Voices that Inspire

What inspires you from WFSU Public Media? Here's this week's Voices That Inspire. My name is Dr. Yudith Davis, and I am the Science Education Professor at Florida A&M University. Basically, I'm a nerd and was raised by nerds. My mom didn't really push me, my mom and dad didn't have to push me. I just had a desire to learn. They did sacrifice and make sure we went to very good schools. I went to the St. Michael's predominantly white Catholic school. And I think African-Americans made up about 1% of that population. And I found myself in a classroom where everyone's African-American. And my teacher was African-American. But Miss Mascot, this beautiful white lady, with long, beautiful hair, she walks into the sea of ocean of African-American children. And she points at me and she says, she doesn't belong in here. Next thing you know, I'm in an honors track. I'm in a class where I'm the only African-American female again. That changed the whole trajectory of my academic career. I'm trying to change the world one child at a time. And I'm trying to make science make STEM, in particular, the geosciences, which is my domain, more accessible and more available for students to learn and understand and actually understand at the point that they can apply it and extrapolate to solve future problems. The thing that keeps me going are the future little boys and girls that I may be able to impact in the arena of science and their teachers and the teachers that teach them. And hopefully it will open up a whole new world for them that they would have never had. Just like I had a world open up to me that I would have never had. I'm Dr. Edith Galadavis and I am hopefully one of the best science educators on planet Earth one day when I grow up. You're listening to voices that inspire.