• Jackie Ricciardi

    Staff photojournalist

    Portrait of Jackie Ricciardi

    Jackie Ricciardi is a staff photojournalist at BU Today and Bostonia magazine. She has worked as a staff photographer at newspapers that include the Augusta Chronicle in Augusta, Ga., and at Seacoast Media Group in Portsmouth, N.H., where she was twice named New Hampshire Press Photographer of the Year. Profile

Comments & Discussion

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There are 9 comments on Where I’m Coming From

  1. I am constantly seeing a lack of black men at MET Computer Science and in the industry as a whole. Their disproportionate underrepresentation is very worrisome.

    I also have to say I am extremely bothered by seeing 20+ years of thought leaders attacking the underrepresentation of women in STEM, and saying little or nothing about the underrepresentation of blacks. I have plenty of women in my CS courses at Met, and a good number of Hispanic, but practically no American blacks. My students of African ancestry have virtually all been immigrants. I’m missing a whole piece of America in my classes.

    1. I have found Africans to value education and appreciate the chance to study sciences. American blacks don’t take stem classes in hs and this holds them back from these courses incollege. STEM courses are hard and require a
      lot more time than courses such as sociology or race.
      I don’t know how to improve thenumbers except to start stem courses in elementary school and keep after these kids.

    2. I am equally concerned about lack of AFrican Americans in STEM. It is glaring across all disciplines. As a product of the 80s and 90s I think there is competition for their attention, particularly the perceived pathway to “getting paid”. And I’m not talking in the illegal sense…sports and entertainment have co-opted the minds and passions of young Blacks in America. These are perceived as easier paths to money, success, and noteriety even though they are more difficult and unpredictable paths than earning degrees in STEM fields. We need to rethink how we engage young Black students and brand STEM education/careers.

    3. I also think the issue is also systemic and includes issues of funding. When I look across public high schools many don’t have the funding to provide hands on interactive science classes. I think the opportunity to see science as tangible is a problem across the US. Also the issue starts from elementary school, as I toured schools for my 5 year old son I asked about their science programming and so many of them had generic curriculum that were add ons that the teachers did. There was no administrator who was thinking about the trajectory from a meta level.

  2. The underrepresentation is an important issue, specially as mentioned in science and engineering. Yet, the article lacks in representing one of the very main groups it highlights, Hispanics.

    Consequently, it very much reproduces what the NSF report found…underrepresenting Hispanics.

    I do appreciate this underrepresentation is being talked about and noticed more.

    1. I agree with you AB. Blacks seem to get a lions’ share of the attention in regards to underrepresentation in America. Probably because the machinery and the system for getting a message out from the demographic has been in America the longest, given the fight for freedom from slavery and the Civil Rights movement. We are in a new era so inclusion needs to be applied to the concenpt of underrepresented as well. When I was in grad school, I promoted this philosophy and created an inclusive group (whites, blacks, feminist, LGBT, etc) and it gave us a more powerful voice when we challenged the administration to increase their efforts in diversity.

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