Bay Area man leads program getting young students interested in STEM

By Sharon Chin

Kevin Nichols leads the Science in the City program, where dozens of fifth and sixth graders are getting excited about science, technology, engineering, and math like never before.

“Those students are going to get 15 science experiments in a week, which is more than they get in a whole school year,” Nichols said.

Students’ faces light up while exploring physics and chemistry hands-on.

Science in the City was a summer program started by Stanford educator Dr. Bryan Brown in 2012 with a grant from the National Science Foundation. When the grant ran out, Nichols continued the program with corporate funding under a new Oakland-based nonprofit he founded in 2016, The Social Engineering Project.

“My goal is to get more young people interested in technology because I know it’s a gateway to the future,” Nichols explained.

People like Leila Haile. The free weeklong camp got her hooked on science and math as a fifth grader.

“It made science fun,” she smiled.

Now, the Pomona College student is studying economics and media.

“Kevin has been a big mentor for me, exposing me to all the different types of roles in STEM and also exposing me to a great network of individuals,” Haile said.

The Social Engineering Project educates and mentors about 200 underrepresented kindergarten to high school students a year in STEM.

Besides the summer camp, Nichols and his team organize Family Science Days, afterschool programs in the Mt. Diablo school district and overnight leadership conferences in the mountains.

That’s where Mikael Akpala met tech professionals who look like him.

“I started to visualize myself as one who could make an impact in tech business and entrepreneurship,” Akpala explained.

Today, he is studying mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell University. Nichols reflected on Haile and Akpala’s STEM pursuits.

“If you see these individuals, they’re excited about what they’ll be able to achieve, so that makes me excited,” Nichols said.

And the students keep Nichols focused, if you ask Board Chair Vernon Goins.

“He’s always speaking about the kids, all the time. ‘How do we get them?’ ‘How do we get them engaged?” she said.

Nichols said he’s simply exposing youth to science early, just as his mom did for him when he was a kid. She enrolled him in the MESA program at UC Berkeley. The Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement program inspired his career path.

He said it was important for him to be mentored by people of color who were professionals in science and technology.

“I’m a member of 100 Black Men of the Bay Area, and we have a motto that ‘if they can see it, they can be it.’ So for me, it’s important that we model for them what was modeled for us.”

In fact, for its 10th anniversary this October, Nichols said The Social Engineering Project will honor NASA astronaut Victor Glover, the Artemis II pilot.

So, for introducing students of color to STEM careers through The Social Engineering Project, this week’s CBS News Bay Area ICON Award goes to Kevin Nichols.