Tony Diaz #npradio

Nuestra Palabra Presents: An interview with Dr. Richard A. Tapia and his featured book "Losing the Precious Few: How America Fails to Educate its Minorities in Science and Engineering" Richard Tapia is the Maxfield-Oshman Chair in Engineering, a professor in computational and applied mathematics and director of the Tapia Center for Excellence and Equity, all at Rice University. He is the recipient of the National Medal of Science, the US government’s highest honor bestowed on scientists, and the National Science Board’s Vannevar Bush Award. He served on the National Science Board from 1996-2002, and two professional conferences have been named in his honor: the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference and the Blackwell-Tapia Mathematics Conference. He lives in Houston, Texas. In his eye-opening book, Losing the Precious Few: How America Fails to Educate its Minorities in Science and Engineering, nationally acclaimed scholar Richard Tapia examines the issues that keep domestic minority