By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., December 28, 2021 – Grand Bahama has suffered a tremendous loss with the death of Dennis Knowles, President/Owner of Microtech Sales & Services Ltd. in Freeport.
When I lived in Freeport and was editor of The Freeport News (2003-2009), I was a member of the Rotary Club of Lucaya and developed a very close friendship with fellow-member Dennis, who had served as program coordinator for the Rotary Club of Lucaya from 2005, a position he held until his death on Monday, December 27.
Among his monumental and significant contributions to the club in his capacity as program coordinator was his introduction of the SECME Programme, whose mission is to “increase the pool of historically underrepresented and under-served students who will be prepared to enter and complete post-secondary studies in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); thus creating a diverse and globally competitive workforce,” according to SECME’S Mission Statement on the Internet.
As noted on Dennis Knowles’ LINK-IN page on the Internet: “We use programs such as the ‘Bottle Rocket’ and ‘Mousetrap Car’ from this organization to interest students in the sciences. We have inter-schools competitions and send the winners to compete in the United States against the best of their regional champions. This year we came 1st and 3rd nationally in the US. The Bahamas Society of Engineers and our industrial sector play a major role in supporting this program.
“SECME is a feeder program for our Kettering University’s AIM scholarship program. The AIM program has provided engineering scholarships for 70 Grand Bahamians as well as co-op jobs. Most of the industrial companies on Grand Bahama are involved with this program.
“We are today, furthering Rotary’s mandate of Nation-building!”
According to information gleaned from the Internet: “SECME was established in 1975 as the Southeastern Consortium for Minorities in Engineering by the Engineering Deans at six Southeastern universities: University of Alabama, University of Florida, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of South Carolina, University of Tennessee and Tuskegee Institute now Tuskegee University. In 1997, the name was changed to SECME Inc. to better represent the territories we serve today, which extend to schools, universities, science- and technology-based business and industry, and public and private agencies in 17 states (from New York to Arizona), the District of Columbia, and Grand Bahama. Since the vision of our founding deans, many additional universities have partnered with SECME to extend our mission.”
In creating SECME, the founding Deans acted to address two urgent–and enduring–national challenges: 1) declining engineering enrollments on campuses across the U.S., and 2) growing evidence of shortfalls in STEM talent to sustain an economy–and global leadership position–increasingly dependent on technology and innovation as primary engines of growth. Their solution: to tap new talent in two groups then grossly under-represented (at less than 1 percent each) in the engineering profession–namely, minorities and women.
Thus SECME began as a collaborative effort of school districts, engineering universities, business and industry, and government. The noble dream and determined pursuit of the founders was excellence and equity as well as needed change in K-12 education. The school-university partnership was the defining element in the original SECME “framework.” That model is, very intentionally, teacher-centered. By impacting teachers, all students benefit.
SECME is chartered in the State of Georgia as a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) corporation. From the beginning, its National Office and administrative home has been in the College of Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in midtown Atlanta.”
