One program aims at creating comfortable, networked and highly energized PhDs. The PhD program Another pilot project in retention for the MPIT office addressed relatively new minority PhD hires in IBM's Research Triangle Park venue, where the office is located. This program was a seed that was planted and nurtured by Sheila Forte, a program manager in the MPIT project office. We started with PhD folks because there's a sizable investment to hiring PhDs and we're particularly eager to retain them. We wanted to help them understand the resources that are available to them and the leadership skills that will help them to be successful and upwardly mobile.
Kids work with a robotics kit made available for school presentations.
Robotics for the pipeline Donald McCoy is the MPIT program manager focusing on the external pipeline. He is also an EE whose regular career track is project management in hardware networking. His main role at the office is to mastermind the robotics modules and other material for use in IBM's Technology Careers Workshops for K-12 kids. Targeted at minority-serving schools across the U.S., this was a really stupendous task. Brown and her team decided to address it by preparing an inventory of captivating hands-on presentation modules that IBM volunteers throughout the country could take out to their local schools.