Chemistry and Hip Hop: A Vehicle to Attract Minority Students to the Chemical Sciences

During the fall semester in 2012, I co-authored an article in the journal, The Chemical Educator that focused on using concepts from Hip Hop to attract students of color to the chemical sciences. We developed a powerpoint presentation to targeted high school students comparing both fields. In fact, we identified some analogies to teach chemistry concepts such as hydrogen bonding, the structure of ice and trends in the periodic table. Furthermore, we also discussed the important contributions of minority chemists (e.g. Saint Elmo Brady, Percy Julian, Sharon Haynie, and Joe Francisco), financing graduate education, and careers for chemists. After the presentation, the students completed a brief survey asking if they learned something new. A few responses:

"I learned how gold and platinum can be used for medical reasons."

"Yes, that there were minorities in chemistry that made a difference."

"The presentation showed how there are innovators in chemistry such as [Percy] Julian and [Saint Elmo] Brady just as there are in hip hop such as Doug E. Fresh and RUN-DMC."

Quite honestly, before I gave this presentation, I knew that Hip Hop was powerful, but I was even more convinced after reading the survey responses of the student participants. Hip Hop can be an effective tool for teaching. Furthermore, I am thrilled that educators such as Dr. Chris Emdin (Columbia University) and Olisa Menakeya (Tennessee State University) are using Hip Hop  to reach young people.  In fact, Harvard University has recently established a fellowship in honor of Nasir (Nas) Jones.  This is absolutely awesome.  Now, I 'm not at all suggesting that we ignore the "traditional" approaches to teaching chemistry concepts.  It takes hard work and yes, a good foundation of mathematical skills is needed. However, "alternative" approaches to teaching science concepts should also be considered when trying to reach an untapped pool of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) talent. We simply can no longer use a "one-size fits all" approach to teaching science.

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