UMBC Sophomore Blossom Metevier (CS ‘15) will be a panelist at Fueling the Future: Celebrating Computer Science Education Week and Computer Science in K-12 Classrooms and Policy, a briefing in Capitol Hill that’s part of Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek). Ceremonially celebrated during the birthday week of computer science pioneer Grace Hopper (December 9-15), CSEdWeek's goal is to share the message that computing and computer science education are essential.

Organized by the Computing in the Core Coalition and sponsored by the congressional STEM Education Caucus, Fueling the Future will give congressional staff and STEM education stakeholders an overview of the state and prospects of K-12 computer science education. Specifically, the fact that Computer Science is not taught in the majority of American high schools and how that needs to change.

Blossom joins panelists CSEdWEek co-chair Ruthe Farmer, Director of Strategic Initiates for the National Center for Women and Information Technology, technology writer Douglas Rushkoff, Alison Derbenwick Miller from Oracle, and Brenda Wilkerson from the Chicago Public Schools. Representative Dan Lipinski (D- IL), co-chair of the House STEM Education Caucus, will kick off the event with opening remarks.

Blossom will share her journey to becoming a Computer Science major. It started after she unexpectedly fell in love with programming during her Introduction to Computer Science class during her freshman year at UMBC. She will talk about why she chose the major and her future goals in the field. A Meyerhoff Scholar and member of UMBC's track team, Blossom plans on doing data visualization research in Dr. Jian Chen's lab this winter.

Fay Cobb Payton, PhD. This research is supported by the National Science Foundation.

Date/Time: Friday, December 7, 2012 10 am Location: ITE 459, UMBC

HIV online information and services targeting African American females are of particular interest given the impact of this infectious disease in this underserved community. That is, data from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention show that African Americans are the racial/ethnic group most affected by HIV.

In 2009, Black women accounted for 30% of the estimated new HIV infections among all Blacks. The estimated rate of new HIV infections for Black women was more than 15 times as high as the rate for White women, and more than three times as high as that of Latina women (CDC Data, 2009). Numerous technology-based tools and applications have been designed for intended populations and users based on age, gender, ethnicity and medical conditions, including smoking cessation, breast cancer, Alzheimer's Disease and heart disease. Prior research (Payton, 2009; Payton and Kiwanuka-Tondo, 2009; Payton, et al., * evaluated health information technology applications relative to people, processes and patients as well as the HIV prevalence among Black women. As articulated in Payton, et al. (2011), patient-centered care has its focus in community involvement, participation and formulation, such as social networks or support groups, thus enabling social change. According to Healthy People 2020, the criticality of health communication and health information technology lends itself to a myriad of topics, including building health skills and knowledge, supporting community and home care, facilitating clinical and consumer decision-making and improving the public health infrastructure. Further, Healthy People 2020 articulates the need for the application of evidence-based best practices in user-centered design approaches to dissemination health information across underserved and under-represented populations to better understand health disparities and health outcomes. Given this context, interdisciplinary approaches can enable improved design and awareness while creating a service experience to address the health issues affecting and infecting a vulnerable population, such as Black female college students. Aforementioned research studies provide insight to social models that can drive the technology design and experiences among Black females. In an effort to reach underserved populations, engagement, design research, communication and human computer interaction frameworks collectively provide the theoretical bases to better engage and design service systems.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Fay Cobb Payton is the director and founder of, MyHIN, MyHealthImpactNetwork, a social network site which focuses on health disparities and social media technology interventions. MyHIN is starting with HIV and prevention information targeting Black female college students and is the result of a National Science Foundation grant. Dr. Payton is an editor for Health Systems, an OR Society journal, a Visiting Scholar at RTI in the Health Communications and Technology group and Associate Professor of Information Systems at North Carolina State University. As a 2009-2010 American Council on Education Fellow, she worked with the NCSU Institute of Emerging Issues and North Carolina Central University.

She earned a Ph.D. in Information & Decision Systems (with a specialty in Health Care Systems) from Case Western Reserve University. Prior to joining the academy, she worked in corporate IT and consulting for IBM, Ernst & Young/Cap Gemini and Time, Inc. Dr. Payton was featured in Diversity Careers in Engineering and Information Technology for her mentoring work with minority and majority STEM undergraduate and doctoral students.

Her research interests include healthcare informatics and disparities; data management, analytics and data quality; and the digital divide, STEM careers and workforce development. Her recent health care publications have appeared in the European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Health Disparities and Practice, Health Care Management Science, and Telemedicine and eHealth. She recently received NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduate support for myhealthimpactnetwork.org

She was a 2007 National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Fellow where she worked on data management and communications strategies for a breast cancer study. She was awarded the first SAS Institute Fellow in 2006 for her work in analytics and teaching in the IS classroom, the 2006 & 2007 NC State University Alumni Extension Award. She is a member of the IEEE Medical Technology Policy Committee, Decision Science Institute Strategy International Planning Committee. She is the co-editor of Adaptive Health Care Management Information Systems.

In the digital divide and inclusion domain, she recently published, "Considering the political roles of Black talk radio and the Afrosphere in response to the Jena 6:Social media and the blogosphere", in Information Technology & People. Her work has appeared in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Communication of the ACM and Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology.

Dr. Payton serves on several local and national boards and has been recognized in NC State and other media outlets for research and mentoring work. She will deliver the keynote for the 2013 International Conference on ICT for Africa in Zimbabwe.

Follow her at:

• Myhealthimpactnetwork.org
• @myhealthimpact and @DrFayonline on Twitter
• fay\_payton@ncsu.edu