In 1951, Langston Hughes, in his poem “Harlem,” asked the question of what happens to a dream deferred. Does it dry up? Fester? Does it become rotten, crust over, sag from its weight, or explode? As a teen reading that poem, which I still hold dear, I tried to imagine his words. Then, as a student, I always preferred words over numbers because my mind could make words come to life. As an adult, I now understand that numbers in the minds of a scientist, an engineer, and a mathematician have just as much potential to come to life. STEM makes an impact.
My Mother’s Impact on My Love for STEM
Growing up, my mother was a lead computer operator. She worked in a civil service position for the Department of the Navy. The times that I could see where she worked were amazing to me. I knew this place was special because I had to pass through a special security station to enter the building and security doors to enter each room. As an elementary school-aged child, it was hard to understand everything that was happening there.
In her work area, the rooms were always cold. Each room was packed with giant computers. There were computers everywhere. In fact, there were computers against every wall. There were computers divided into aisles. The sound of the hum from the machines was loud. As a child, I thought hundreds of computers had to be in each room.
The Mind’s Eye
As you read this, I’m sure your mind is picturing a room full of desktop computers or laptops. You might even think there are tablet devices spread around on tabletops. Nope, not so. These machines were IBM magnetic tape drive computers. They stood over six feet tall, two feet wide, and four and a half feet deep. They were built to store information on reels of magnetic tape. These reels were 10.5 inches in diameter, about an inch wide, and held 2,400 feet of tape.
[That is a lot of tape. Imagine this: you have a friend hold the reel and stand with their feet on the white line of the end zone while facing the opposite end of a football field. You grab the beginning of the roll of magnetic tape and hold onto it as you run to the opposite end of the football field. There is enough magnetic tape on one reel for you to run from end zone to end zone eight times!]
The Hum of Machines
My mother and her coworkers would type commands on the keyboards that were connected to small monitors. The monitors at this time were not colorful like they are today. The screens were usually black, and the letters were either white or green. In addition to the letters, they also included slashes, colons, and other characters to give commands to the computers. There were shelves upon shelves of the reels stored on specially designed cabinets in the room. It was also a part of their job to exchange the reels on the machines throughout the day.
Just imagine a room full of these machines the size of refrigerators. Not to mention the room felt like a refrigerator. When I close my eyes, I can still feel the chill of the air and hear the hum of the machines as they work.
Today, technology has advanced farther than anyone back then could’ve imagined. A one-terabyte (TB) thumb drive can hold more data than one room of those computers. A smartphone can do more calculations and hold more data than a room of those machines could do in a day. Someone back then had a vision, or a dream, of improving beyond what was currently possible. Yesterday’s ceilings have become today’s foundation.
Settling My Future in STEM
Years later, my mother tried to convince me to change my major in college to something that involved computer science. At the time, the government was hiring college graduates with degrees in the computer field and paying them better than they were paying my mother. Needless to say, I didn’t listen. I graduated with honors from Norfolk State University with a Bachelor of Science in Mass Communications. Later, I began a career in law enforcement. Though my life has taken a path I never imagined it would take, and in a field outside of my degree, I credit my education as the key that unlocked the opportunities for my future.
In July 2003, during a speech commemorating the launch of a program to improve education and health care in South Africa, Nelson Mandela said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Technology has caused the world to change in ways and at a speed never before seen in human history; however, education, and its influence, have been the catalyst for technology’s growth.
As a child, then a teen, and a young adult, I changed my mind more times than I could count about what I wanted to do as a career. I wrote poems but couldn’t rap or sing. I wasn’t star-athlete material. Math wasn’t my strongest subject. Still, in hindsight, the natural gifts I did have offered me more opportunities and options than I was aware of. The problem I had, and I’m sure others today may face, is not having a broad enough view of the landscape of options the world at the time and the future offered.
My Father’s Impact on my Love for STEM
My father was born in 1947 and was the eighth child of the twelve. For my father, his landscape was a lot different when he grew up. He was born on the rural eastern shore of Maryland, in a small, two-bedroom house surrounded by farmland. He and his eleven siblings grew up sleeping head to foot in two beds, split between the boys and the girls. The children shared clothes, which included using patches to cover holes and using pieces of cardboard to cover a hole in the bottom of their shoes.
To feed their family, my grandmother would gather wild greens that grew by the roadside, and my grandfather would slaughter the livestock he had in the backyard. In addition to going to school, he and his siblings would work in the neighboring farms and production plants doing odd jobs, including harvesting crops, cleaning chicken coops, as well as labeling and filling canned vegetables.
He once told me that he only saw two ways of starting a career to move outside of rural Maryland, either become a teacher or a minister. During that era, there were not many schools to choose from for minority students. When my father finished high school and looked to further his education, there were no student loans available to help with tuition. In order to pay for school, he worked, and his older siblings who had finished college and begun careers sent money home to help the next set of students get their education. Of the twelve children, one died from illness at a young age, and the other eleven all received college educations.
My Father’s Dream
As a child, his dream was to one day become a physical education teacher one day. To make that dream come true, he enrolled at Norfolk State Division of Virginia State College, now Norfolk State University. In 1969, he earned his degree and began a forty-year career as an elementary school physical education teacher for Virginia Beach Public Schools. After many years of being retired, he still hears from former students who thank him for his impact on their lives, some of which he taught the parent and their children.
Though my career path has not taken me directly down a path in STEM or as an educator as my parents did, I still draw from their experiences in hopes of helping others. Like a relay race, my parents and their generation ran their laps in the race and passed the baton to me and those in my generation. And now that it is my turn to run, I am holding the baton firm, not just so I don’t drop it, but to make sure it is ready to be passed to the builders of tomorrow.
Helping the Builders of Tomorrow with STEM
Like my mother, I want to help the builders of tomorrow have their hands in the technology of today and ask the question, “What can we do better?” I want to push them to take advantage of the wealth of educational resources that are available, so they can gain the knowledge and skills to answer that question.
Also, like my father, I want to encourage the builders of tomorrow to dream big. Get a vision of their dream. Draw it out. Write it down. Pursue it. What was once thought to be impossible was disproven when it became possible. What was once thought to only exist in our imaginations has become tangible. Right now, someone’s dream is waiting to be released from their thoughts to benefit the whole world.
In the same way that educational opportunities have expanded, so too has financial support to assist students to reach their goals and achieve their dreams. For example, I am the president of the Suffolk Education Foundation, a non-profit organization that raises funds to help graduating seniors pay for college and awards grants to teachers for innovations in the classroom. We fund these projects not just through the generosity of our donors and supporters, but also due to their desire to provide opportunities for the builders of our tomorrows.
The Suffolk Education Foundation and STEM
The Suffolk Education Foundation seeks to support opportunities for students to learn in new and innovative ways. This last year, we funded 16 instructional grant applications from teachers seeking funding for classroom innovations. There were many types of projects but the ones that excited me the most were STEM-related. Through these innovations, the teachers are allowing the students to be introduced to and put their hands on technology earlier, including opportunities like robotics, engineering, and problem-solving. These early introductions are the planted seeds that can blossom into interests in the STEM field.
STEM disciplines walk hand-in-hand with the law enforcement profession. One of the most visible ways is the Crime Scene Investigator (CSI). Though they have received their fame on television shows, the job is a lot less glamorous and a lot more important. The CSI’s job is to go to crime scenes and collect all the evidence, no matter how small or seemingly unimportant, to help lead the investigators to the true culprit. CSIs use many scientific means of gathering, testing, and proving the collected evidence, and at times, in ingenious ways.
For example, the first CSI to work for the City of Suffolk Police Department was a Black woman, Joan K. Jones. She was hired by the police department in 1996 after working as a fingerprint examiner for the FBI. She processed all types of crime scenes, from burglaries and robberies to murders and more. Through the years of being on the front line, Joan has so many stories to tell.
A Fascinating Case
One case that sticks out from her experience was an armed robbery at a fast-food restaurant. Three men entered the restaurant just before closing and shared two burgers, fries, and a drink. Five minutes before closing, the men threw away the remainder of their food and robbed the restaurant at gunpoint. A witness saw the men running away and called the police. Moments later, the police arrived, and even with the descriptions of the men, they were unable to locate them. When Joan arrived and gathered the information about what happened, she learned that the trashcans were emptied right before the men threw away their trash. That means the only items left in the trashcan belonged to the robbers. Now, normally evidence is placed in a paper bag to preserve it.
However, this posed a bit of a dilemma because the food would rot and permeate through the bag, undeniably destroying any trace amount of DNA evidence. Instead, Joan used a plastic bag to protect the evidence. She quickly took the evidence to her office and placed it in a freezer, and the next day she took it to the lab to be tested.
A Job Well Done
As a result of Joan’s meticulous actions and ingenuity, the lab was able to find fingerprints on the paper wrappers, the fry box, and the lid of the drink cup. Surprisingly, the lab was even able to get DNA from the saliva of the partially eaten burger. You could say the culprits didn’t get to “have it their way” that evening. The fingerprints were compared to the files the police had in their database, but unfortunately, no matches were found. However, not all hope was lost. When the DNA from the burger was entered into the system, the police were able to identify and apprehend the three suspects.
What the Criminal Justice System Relies On
The success of the criminal justice system relies heavily on the groundwork done by CSIs, detectives, crime analysts, fingerprint technicians, and patrolmen. STEM careers are drastically improving and shaping the criminal justice system on a daily basis, creating alternate avenues for investigative techniques, evidence collection, preservation, prosecution, and convictions. To be able to positively identify a criminal through the work of these STEM fields is critical in the criminal justice system as a whole. This positive evolution of investigative techniques allows the system to try the correct individual, eliminating the rate of false convictions and ensuring a just and fair trial. The justice system relies on the amazing skills and abilities of these STEM- based individuals to help ensure that justice is had by all.
Unfortunately, for many justice is just a dream. But, it doesn’t have to be.
STEM Dreamers of Today
Today, there are dreamers who wish to be lawyers, business owners, servicemen and women, and more. There are also those who wish to shape tomorrow through medicine, science, public safety, and technology. Yesterday’s dreamers made their dreams a reality for today. So, today’s dreamers, you, can build us a better tomorrow.
In the poem “Dreams,” Langston Hughes says, “Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.” Today, if the wings of our dreams are going to reach the future, education is the wind on which those wings will fly. The future is waiting. Opportunities are waiting. The builders of our tomorrow are traveling the paths of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Today’s leaders are waiting to coordinate the meeting between the builder’s abilities and the future’s opportunities.
About the Author
MAJOR DAVID MILES
Major David Miles is an honor graduate of Norfolk State University where he received a B.S. in Mass Communications in 2001. He began his law enforcement career in 2006 with the Virginia Beach Sheriff’s Office, where he gained valuable experience in correctional and court operations.
In 2015, in order to serve in the community in which he resides, he transitioned to the Suffolk Sheriff’s Office where he has faithfully served the city and citizens of Suffolk. Major Miles was appointed to Chief Deputy in 2019 and is the recipient of the FBI-LEEDA Trilogy Award. In order to build bridges between law enforcement and the community, Major Miles is a part of various community organizations and is the president of the Suffolk Education Foundation.
