By Williesha Morris | wmorris@al.com
Phanuelle Manuel said having a fellow Black woman as a mentor helped her visualize a future in computer science.
Manuel, and hundreds of other high school students, received training, mentorship and support on Advanced Placement tests as part of a national effort to encourage more Black women to enter computer science.
“I could see myself succeeding in the future,” said Manuel, who is now a freshman at the University of Alabama. “I would say it’s a lot more encouraging seeing somebody do it first that looks like you.”
UA and Tuskegee University were two of seven colleges that offered programming funded by one of the grants terminated by the National Science Foundation in April. Now the $3.5 million program has come to a halt, weeks before students were set to arrive on UA’s campus in June.
“I already had the dorms reserved and the meal plan set up, and we even were starting applications,” said Jeff Gray, the program’s primary investigator and a computer science professor at the College of Engineering. “Some of us have spent 300 or so hours on the project.”
The Legacy program, a collaboration between seven predominantly white and historically Black colleges, planned to work with 600 students from Mississippi, Ohio, Michigan and Alabama through 2028. The year-long program included mentorship from leaders at companies like Intel and training on computing and coding.
Black women make up “only 3 percent of the tech workforce. And even fewer Black women have leadership roles in Silicon Valley,” according to the United Negro College Fund.
Legacy was an expansion of an Alabama program that began in 2019. Initial results showed 72 percent of 71 of the Black girls who participated received a score of 3 or higher on the AP test. They outpaced the national average score for every other group, including white and Asian males, according to Mohammed Qazi, one of the project’s faculty organizers at Tuskegee University.
“We’d Have To Pivot”
Once President Donald Trump issued an executive order telling universities to stop race-specific programming, Gray tried to pivot and keep the program open.
“We knew if we wanted to keep it alive at least for the next year, we’d have to pivot,” Gray said. Gray is an associate professor at UA and has been doing outreach to K-12 students for 20 years. “So we expanded it to all genders, all races. And then the week after we did that we got terminated.”
Alabama is one of the top five computer science education states in the country, according to Gray, who said the program was a great fit for Gov. Kay Ivey’s initiative to improve computer science opportunities in the state. As of fall 2024, there are 1,100 students studying computer science at UA, according to the school’s Office of Institutional Research and Assessment.
He said the program focused on “equity of opportunity” to help students who have the aptitude but were unaware of careers in computer science.
“We were just trying to open doors,” Gray said.
Qazi said the program’s objectives were expansive. They were not trying to turn every student into a computer scientist but instead help students explore the topic in depth and find role models.
“Our role is to also remove the barriers to access,” Qazi said. “Often in these rural communities there’s not the type of mentoring that is available in the more affluent districts.”
“Community And Sisterhood”
Most importantly, Qazi said, the project creates a bond between the girls that doesn’t end when the program is over.
“That aspect of community and sisterhood played a very big role in the success of the project,” Qazi said.
The program was more than about academic coursework and training but about making social connections “that had a tremendous impact” on the program’s success, he said.
Manuel made friends that she stays in touch with. Her older sister, Phaedra, also participated in the program and got interested in computer science. Phaedra started a computer science club at Hoover High School and Manuel joined it, too.
“I wasn’t into computer science,” Manuel said. “Computers and technology were cool, but it wasn’t my thing. A lot of the things my sister did guided me into my career path.”
She said many students get frustrated and bogged down with programming, but she reveled in it.
“I always tell people around me that I’d rather struggle with my code for hours than pretty much do anything else, because it’s a very rewarding experience,” Manuel said. She entered UA as a Randall Research Scholar, an Honors College program for students interested in the computing field.
Manuel learned about the grant cancellation while attending the National Center for Women & Information Technology conference. She was a keynote speaker and said she was disappointed and shocked when Gray told her.
“My mind is still kind of reeling about it, because it was such an integral part of my life and my sister’s life,” Manuel said. “And getting to know Dr. Gray through that program is the reason why I attend UA at all.”
Qazi said he’s devastated and hopes other opportunities emerge to continue the project in compliance with the federal government.
“We need funding, because we have to provide compensation to the teacher leaders. We have to provide these resources,” he said.
“The ones who are going to suffer are the students,” Qazi said. “We’ll survive as faculty, but the students are not going to get the support they need, unfortunately. Both financial and also career building, that support is gone. That’s what’s very disheartening. Those who are the least privileged continue to suffer.”
Manuel said backlash against DEI programming won’t deter her from surrounding herself with Black people and women in computer science and work towards achieving her goals.
“No matter what the government says, what restrictions say, I know that I belong in this field, and I know that I love this field,” Manuel said. “I’m not going to change my interests because someone out there thinks I can’t accomplish this or I don’t deserve to accomplish this.”
