a demonstration involving alginate hydrogel. The Society of Automotive Engineers brought their Tiger Baja Car, assembled it, and let the young children took a spin on it (with adult supervision of course). My advisor, Kriangsiri Malasri (also known as Top), did a demonstration where he taught the audience how to create an app.

The event went really well and everyone had lots of fun! It is always nice to give back to the community.

Here are some pics from the event:

That is Ken Moody, the Keynote Speaker for the NSBE AWFE event. Ken Moody currently serves as a Special Assistant to Mayor Strickland. Moody earned an Associate’s Degree in Computer Science from Connors State College. He then earned a BA in Sociology from Memphis State University, where he was also a member of the men’s basketball team. He went on to earn an Executive MBA from the University of Memphis.

Here is the President of the NSBE Professional Chapter of Memphis, John Brito, giving an award to Mr. Moody for his outstanding dedication to improving the City of Memphis.

Here is my friend, Kevin Williams (Computer Science Major) and I, representing the medical device startup, 1Body Medical (which I will explain in a future post).

The Grizzlies Grannies and Grandpas delivered an exciting performance at the 2016 AWFE Memphis. This energetic bunch of ladies and gentlemen are over fifty and are still rocking and rolling! The Grizzlies Grannies and Grandpas entertain fans at Grizzlies home games like no other group can.

This is Dr. Reginald Archer from Tennessee State University. He is the National Professionals Region III Chair of NSBE. He was at the AWFE event and thought it was a unique way to give back to the community. 

Overall, I enjoyed myself and I liked spending time with the NSBE Professionals of Memphis. They sure are a fun group to be around. 

Remember, future STEM majors! It is always good to volunteer and help out your community! You never know what kind of people you will meet or what good opportunities it can give you! But the most important thing is the satisfaction of making others feel content. Seeing other people smile makes me smile and I am always willing to volunteer whenever I have the free time.

Hope you all enjoyed reading this post. 

-Herve Aniglo

How is everything going?

I hope your finals went well! This past semester, I met so many new and wonderful people and I increased my professional networking circle tremendously. 

Remember you all. During your college years, make sure you network, network, NETWORK! 

This past semester, I had numerous lunch meetings with professionals and I gained a lot of knowledge and words of wisdom that I can apply to to my future career and in life. 

That is one advice that I would give you all. In the future, when you are in college, set up a personal one-on-one meeting time with a professional who is in the field of your desire and take this opportunity to learn from them. You do not necessarily have to learn only about their career, but you can learn about their triumphs and struggles as well. They can impart what they learn from their experiences and mistakes to you, so you do not have to go through what they have been through and make the same mistakes they have made. 

Take these chances to know more about them, their background, their childhood, hobbies, schooling years, future goals and aspirations, etc. Hopefully, you might acquire a mentor or multiple mentors. Also, feel free to network and have one-on-one meetings with people from different and diverse fields! This past semester, I had lunch meetings with Mechanical Engineers, Process Engineers, Environmental Scientists, IT Project Managers, etc. Do not be afraid to interact with someone who is in a different field. You never know what you might learn from them.  

You all, I felt that I had learned a lot and grown a lot this semester. Both in-class and outside the class. I had so many good moments that has happen to me but I cannot list them all. I mentioned most of my good moments in my previous blog posts.

Well, this semester, I volunteered a lot and that is something I plan to do when I grow old and retire. Volunteering is a good way to give back to your community and help those who are in need of a helping hand. 

One thing that I am most proud of is the fact that I got an early membership into the NSBE Memphis Professional Chapter. Why is that so special you ask? You know how I got into that? I attended almost all of the social events and meetings they have held this semester. The executive board members noticed my determination to represent the University of Memphis NSBE chapter. With that being said, most of them invited me to be part of numerous committees within the organization such as membership, public relations, programming, NSBE Jr, etc. This is a good thing because ALL of the NSBE Memphis Professional Chapter members are actual engineers in the workforce, not young college students such as I. As a senior who is going to graduate next semester, this is a very good honor to receive. Instead of having to wait until I graduate to join, I am part of the chapter already. 

That is why it is good to network and stand out from your peers! I was the only one from my chapter at the University of Memphis who attended the most meetings of the NSBE Memphis Professional Chapter and look at what it has given me! I also had the opportunity to have lunch meetings with them and learn a lot from them and their experiences.

Here are some pics of me at the meetings:

Now, the reason why I have named the title of this post “Looking Back, Moving Forward” is because we all learn from our mistakes and successes. The struggle and obstacles that we experience in our journey and on our road to success happens for a reason. We endure them then learn from them in order to make ourselves stronger and not go down the same road and make the same mistake again.

More importantly, we go through these things and learn from them so we can pass down these words of wisdom and knowledge to the next generation and our future children.

That is me and David Otunga. He came to the University of Memphis and, as part of an event hosted by SAC (Student Activities Council), he gave us a speech. David told us about his humble background, his hardships and triumphs, and how he came to be the man that he is today. 

David learns a lot from everybody that he has ever met and instills those lessons to his personal life. He is not afraid to learn different things. Also, he mentioned that he broke the stereotype of being a buff jock. By that, he mentioned that people would see him and automatically be afraid of him or think he is uneducated and unintelligent. But he proves them wrong once he speaks. This applies to you future STEM majors! 

Break the stereotypes of being an engineer or a scientist! Do not let the media or what people think prevent you from being yourself or define you in any way, shape, or form. Pursue what you are interested in but most of all, be happy with what you have chose. Go out and live your life and show the world how bright and unique you are!

I am so glad I got the opportunity to meet him. Its not everyday you get to meet a celebrity. 

I also made a new friend at this event. His name is Jalen Wilson and he is currently a computer science freshmen. We both vowed to be as intelligent and fit like David Otunga in the future, lol. 

Well, with finals out of the way, I am ready for the next semester! And I am also ready for my volunteer abroad trip to Costa Rica! I leave tomorrow, December 12th.

I hope everyone is prepared for the next semester and ready to become as excellent as they can be! I wish you safe travels, a very wonderful Christmas, and a joyous and blessed New Years!

And Remember: Don’t ever be afraid to try something new, learn something new, or ask for help. You are benefiting yourself in the long run. If you want to succeed in life and live a good life, then there is no problem in asking for help.

This is me and my very intelligent and hardworking Computer Engineering friend, Steven Duncan. We got some pizza and pasta after our East High School Ice Cream Party. A good way to celebrate a job well done on finals and a good way to end the semester on a good note. This is one of my highlights of 2015, because with our busy schedules, its hard to sit down, have lunch, and unwind from the stresses of school. But luckily, school was over for us and we made time to hang out and just talk about life. 

“I’m one of those people who think I can learn something from everybody.”                                                                                       -David Otunga

-Herve Aniglo

Greetings, bright and future scholars! Last week, the NSBE(National Society of Black Engineers) Region III had their Fall Regional Conference here at the Hilton Hotel in Memphis, TN. The conference went on from Friday, November 6th to Sunday, November 8th.

Before I went to the event on Friday, I volunteered at White Station High School for their NSBE Takeover Event. T.O.R.C.H (Technical Outreach Community Help) is a NSBE program which gives outreach opportunities that impact non-NSBE members and NSBE members alike. The purpose of T.O.R.C.H is to show how science and engineering can be fun through the demonstration of engaging and interactive STEM projects. This event was also in collaboration with the Navy. We had some representatives demonstrate STEM activities to the students and give a talk about what it is like to be in the Navy. 

The event was fun. Using buttons, a piece of wood, and a balloon, I taught the students how to build a car with the balloon as a propeller so that it can move in any direction. 

When I attended the event, I was the only NSBE representative from the University of Memphis. However, I met some NSBE representatives and STEM students from other universities outside of Memphis such as Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, University of Central Florida, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Mercer University.

Here is a group picture I took.

I enjoyed the short time I had with these guys. We mostly talked about our childhood and the good ole days when life was stress-free and the only things we had to worry about was completing video games and waiting for new episodes of our favorite TV shows to premiere. But along with that, we talked about our college experiences, why we chose our major, what we are learning from college, and how it is shaping us to be mature and responsible adults. I wished our interaction was longer though, but I enjoyed the brief time nonetheless.

After the NSBE Takeover Event was over, I changed clothes and took me and my friend Kareem DaSilva to the Conference. Here is us on Friday, November 6th.

Nothing much happened on Friday, but Kareem and I managed to network with new people both from the city and outside of the city. That night, at 9:30PM, we entered the 1st Annual NSBE Region III FRC Hackathon! 

Now, for those of you who do not remember or know what a Hackathon is. A Hackathon is an event where groups of people come together to collaborate on programming, software, and hardware projects. Sometimes, a Hackathon is a competition with prizes, but other times it is not. The last Hackathon I went to was 3 days long. This Hackathon was 12 hours. From 9:30PM to 9:30PM.

Now, at this Hackathon, we were given a scenario where the NSBEconnect website disappeared from the world. There are no backups and it would take too long to create a substitute website. We are given 12 hours to create a mobile platform that would take the place of NSBEconnect. Our software must include user interface, a mapping system (geoanalytics), user profiles, and a registration system. 

At first, I wanted to build a website using Bootstrap, HTML, jQuery, CSS, Javascript, PHP, JAVA and Ruby on Rails. But Kareem told me a better (and easier and quicker) idea to solve the problem: Build An App! 

Prior to this, I had no experience in app development. I mean some of the syntax were similar to web development and other programming projects I have done before but this was an entirely new and different way of coding to me. 

So, this is my first time developing an app and we created an iOS app for iPhones. Kareem wanted to build an iOS app and I went with that idea. One of the problems we had was that I had a Windows laptop but I needed a macbook to create an iOS app. Luckily, Kareem had one and it was tough taking turns with one laptop but we managed to make it work.

So Kareem and I stayed up until 2:30 in the morning building this app, then we left and went home to get some sleep. I woke up from my nap, sent Kareem some code to test so he can test the app on his macbook and he said that everything worked well and he submitted the final project.............at 6:30AM.

So, Saturday, November 7th was a very busy day for me and I only had 4 hours of sleep. I woke up, got ready and volunteered at Dunn Hall, the Computer Science Department at the University of Memphis. NSBE was having a PCI(Pre-College Initiative) Computer Science Department Tour at the U of M. I helped instruct pre-college students on programming practices and getting used to and understanding the concept of a computer being told everything you tell it to do based on the code you have written. We used the example of telling a human being to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The students thought it was amusing seeing a human pretend to be a computer and take everything literally and make mistakes on making a sandwich based on what they were told to do literally. 

After I was done, I picked up Kareem and we went to the FRC. That morning, I was part of a panel where my fellow STEM Ambassadors(Rachel Stein, Corinna Carter, Michaih Ley Bayani, Caitlin Mcgrath, David LeVine, Jordan Avery, and Julianne Nelson) and I talked about our majors, college experiences, and what we learned from high school that prepared us for college. The audience were high school students and it was nice answering all of their questions and encouraging and motivating them to follow their dreams and future goals. 

Afterwards, I attended a talk given by Jean Blanc, Public Relations Chair of the Memphis NSBE Professional Chapter. He talked about relocation for a job and the benefits and downfalls that may come with it. It was a good talk. Learned new things about making a decision on whether I want to move out of Memphis or not and what factors I should consider. Jean was born in Haiti, but raised in Boston, Massachusetts. He moved to Memphis for a job opportunity as a Technical Liaison Engineer at Thomas and Betts and he loved living in Memphis ever since. He is also one of my mentors. Here is a picture of us.

To the left of me is Jean and to the right of me is Quincy Beasley, the PCI(Pre-Collegiate Initiative) Chair of the Memphis NSBE Professional Chapter. (Jean and I were helping out at the NSBE. Jr. meeting last month and I am going to assist Quincy again this weekend for this month’s NSBE Jr. meeting).

After Jean’s presentation, I went to the FRC Career Fair and passed out my resume to many employers such as ThoughtWorks, a global technology company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois and Google (Yes, Google was there!).

After that, Kareem and I got ready for our Hackathon Presentation! I was a bit nervous but everything turned out surprisingly well and we impressed the judges! Our app included a login/registration form, geoanalytics, event planning, statistics, a password saving system, etc. We went above and beyond the other participants in the Hackathon. And we worked on this app for a total of 9 hours straight! We did not even get a chance to eat.

Later, at the closing ceremony, they announced the winners of the 1st Annual NSBE FRC Hackathon. Guess what? 

WE WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kareem and I were so happy and glad.

Here is us working on the app the night before.

Here is us with Karl Reid, the Executive Director of NSBE. He congratulated us for winning 1st place in the Hackathon and told us that we represented the University of Memphis very well.

We also got an invitation to continue working on the app at the NSBE Headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, during the summer as an internship opportunity. Also, we received another invitation to showcase our app at the National Conference in Boston, Massachusetts along with Danielle Jones, a PhD Computer Science student from the University of Memphis.   

I could not have won the Hackathon without Kareem. He is actually an app developer at the Crews Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Memphis. He created his own app before and posted it on Google Play Services. He is even developing an app right now. He has prior experience of app development and guided me throughout the development of our app, pointed me in the right direction, and helped me in every way he could. We both accomplished something amazing and are satisfied with the results. Together, we created the NSBEMobile App! 

The programming languages that were used in the building of this app was Objective C and Swift. Swift is similar to Javascript, which I had previous experience in and was not all that hard to learn because of the similar syntax. 

All in all, we had a good time! Enjoy the pictures below!

This is the University of Memphis NSBE Chapter President, Sidney Babalola, and John Brito, the President of the Memphis NSBE Professional Chapter.

This is Sidney and Marsalas Whitaker, the president of the University of Memphis NSBE chapter before Sidney. Marsalas was a former Biomedical Engineering major at the University of Memphis but he is now an entrepreneur and co-founder of SweetBio, a biotechnical startup that specializes in making membranes for oral tissue regeneration.

This is me and Sidney.

(Left to Right) This is Kareem, me, John Brito (President of the NSBE Professional Chapter), George Eason (He is in the back. He is the President of the NSBE Chapter at Christian Brothers University), William Yates (Treasurer of the NSBE Professional Chapter), and Grace Johnson-Bann (Secretary of the NSBE Professional Chapter).

I am glad I attended the conference and I am glad I gave Kareem the chance to attend it. Listen up, future scholars! Do not ever limit yourself to anything! Kareem and I created an app within 12 hours. If we can do that, then you can do it too. NEVER SAY NEVER. Believe in yourself and you will discover your true potential and propel to greater heights and achieve the proud sensation of success!

The future is looking bright for all of you STEM Majors. I guarantee it. As long as you make the right decisions, stay motivated and optimistic, you will be on the path towards greatness.

-Herve Aniglo