Each year, the [BAMIT Community Advancement Program (BCAP) Fund] will support at least one MIT undergraduate and/or graduate student in the pursuit of a proposed project, advised by an MIT alumnus/a mentor, that addresses a specific challenge in an underserved community of color. During MIT’s Independent Activities Period in January [2020], the first two BCAP fellows, Danielle Geathers ’22 and graduate student Melissa Isidor, kicked off their projects.
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Mechanical engineering student Geathers, this year’s undergraduate recipient of BCAP funding, conceived her project during research for a gender studies class. Reviewing data about MIT’s increased numbers of female admitted and matriculated students, she noticed that African-American female students remain significantly underrepresented in the applicant pools.
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At the grad student level, Isidor is using the BCAP funding for an ongoing project called A Voice at the Table, through which she is exploring the importance of community spaces where “all who identify as Black womxn” (terminology used to be inclusive of a spectrum of gender identities such as woman, nonbinary, and trans) “can feel safe both physically and emotionally.”  

Slice of MIT, 11 March 2020

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