Event ID: 1167897
Event Started: 11/11/2008 6:47:49 PM ET
Please standby for realtime caption text.
[ musical intro ]
Good evening this is Steve Jacobs and I will conduct a brief speaker
test before we start this evening a few are able to hear my ideal
please hold your left controlled key down on your keyboard. If you can
hear me talking, hold the left control key down on your keyboard we.
Okay.
I don't see anybody doing that. So let me check.
Can you hear me in the room? Can you hold your left control key? Okay.
Jeff, when ever you are ready, let me know and I will turn things over
to you.
Okay, Steve, thank you theory much and good evening
everybody. This is the beginning of the second season for Starting
Wright, getting ready now for college and careers in science
technology, engineering, and math. I want to think everybody to the
program and the the know how happy we are and have got them into the
room. We will have an exciting evening talking about some things that
are pretty important.
First of all, I am Jeff Vernooy and I
am director of the disability Services Wright State University. And I
have had an opportunity to meet a lot of individuals with disabilities
who wanted to go to college and be successful and did that. And are not
out of it in the world working really hard -- and are now out in the
world doing things that they really wanted to do and doing things that
they like what.
Who are we? We are Wright State University.
We are a poor year in -- we are a for your institution and have
approximately 17,000 students and have the largest program of students
with disabilities. We have 500 students on our campuses to receive
services from our program on aid to -- on a daily basis we did this as
a relatively new institution that was interested in beginning to work
with individuals with disabilities and saw a need with in the
population and wanted to be able to serve that.
You will see
before you we have a picture of the campus. It is a compact campus and
one of the things that led us to this position in the nation for
accommodating and teaching students with disabilities was the
architectural features of a 100% accessible campus for folks to travel
on. And all of the epidemic buildings that you see before you are
connected -- and all of the academic buildings that you see before you
on the picture are connected to an underground tunnel system. Our
population is large. It's not unusual for you to see someone with a
disability with in the first five minutes of arriving on campus. While
we have a large population, it's not segregated either. We have
students living in all are different housing the facilities in
participating in the luck in all the different activities located on
campus.
Starting Wright can about here in the office of
disability services and could not possibly make it without the support
of the Starting Wright team. You can see my picture there. And one of
the people that most of you who have had a chance to talk it is Meg
Spoonster. She is are -- our intern and Cindy Boone the coordinator.
They're the people that will collect the homework and the issue in the
prices when we have the prizes. That is something that we will talk
about later.
Here with in the office of disability Services I
have assisted director and her name is Katherine Myers and she is the
technology expert here at Wright State University. And she works in
adaptive technology in keeping things running and smooth. And finally,
Clark Shingledecker is our principal investigator and he spent lots of
time putting together these programs and getting us to the place that
we are. There is another person who is not listed here, and you will
get to talk to him later. And that is key to. He is the person that
deals with the corporation and bird fights as the facilities -- and
provides us the facilities and Steve will be talking about some of the
features of this program.
So what is Starting Wright all
above? What is STEMM? And why do I need to be thinking about education
after high school and a career out and how did the Starting Wright
weathercasts work with -- web casts work?
In the meantime we
started this program with a goal to increase the number of students
with disabilities who choose to succeed in STEMM college education
programs and careers. For a long time we have watched students come to
Wright State University and go into various majors. Some of them have
been very successful and others have not been successful but still one
of the things we have been doing is tracking the students who have been
successful in taking a look at the characteristics that they have had.
The things that they did to prepare to come to college. And we thought
that we would find a way to share those success secrets with you. So
that as you begin your process in thinking about college after high
school, you would know what you need to do to get ready for that. We
also want to raise the interest in science and technology. People with
disabilities -- [ no audio ]
[ no audio ]
It seems
that I lost my sound for a second. The focus is to raise the interest
in science and technology and how to prepare for college. College is
the something that you decide to do right after graduation from high
school. It's a process that requires some planning, not just financial
planning, for planning to develop personal skills and understanding
with the academic requirements are and finding and using a variety of
resources that will assist you in being successful. The approach that
we are taking is that we believe that nobody can do this
single-handedly. And certainly students with disabilities and their
parents need to work together to make the college and career decisions
that are coming forward. So we want students and their parents to be
here and listened to the shows and use the information that we get, and
give them as discussion points that can happen after the show. We want
to raise issues with in your minds as to the weekend talk about those
things and get ready for those -- so that you can talk about those
things and get ready for those.
One of the first questions
that we get is STEMM. That is a new word and it stands for science,
technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine STEMM or S-T-E-M
squared. These are in areas that we think will have significant growth
in the next 25 years. We have to get involved in order to maintain our
place in the world as a leader and developer of new and innovative
technologies.
Getting through a program requires several
steps. And what you have been for you is a small craft that basically
talks about where you should be now. Most of you are probably between
middle school and high-school at this point. Ultimately you want to go
forward and go into some type of college or university and ultimately
into training. Are we talking about everybody going through and getting
a Ph.D.? No. We're talking about all kinds of post secondary
educational experiences anywhere from a two week course to a Ph.D.. So
the things that we're talking about are designed to help you get ready
for that STEMM experience, whether or not it two year, for year, two
weeks, two months were, what ever it might be.
Why should I
consider education after high school? I graduated from high school in
1969 and when I graduated, my fellow classmates had two choices. One of
them was to go on to college, as I did. The other group was a group of
individuals who decided to go into the working world and to learn as
they earned. Many of them ended up in manufacturing positions and had
good, long careers providing those types of things. Today that second
option, of going into manufacturing, does not exist. Many of our
manufacturing facilities have left this country and have gone to other
countries. Some students leaving high school today need to get
additional training in order to be successful. And that additional
training should come through colleges and universities as I said, most
did you are somewhere between middle school and high school at this
point. And you stake, why should I care now? College seems so far away.
You have several years before you're ready to start on a college
campus. But getting ready for that means that you have to develop the
kinds of skills that you are going to need and make the choices that
you need to make to make sure that you are in a successful area we want
to give you plenty of time to do that. Some out is the time to begin to
think about those things and moved in those directions when I talk with
our students who have been successful in college and I asked, when did
you start believing? I often hear from them [ no audio ]
[ no audio ]
There. So as I was saying, people plan for college for a long period
out of time. Those who are the most successful plan on this for quite
some time.
We talked about the decline of the manufacturing
world. And we find that the decline of factory jobs and the need for
workers in science and technology.
We are moving into what is
called a knowledge economy. Which is an economy based on the
development and research base on new and innovative ideas. During our
recent presidential election you heard a lot of mentioned about
alternative energy sources and the need to come up with new and
innovative ideas to heat our homes and run our cars and provide
something other than petroleum as a means of moving things. And
knowledge economy is the economy that will bring those things to the
market and make those things happen.
The reality is that post
secondary institutions in America have been given the primary
responsibility for creating the 20% to work force for jobs in the
knowledge economy. High-school will prepare you for that post secondary
institutions are going to be the place where you learned to do the
things that will make you money and allow you to take care of yourself
and your family in the future.
We take a look at the people
in this country who have disabilities. And there are almost 22 million
of them between the ages of 24 and 65. And when we take a look at all
of those individuals, it is a very small percentage of them that get
both bachelor's degrees in science and engineering or in some cases
Ph.D.es. And you can see how that the pigs what a small number of
individuals right al if we look at the population of 22 million people
with, we know that 60% of those folks are not employed at this time.
40% are employed and of those employed, a very small number of them are
in science and engineering.
When you come into one of our
classrooms here at Wright State University. You see a picture there. We
have individuals with disabilities but they are able to the small
number of individuals -- they are in relatively small number of
individuals.
What to think it is important? We think it's
important for most students with disabilities to choose a degree and
you should consider STEMM fields that will happen over the next five to
ten years.
Ultimately this is the picture that we would love
to see is a line of people with disabilities waiting to get their
diplomas in STEMM
What is the payoff? We see that the average
high-school dropout earns an average of $20,000 a year. And $20,000 is
not a lot these days. Those who earn high school diplomas will earn
somewhere around $30,000 a year still not a very good amount of money
in today's economy. Individuals would to get college degrees -- who do
get college degrees will have earnings in the neighborhood of $50,000 a
year. And those to go into the STEMM bachelor's degree fields will
errant around $75,000 a year. will earn around $75,000 a year sweeping
be successful and raise a family.
Why haven't we done these
things? Why haven't there been these kinds of things? Starting Wright
has taken awhile to look at all of the different barriers that prevent
students with disabilities from entering into the STEMM careers. The
motivation and interest, the compted skills, the opportunity, the
academic preparation and personal skills are barriers that may prevent
students with disabilities from going into those STEMM careers. And
part about when to do is identify those barriers and healthy to work
around those things to do the things that you want so that you can be
successful and create a good lifestyle for yourself.
In the
upcoming programs we will have opportunities for you to hear directly
from individuals, students and employed individuals who work in STEMM
fields. We will spend time talking about how to do the academic
preparation for college and what are some of the important one for
courses in high school that you should be taking so that you can move
on into that field. And what kind of personal preparations do you need
to do? What kind of skills and abilities to you need to develop to be
successful in a college environment?
One of the unique things
about this show is that we are going to have the opportunity for you to
interact with us in a variety of ways. So I have asked Steve Jacobs to
take a minute or two of our time and walk us through the features of
this show so that we can get a better understanding of how we interact
Steve, can you take it from here?
Yes. I would be happy to
pick by the way, thank you for your feedback on the audio. When we do a
transmission of the type that we are to -- that we're doing tonight we
set everything at average because some people have more powerful speeds
and higher connections to the Internet. It's a matter of adjusting
things appropriately and you're a feedback has been invaluable. Those
of you who here static or those of you who are hearing things cut in
and out, it's not the system doing that it's your Internet connection.
However -- he lost does. Can anybody else here, hear me? I think Jenson
probaby were -- thank you -- you may have a slower speed connection and
we can fix that by turning the band with down the next time. The system
that we're using is called IDEAL conference Pierre it is a conferencing
tool and we had designed this to be fully accessible. So regardless of
the type of the system of technology that you are using or whether you
are a student who is blind or hard of hearing or deaf or go fishing or
have a mobility -- or low vision or have a mobility disability. You
should be able to use this to the full extent PUC that there is an chat
area and a list of the names. And Jeff is using PowerPoint slides. That
is what we are seeing in the browser window. Some of the other
capabilities are to show word documents. Some of the more recent
features are to actually broadcast a desktop did so and I happen to be
your mentor and I am an engineer and I want to show you what I do
during the day at work as an engineer with. I can show you the
applications that I use on my PC. How'd I use a CAD cam system.
There is a new feature in the system that will let me broadcast what I
am doing on my PC. We've found that to be helpful in areas where we are
entering students in the workplace and showing additional students what
it's like being an engineer or programmer or somebody who does excess
ability work. This system, although we use it locally, we could just as
easily have somebody in the room from India or Australia or Japan. In
fact, we have meetings with some international organizations where we
can have as many as ten different people from ten different countries
all at the same time in the room. So technology like this is breaking
down the barriers of communication. I know that when Jeff and I were in
high school, and I am a few years older than him, we have nothing like
this. We did not have computers or the Internet, and all of you to. And
you will be using it in high school and in college and in facts the
fact, it impacts employment. We have employees who work and live in
Japan and Brazil and Australia and China and Canada. And we paid them
just like we would create an employee who comes into our office. like
we would pay an employee who comes into our office. But I have never
met our employees. I have interviewed them and we have seen the quality
of their work and we actually have them to development work for us. So
the world is getting smaller and when you can imagine going into STEMM
curriculum and into STEMM to assume that you're going down into a
building and sitting at a desk working for a company with. You could
just as easily go to work for a company who is based in Canada. You
could be working from home. You could be working from a friend's house.
I work from home and I run three companies from my home. We have no
buildings and all of our employees work from home. And we are a fairly
decent sized business and our parent company owns three small
subsidiary companies and it's a new way to work. You won't find this in
factory jobs or retail. But in areas of STEMM practices and STEMM
professions it becomes quite easy if you use a PC as part of what you
do at work to work from anywhere and still meet with people who you
work with Pete you can collaborate on development projects over the
Internet. So began to change your thinking of what the work environment
is going to be like. And I can only imagine what things will be like in
five or six years. I am not exactly sure what else you'd like me to
cover. Basically I have described what the system has the ability to do
and how we use it. Let me turn it back to you and see if there's
anything else that you'd like to cover and thanks for letting made to
this.
Can you take a minute to describe the polling responses and how to chat to one another with.
[ no audio ]
Steve, I don't know if you heard me. We would like you to take a minute
on how they might use a microphone or enter some responses to polling
or chatting or submitting questions to the moderator will.
I'd bet you can hear me now. I messed my microphone up. I assume that you can hear me now.
[ no audio ]
Steve, are you back with?
There we go this is Murphy's Law. It waits until you want to
demonstrate it and there it breaks. Sorry about that, my mouthpiece of
my microphone broke off so I'm holding it on there hoping that it does
not disconnect again. You can see that you can text message each other.
We may enable you to use your microphone to actually talk to each
other. That gets more complex because everybody's computer is different
and everybody's had set is different as is their connection to the
Internet and the speed of the processor and the applications that they
have running and the portions of their operating systems. And all of
those can impact with the out or not the microphone will work or how it
works. So what we normally to suggest that people ask their questions
or submit comments using the chat. But in the future if you would like
to try to use a microphone we can let you to that. I love the when
we've work emoticons, thumbs up,smile except for Carmen. He gave a
thumbs down.
We can also do polling responses. Maybe it's a
beaut. Do you want to have been meeting next week -- maybe it's a vote.
Whoever issues the poll can see the results. We have some very creative
emoticon users. I like rachel elder with the tongue sticking out.
Thank you, Steve. Yes we do. I like to see all of the people of their
asking questions. That is one thing about the Starting Wright program.
We will give you a lot of opportunity to interact with each other there
is one thing that we always have as part of the Starting Wright program
and that is homework I know that homework does not seem like a lot of
fun. It helps us to give you an idea of the things that you need to
learn and began to find and learn about other resources that are out
there. So tonight we have our homework assignment. And you can send
your homework in by Friday that the week that the program comes out. So
this coming Friday is when your homework will be due. We want you to
write back to us and tell us what STEMM stands for. You don't have to
do that right elbow when you send in your homework, we want to know
what homework stands for -- you don't have to do that right now. The
second thing that we would like you to do is list one person that you
know that has a STEMM career and tell us a little bit about the job is
that they do. So tell us we know that has a STEMM career and how they
do their job. And the third one we would like you to go to our office
of disability Services web site pretty you can see the address listed
below in blue. And we would like you to check out a video called
striping -- striving and thriving and it will give us a chance to see
how well you do with audio and video on your computer. If you were able
to view the film and what you thought about it. Remember the homework
is due this coming Friday. And you can send them in to
StartingWright@gmail.com and it needs to be turned in by this Friday.
If you do that by this Friday we will send you out a Starting Wright
drawstring pack. He can carry books and papers and other kinds of
things and you can wear it to school and it's a neat little package for
you with.
[ no audio ]
There we go. The program
schedule, Tuesdays at 7:00 p.m. are the times that we will have the
Starting Wright program. We thought that it works well for everybody's
schedule. So November 18th and then November 25th. We will have a
Thanksgiving break and we will come back until December 9th and our
final show for this year will be December 16. We will finish with a
show on December 16 and we will come back on again sometime in early
2009.
Starting Wright as I said, the next program will be
Tuesday, November 18 if you would like to go back over this program,
you can buy going to our archive. It's listed there in front of you.
You can request a copy of the program by sending us a message at
StartingWright@gmail.com. One thing we would like to do is make sure
that everybody who is participating in the program is checked into the
program. If you have not called Clark or Meg, we would like you to do
that. Meg can be reached at 937-775-5827 and Clark can be reached
937-775-5121.
With that, I will say good evening. Thank you for joining us at Wright State University and Starting Wright.
Have a good evening.
Goodnight.
[ event concluded ]