{"id":71402,"date":"2023-05-21T08:59:30","date_gmt":"2023-05-21T12:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/?p=71402"},"modified":"2024-03-20T16:28:51","modified_gmt":"2024-03-20T20:28:51","slug":"innovating-to-change-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/innovating-to-change-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Innovating to change the world"},"content":{"rendered":"
Ana Rico (COM`24)<\/h6>\n

Born and raised in New York City, Shateva Long (CAS \u201823) has been inseparable from her computer since she can remember. After participating in a Girls Who Code program in high school, which revolved around video game design, she discovered her passion for coding, and decided to come to Boston University as a Computer Science major.<\/p>\n

Upon arriving at BU, Shateva discovered that studying Computer Science was not, in fact, video game design. Rather than the coding experience she had initially expected, the curriculum had a more theoretical and math-based approach. Nonetheless, as someone who had always loved math, she enjoyed the problem-solving challenges.<\/p>\n

\"Shateva<\/p>\n

\u201cI always wanted to build something,\u201d says Shateva. \u201cbut in my courses I couldn\u2019t find a lot of project-based learning.\u201d As a very hands-on person, she couldn\u2019t shake the feeling that something was missing from her college experience.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where BU Spark! came in, a BU initiative to support student-driven projects related to computer science and engineering. During her sophomore year, Shateva joined their Innovation Fellowship Program, and took the role of team lead, which gave her the opportunity to start her own project.<\/p>\n

And, motivated by a conversation Shateva had with a BU student who was confused about the Black Lives Matter movement, Shateva came up with an innovative idea. After diving into articles about the movement, she realized that the majority of the authors\u2019 own perceptions and biases would creep into their descriptions. She decided to create a tool to combat bias, as well as to help other students learn about bias and reflect about their own experiences.<\/p>\n

Along with two other CAS developers, and a CFA UX designer, Shateva launched B (or Bias) Scanner, which allows users to copy and paste text found on the Internet into the app, where it is scanned to identify potential words or phrases that could exhibit racial bias. Shateva\u2019s group received the first $2,000 Spark! Equity Innovation Fellowship, funded by a grant that supports students working on innovation projects that address issues related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and antiracism.<\/p>\n

\"Shateva<\/p>\n

\u201cRacial bias is found all throughout medical textbooks and it is negatively affecting the lives of women of color, especially Black women. Even outside of textbooks, I see this bias and it is impacting the way information is being digested,\u201d Shateva said at the time. \u201cMy classmate was expressing their confusion with the Black Lives Matter movement and claimed that the sources they read had conflicting information. The first thing I thought was, how can I fix this?\u201d<\/p>\n

Shateva\u2019s dedication to diversity and inclusion work didn\u2019t stop there. Together with a friend, she created the Black Policy Initiative, a project supported by then-Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore, aimed at empowering black students, and involving them in the decision-making processes on campus.<\/p>\n

Her dedication to DEI was further fueled by a personal experience involving two friends who, despite not looking anything alike, were able to unlock each other’s phones due to their similar skin tones. Curious by this, Shateva researched and discovered that this is something that mostly happens to people with darker skin.<\/p>\n

This motivated her to combine her passion for DEI with her love for technology, and create the DEI Tech Collective. This student initiative tries to hold tech leaders accountable and make sure no one is pushing DEI down their priority list.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cWe don\u2019t see much change, because people don\u2019t believe that change is needed,\u201d says Shateva. \u201cProgress can be achieved faster if we just include everyone. I\u2019m not talking only about color, I\u2019m talking about different abilities, backgrounds, and socio-economic status.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shateva\u2019s journey has been marked by many occasions where she has stepped up as a leader, in both the technology world and as a first-generation college student \u2014 from serving as a computer science ambassador and a code instructor, to being a peer mentor for the FY101 First Generation Students section. \u201cI\u2019ve noticed that I always tend to take leadership roles, even when I try not to,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Together with some friends, Shateva also initiated the Age of Advocacy initiative, a program dedicated to supporting middle school women of color during their transition to high school, by engaging them in projects through a social justice lens.<\/p>\n

After four years at BU, Shateva believes that the Computer Science curriculum really made her a \u201cbetter thinker,\u201d and Bu Spark! helped her discover her career path. She is now ready to start working in Redmond, Washington, as a project manager at Microsoft. Shateva is excited to experience life after college, while she keeps trying to make a difference regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of my great experience here, I feel ready to go,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ana Rico (COM`24) Born and raised in New York City, Shateva Long (CAS \u201823) has been inseparable from her computer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20868,"featured_media":71404,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[545,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71402"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20868"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71402"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71567,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71402\/revisions\/71567"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}