{"id":19137,"date":"2013-01-17T15:04:48","date_gmt":"2013-01-17T20:04:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=19137"},"modified":"2013-01-17T15:04:48","modified_gmt":"2013-01-17T20:04:48","slug":"1st-black-female-computer-science-ph-d-student-at-univ-of-michigan-reveals-lack-of-role-models","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=19137","title":{"rendered":"1st Black Female Computer Science Ph.D Student At Univ. Of Michigan Reveals Lack Of Role Models"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cAm I really the first?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That was the first thought that came to mind when <strong>Kyla McMullen,<\/strong> 29, found out she would soon become University of Michigan\u2019s first African-American female computer science Ph.D alumna this past year.<\/p>\n<p><strong>McMullen<\/strong> later decided to go to the records office to search for another fellow Black female alumnus to connect with. But she soon discovered that she would become the first Black female student in the history of the program to complete the Ph.D.<\/p>\n<p>While <strong>McMullen\u2019s<\/strong> graduation this past spring marked a racial landmark for Michigan\u2019s computer science department, she said that her experience in the department was sometimes \u201cisolating\u201d because she had very few people to turn to for mentorship.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you\u2019re a Black woman who\u2019s interested [in computer science], you think you\u2019re going to be the only person that looks like you,\u201d <strong>McMullen<\/strong> said. \u201cEveryone knows <strong>Bill Gates<\/strong> or <strong>Steve Jobs<\/strong>, but there is really no one famous that is African-American. The lack of role models or even the lack of someone who looks like you is one huge factor that influences why Black women don\u2019t pursue computer science.\u201d<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cAm I really the first?\u201d That was the first thought that came to mind when Kyla McMullen, 29, found out she would soon become University of Michigan\u2019s first African-American female computer science Ph.D alumna this past year. McMullen later decided to go to the records office to search for another fellow Black female alumnus to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}