This Valentine's Day, Let's Remember Dr. Daniel Hale Williams and Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler

Dr. Daniel Hale Williams

Dr. Daniel Hale Williams (January 18, 1856 – August 4, 1931) was an American surgeon. He was an African-American general surgeon, and performed one of the first successful pericardium surgeries. He also founded Provident Hospital, the first non-segregated hospital in the United States. At the time that he graduated from medical school,
black doctors were not allowed to work in Chicago hospitals. As a result, in 1891, Dr. Williams started
the Provident Hospital (in Chicago) and training school for nurses in Chicago, Illinois.

Dr. Williams was the sec on to have successfully performed pericardium surgery to repair a wound. Henry Dalton was the first. Dalton successfully performed pericardium surgery to repair a wound in
1891, with the patient fully recovering.

In 1893, Williams repaired the torn pericardium of a knife wound patient, James Cornish, the second on record. Dr. Williams performed this surgery without the benefit of penicillin or blood transfusion at Provident Hospital; in Chicago, on July 10, 1893. Roughly 55 days later, James Cornish had successfully recovered from his surgery.

In 1893, during the administration of President Grover Cleveland, Williams was appointed surgeon-in-chief of Freedman's Hospital in Washington, D.C., a post he held until 1898 when he married and moved to Chicago. In addition to organizing the hospital, Williams also established a training school for African-American nurses at the facility.

Williams was a teacher of Clinical Surgery at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee and was an attending surgeon at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. He worked to create more hospitals and for accessibility to African Americans. In 1895 he co-founded the National Medical Association for African American doctors, and in 1913 he became a charter member and the only African American doctor in the American College of Surgeons.

Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler

Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler (February 8, 1831 – March 9, 1895) was an American physician. Rebecca Lee was the first African-American woman to become a physician in the United States. She married Dr. Arthur Crumpler after the Civil War. Her publication of A Book of Medical Discourses in 1883 was one of the first written by an African American about medicine.

In 1831, Rebecca Davis Lee was born in Deleware to Matilda Webber and Absolum Davis. She was raised in Pennsylvania by an aunt who cared for infirm neighbors. During the antebellum years, medical care for poor blacks was almost non-existent. She moved to Charlestown, Massachusetts by 1852 and was employed as a nurse until she was accepted into the New England Female Medical College in 1860. It was rare for women or black men to be admitted to medical schools, during this time. When she graduated in 1864, Rebecca Lee (later Crumpler) was the first African American woman in the United States to earn an M.D. degree, and the only African American woman to graduate from New England Female Medical College.

Crumpler first practiced medicine in Boston, primarily for poor women and children. During this time she "sought training in the 'British Dominion'".

After the American Civil War ended in 1865, she moved to Richmond, Virginia believing it to be "a proper field for real missionary work, and one that would present ample opportunities to become acquainted with the diseases of women and children. During my stay there nearly every hour was improved in that sphere of labor. The last quarter of the year 1866, I was enabled to have access each day to a very large number of the indigent, and others of different classes, in a population of over 30,000 colored." Crumpler worked for the Freedmen's Bureau to provide medical care to freed slaves; She was subject to "intense racism": "men doctors snubbed her, druggist balked at filling her prescriptions, and some people wisecracked that the M.D. behind her name stood for nothing more than 'Mule Driver'".

Rebecca married Dr. Arthur Crumpler around the time of her graduation but by the time she moved back to Boston. Her neighborhood on Joy Street in Beacon Hill was a predominantly African American community. She "entered into the work with renewed vigor, practicing outside, and receiving children in the house for treatment; regardless, in a measure, of remuneration.





STEM Articles:

a) The Georgetown STEM Report (Executive Summary)

b) K-12 NAE STREM Report

c) Integrated STEM Education: What is it? What Should it be?

d) MissionBit's Volunteer Hackers Close the Computer Science Education 
    Gap In SF's Schools

e) 'Math Bites' show with Danica McKellar makes numbers hip

f) What Afterschool STEM Does Best

STEM Activities/Videos/Websites/Podcast:

a) Do Math in Your Head

b) How Gardening Enables Interdisciplinary Learning

c) How making Robotics Captivates Kids' Imagination

d) Learning STEM Skills by Designing Video Games

e) Science Bob Experiments

f) California Academy of Sciences Teacher Resource Page

g) In Oakland, Using Video Games to Build a Bridge to Silicon Valley

STEM Profesional Development Opportunities:

a) Solar School House Primer: (For educators: Grades 4-12, Free)
    March 1, 2014

b) Project WET Training (Training is Hosted by Yolo County Office of Education)
    (February 28, 2014 is the registration deadline) Training is March 8, 2014

c) Up Your Game Older Youth Conference (Hosted by Region 6)
    (February 28, 2014 is the registration deadline)
     March 22, 2014 is the training date
     (Fee: Free unless you no show)
 

STEM/Misc./Events/ Grants/ Contest:

a) Teen Safe Driving Grant (Deadline: Rolling)

b) Fender Music Program Grants (Deadline: Rolling)

c)  SMUD Solar Car Race (Entry Deadline February 28, 2014)

d) Placer County STEM Expo (March 1, 2014)

e) The Young Naturalist Award (Deadline: March 1, 2014)

f) Access Fund: $10,000 (Deadline: March 1, 2014)

g) Siemens "We Can Change the World" Challenge (Deadline: March 4, 2014)

h) National Science Foundation Grants

i) SPARK Grant Finder

j) American Heart Association- Childhood Obesity Rapid Response Fund
   $15,000 to $100,000 (Deadline: Open)


Thanks again for all that you do in the field. Please keep us posted about STEM events/activities in your area. Please feel free to contact us at any time.

Monica Gonzalez-William (SCOE: Region 3: After School Regional Lead)
@ mgonzalez@scoe.net

Phil Romig: (SCOE: Science Curriculum Specialist) @ promig@scoe.net

Mark Drewes: (SCOE: Project Specialist II: After School) @ mdrewes@scoe.net