Twenty years ago, as a young man in Colombia, Juan Gutierrez designed an experimental information system for electronic literature for the country’s Department of Education. Back then, as a fiction writer educated in civil engineering, he created a database that he would later emulate in Spain, and which he’s now developed at the University of Georgia as a program to improve STEM education for Latinos as part of the Latin American and Latino STEM Education Initiative.

An Interesting Story

How Gutierrez got to where he is today makes for an interesting story and explains some of the fire that motivates him to make a difference in the world. Back in 2000, after creating the initial electronic literature program in Colombia, violence coupled with an intense economic recession shook his country, and he could no longer work in the oil industry as he had done. Broke and desperate, he was offered work by an American company that sought computer programmers in Cartagena, Colombia. The only challenge was driving there with the bare essentials through guerilla territory lit up in flames.    

Call it a whole lot of bad luck, but for Gutierrez, it was the push and inspiration he needed to make a difference in the world. “I am running. I’m running from penury (extreme poverty),” he said, referring to a famous Benjamin Franklin quote. This “running from penury” brought Gutierrez to Florida, where he was given a post with the same company he worked tirelessly for in Colombia. While working full time, he applied for a master’s in creative writing, with a second option in mathematics (Florida State University required a backup major, and after watching the movie “A Beautiful Mind,” he selected math). Ironically, he was rejected for the master’s in creative writing program but was accepted into biomedical mathematics.

In 2007, after receiving his green card for being an “alien of extraordinary ability,” Gutierrez received a contract from Spain’s Ministry of Industry to build a global poetic system (a phone app that helps people navigate Barcelona’s history and culture). And then in 2012, with a Ph.D. in mathematics in hand, the University of Georgia at Athens (UGA) created a specific position for Gutierrez where he would develop its Office of Proposal Enhancements, while also teaching mathematics, bioinformatics and computer science.

Creating Alice

From the beginning at UGA, the goal was to pursue grants that would lead to the creation of the Latin American and Latino STEM Education Initiative. Gutierrez ended up receiving a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), and thus began designing a web application that uses an interactive learning interface to revolutionize how young people become fluent in complex mathematical languages. Through this, students acquire the knowledge and skills needed as a springboard for advanced studies in all STEM disciplinary fields.

Reaching minority and poorer populations in this country and throughout Latin America who don’t have access to proper STEM education during their younger years (some of their schools are lucky enough to have enough toilet paper, as he put it) has been key for Gutierrez. By developing a STEM web application, he hopes to make STEM education accessible to every college student and beyond, and offer unique programs that cater to the specific needs that each student may have to be able to succeed.

Already in his classrooms, he’s put to test his new program called ALICE, Adaptive Learning System for Interdisciplinary Collaborative Environments, in eight classes. In one case, he’s used ALICE with one cohort of students, and not with another, with computer programming as the focus, to test its effectiveness. By inputting data on students’ learning goals and their prior education, ALICE provides each individual student a curriculum and the resources/links he or she needs to learn exactly what’s needed to achieve success.

“This is a multilingual program that touches upon many topics, from an introduction to programming and systems biology to mathematical biology. The goal is for this system to be an open source that is available to everyone and helps eliminate barriers to learning,” Gutierrez said.

“While historically males have outperformed females in these types of classes, we’ve observed that with the introduction of ALICE, we’ve equalized performances of males and females,” he added. “We’ve also observed that people who have had prior exposure to computer science in wealthier districts performed relatively well, and that being able to learn material in earlier grades was often based on their socio economic status. So we’ve equalized performance by access to computers.”

STEM Support For Latinos

After witnessing ALICE’s potential in the classroom, Gutierrez hopes to receive a second grant from the NSF to expand the program after this grant ends in August 2019. In doing so, he plans to test ALICE beyond the University of Kansas, which has very few Latino and minority students.

“I’d love to get in touch with Hispanic-Serving Institutions and reach places like the University of Texas in San Antonio, where 65 percent of the population is Latino, yet they don’t have a doctoral program in mathematics or the like,” Gutierrez said. “I want to create courses in math in multiple disciplines that will help close the achievement gap, because we need more Latinos graduating from STEM fields.”

Gutierrez hopes his program can make a difference in changing the current reality in which substantial numbers of students drop out of their first declared major and end up in a different destination major far from STEM fields—and often because of a long-proven bottleneck in mathematics.

Beyond Latinos in the U.S., Gutierrez is also collaborating with universities in Latin America to help improve STEM success there. He’s reached out to the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute on campus and, with its help, has formed agreements with schools that include la Universidad del Quindío and la Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira in Colombia. The goal is to offer ALICE courses to their students as well.

“A substantial number of our graduate students in STEM are foreigners, and a substantial number of them are from China, with very few from Latin America,” Gutierrez said. “If we are going to subsidize international students, we might as well support students in countries with the greatest needs.”

Changing The World With Technology

While the Latin American and Latino STEM Education Initiative is very much in its infancy, with greater dissemination and testing of ALICE needed to determine its full potential, Gutierrez has high hopes in bringing STEM equality to the world of education, beyond colleges and a select group of students.  After all, at age 45, the young professor is still “running from penury” and determined to change the world.

“My professional mission is to make the face of success match the face of the nation,” he said.  “And my goal is to promote high quality accessible education to everybody in the world…for free, forever.” •