Long weekends are great for catching up on items you should have dealt with long ago. Over a month ago I was invited to participate in a conference at Princeton. Invited meant all expeses paid, travel and hotel. I knew it was important when they sent a strech limo to fetch me at the airport and take me to the nobelis of hotels at Princeton.

The conference, Leading Change in Science and Technology, was geared towards Princeton Black Engineering and Science Alumni. I was invited to speak on a panel titled: Increasing Diversity: Academic and Coporate Resposnisbity. Everyone on my paenl had some link to Bell Labs, the meca of Science and Engineering research. Almost all the panelist were participants in the Bell Labs CRFP (Cooperative Research Fellowship Program), a fellowship program that paid for six years of graduate school. Another panelist and I had participated in the Bell Labs Summer Science Program in the 80s and early 90s. This program exposed minority middle and high school students to science and engineering through two week summer programs and 10-week summer internships.