Making Tracks: Ghetto Genius Motorsports into Street College

By Dr. Will Patterson and Sharon Irish

This is a story about how a small group of volunteers in 2018 developed an after-school youth program, Ghetto Genius Motorsports, a project founded by Dr. William Patterson (Dr. P) at the Don Moyer Boys & Girls Club in Champaign, Illinois. Then the program expanded and moved into a nearby park for the summer — Street College. The project leaders visited other youth spaces in the fall. This is both a grant report for one of our funders, the UC2B Community Benefit Fund (CBF), and a broader documentation of our collaborative efforts with other entities, like the Community Coalition and the Champaign Park District. Earlier iterations of the work can be found here. A TEDxUIUC talk, “The Ghetto Genius Paradigm,” by Dr. P is available here.

Dr. Will Patterson (Dr. P in black turtleneck) leading a planning session with youth at the Don Moyer Boys & Girls Club in Champaign, Illinois. Volunteer engineer Landi Najarro stands next to Dr. P. Sam Smith (with scarf) from Krannert Center for the Performing Arts stands on the right. Photos by Sharon Irish.

With UC2B CBF support, we purchased a range of supplies to work with middle- and high-school-aged youth at the Club and out in the community. Dr. P grew up in the Club and has been actively involved there for decades; the Ghetto Genius team had some equipment and some funding from previous programs. In addition to paying stipends to four youth leaders ($300-$600 each), we bought: Kiwi Co light-up speaker kits; Zumo robot kits; MaKey MaKeys; a humanoid robot; supplies for repair of previously-owned remote control cars; Rane DJ equipment; a gas-powered generator; an electric drum set; an audio interface; and peripherals.

Prior to receiving the UC2B Funds

Ghetto Genius had been busy at the Don Moyer Boys & Girls Club in 2016 and 2017, so we already had relationships with many of the youth there. In addition to investigating remote control cars in 2016–17, in January 2018, Landi Najarro used Lego robotics from the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) at the University of Illinois to teach programming. Several girls built a robot that they named “Bob” and enjoyed programming “Bob” to move.

Building the robot “Bob”

Spring 2018 at the Club

In building the small speaker kits, the youth came to understand aspects of circuitry and sound.

An entry in one student’s notebook, on the left, defined different speaker parts. Another entry reflected on various roles that each participant took and some reactions to that process.

In addition to Club youth, we had others from a nearby high school and the NAACP ACT-SO program join us. Standing in the back are University of Illinois students from the local chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE).

In addition to NSBE students, members of the electrical engineering fraternity at the University of Illinois (HKN) came and helped the Club youth understand some of the concepts behind sound amplification.

Engineer Jim Campbell, standing in the center, has been another long-term volunteer with the program.

Landi Najarro (right) worked with Club girls to design circuits.

Finished speakers were customized with colors, patterns and names.

These were criteria that we generated with the youth to evaluate their experiences of LIT (Leadership, Innovation, Technology)

What Leaders do:
includes research, creativity, confidence, decision-making, passion, take control, showing people what the goal is, confident decision making (popular or unpopular, right for the team)

Innovators (like the go-cart or to name a robot is an example)
teamwork; creativity; How it looks, What makes it yours? give it personality, with sensors or team name, for example; how do you promote and distribute knowledge; what is your presentation like?

Technologist
How does the speaker sound? Engineering process — know how to put it together; knowledge of the building process; key words, knowing the components, knowing what goes where; knowing how to explain it; knowing the language; person that makes your phone, engineer
Definitions, booklets, slideshow to demonstrate, make a rap, demo, make a video
What problem did you have and how did you overcome it?

Street College, Summer 2018

The Don Moyer Boys & Girls Club is fully occupied with their own programming during the summer, so Ghetto Genius moved to nearby Douglass Park, in Champaign. Using equipment purchased with UC2B funds, we provided programming at the park pavilion twice a week for the month of July on a drop-in basis. Four youth were paid with UC2B funds at the end of the summer for their commitment and leadership. Over the course of the month, we had 41 youth involved with remote control cars, assembling small speaker kits, building speakers from scratch, learning to DJ, and programming a humanoid robot. The Champaign County Community Coalition provided funds to pay instructors.

Dr. P in the Douglass Park pavilion working with youth to troubleshoot remote control cars. Others in the background are setting up DJ equipment.

Former student of Dr. P’s (in striped shirt) stopped by during his lunch hour to help out with RC cars.

Testing remote control car at Douglass Park

While some youth worked on cars, others assembled the small speaker kits, learning about circuits and sound.

Still other youth explored the possibilities of “Little Bits,” which are synthesizer kits loaned to us from the Illinois Informatics Institute/C-U Community Fab Lab at the University of Illinois.

Project engineer Joe Bolton (in black shirt) works with a youth to build speakers from scratch. Here they are assembling the case.

The speakers have been wired into the case. Behind the in-process speaker are a few of the speakers that project engineer Joe Bolton built.

When youth diagram their projects, it helps them understand how things work and demonstrate mastery. The “Pyle” refers to the brand of speaker installed in the box.

The various modules of Street College — remote control cars, speaker builds, DJ skills — contributed to understanding the programming necessary to get a humanoid robot to move to music. Here one of the youth leaders assembles the robot, named “Uncle Drew.”

We had trouble finding a laptop onto which we could download the robot software. Thanks to the Illinois Informatics Institute/Fab Lab, we finally got a model that was new enough to work. Here two of the youth work to program “Uncle Drew.” Other youth are building speaker kits. We used the one electrical outlet in the pavilion, with a heavy-duty extension cord, to power the computers and charge the robot. The generator powered other equipment.

One of the youth leaders picked up DJ skills very quickly.

The award-winning graphic designer and University of Illinois professor, Stacey Robinson, came for a couple of sessions to talk about his work and teach illustration to interested youth. Fortunately, Professor Robinson brought his own iPad because the ones we had from 2011 could not handle the software.

Fall 2018

In September 2018, Dr. P and Joe Bolton visited the Urbana Neighborhood Connections Center (UNCC) in Urbana, Illinois. They led a dynamic session with 21 youth, but we do not have photo permissions to publish images of the young people. The DJ and MaKey MaKey activities occurred in the space that the Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab helped set up at UNCC. Youth produced sounds with the MaKey MaKeys and laptops. Joe Bolton recorded those sounds and other youth mixed the sounds on the audio equipment.

Summary

GHETTO GENIUS has established itself as a credible entity to a variety of stakeholders interested in improving the life experience of young people and their families in underestimated, undervalued, and marginalized communities. By exploring the historical legacies of marginalized communities, Ghetto Genius removes the limitations of suppression and access to opportunities by demonstrating past narratives where people have excelled because of their life situations. Hip Hop has served as a cornerstone of self-expression and development since its inception over 40 years ago. The amassed community-centered data of innovation in music, business, education, and social entrepreneurship provided Ghetto Genius with an opportunity for young people to create a pathway to define their own success.

Our method for engaging young people by integrating their “life” survival tools and things of interest, i.e., smartphones, iPads, computers, boom boxes, drones, robots, and music production provided the necessary foundation to mentor participants through a variety of activities that would expose them to science, technology, engineering, and math concepts within the context of their own environment.