United States Department of Transportation
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Edition:Final Education and Workforce Development Report
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Abstract:Although the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education declared state laws establishing segregated public schools unconstitutional, in 1957 Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus tried to prevent nine African American students from attending school at Little Rock Central High School (LRCHS). Faubus’ attempt to block access to the students, using the Arkansas National Guard, resulted in President Eisenhower using soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to escort the students into the high school. Even though all students, regardless of race, can now attend public schools, segregation in a different form is still very evident when considering Advanced Placement (AP) classes. The lack of students from underrepresented minorities is especially evident in AP classes affiliated with the Science, Engineering, Technology, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. The goal of this education and workforce development project was to develop an educational/mentoring/advising model to open doors to all students, regardless of socioeconomic background, who want to go on to careers in fields related to maritime and multimodal transportation. This goal was accomplished through knowledge transfer and mentoring partnerships established at the following institutions: 1) Village of Promise (VP) in Huntsville, Alabama, 2) LRCHS in Little Rock, Arkansas, 3) Philander Smith College (PSC) in Little Rock, Arkansas, and 4) the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The proposed approach for this project was similar to the successful Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ) pipeline model. The proposed work included visits to the respective institutions and field trips/visits of the participants to local maritime navigation structures. Visits to Lock and Dam (L&D) structures like the Murray L&D in Little Rock, Arkansas and the Guntersville L&D in Huntsville, Alabama, took place on April 2, 2019, and September 25, 2019, respectively. These field trips bolstered the information that was presented to the students on the history and present-day use of maritime navigation and hands-on model-scale dam creation demonstrations. The application of the HCZ model for STEM is promising and may contribute to the development of a diverse workforce for maritime transportation. Evidence exists that the HCZ model has worked for the city of Harlem. VP, a participating partner institution, and other locations across the country have successfully implemented the HCZ model. In a similar fashion, education and workforce development was successfully achieved by blending existing programs at each of the associated institutions (UA, PSC, LRCHS, VP). Thus, students from underrepresented minorities, with STEM knowledge, were exposed to maritime principles and are now more aware of workforce opportunities within the maritime and multimodal fields.
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