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Michael Spencer
Michael Spencer is working to create a new conducting material that will be the basis for something that does not exist yet - a blue laser. As an engineer, Michael has the training and expertise to reach that goal. As a professor, he works to share his skills and knowledge with students, and to show them that they can be successful in reaching their goals, too. His passion for teaching is part of a family tradition - his mother and grandmother were teachers, and his grandfather was the first freed slave to earn a teaching certificate in the South after the Civil War. The certificate, however, came with the restriction that he could teach in only the "colored" schools in Kentucky. This family story has been an inspiration for Michael, who feels that part of his responsibility is to "prepare students for the real world they will encounter after graduation."Michael does his research at Howard University, where he is the director of the Materials Science Research Center of Excellence. He chose to work at Howard because he wants to be part of the African-American and multiracial community at Howard. He is a strong believer in the mission of the historically black colleges and universities, and Howard is one of the most prominent of those schools. Many of his students come from difficult backgrounds and are not exposed to the same opportunities as their white counterparts. Michael believes that his job is to teach his students not only the scientific skills they will need to succeed in this competitive field, but also the management skills and the "language" of scientific business so that they will be able to move into positions of power in corporations, research centers, and other universities.
Michael grew up in Detroit, the son of a businessman and a teacher who earned a law degree while she was pregnant with Michael. He was an only child who had a lot of support from his parents. Unfortunately, his father died at a young age, when Michael was just eleven years old. After his father died, Michael and his mother moved to Washington, D.C., to be nearer to their family and where Michael's mother took a job in the Department of Commerce. Despite the loss of his father, Michael excelled at school, and went to Cornell University, where he earned a bachelor's degree and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. He still considers Washington to be his hometown, where he visits his mother often. He also spends time with his son, who lives in the city.
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