Minority Recruitment Initiative

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Minority Recruitment Initiative
Anthony Calamito Megan Lavelle Andrew Carson
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Introduction
Problem
Minorities (especially African Americans) have
lower educational attainment compared to the rest
of the population
Client

• Institute for Economic Transformation (through
  Kelly Prince) approached us about mapping
  demographics of the 10 county region
• Maps to be presented to the City of Pittsburgh
  Planning Board, Duquesne University

Goals
Create maps for comparison and find answers to
problem of low educational attainment
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The Problem

• Statistics show minorities in the region fail to
  achieve the same level of attainment as the
  general White population

• This is particularly true of the African American
  population the largest minority in the region

• At what level do we lose these people? Why?

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Purpose and Tasks

• Locate and/or create data for use in mapping
  convert and format data for use in a GIS (ArcMap)

• Create various demographic maps, and maps of
  educational attainment

• Maps include median income, percent Black/White,
  poverty level, etc

• Geocode school locations onto various demographic
  and attainments maps for analysis

• Use GIS skills to find answers to questions
  regarding low levels of attainment

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Issues with the Project
Client Related

• The client had no prior knowledge of GIS and thus
  failed to understand the complexity of the project

• The detailed maps requested by IET were not
  possible for the group of students to complete,
  given limited time and resources

• Limited timetable with other class work and
  outside work

• Inability of client to decide what exactly they
  wanted led to much indecision and wasted time

• All comes back to inability of client to filly
  understand GIS and all that it entails

• Time restraints forced us to focus on Allegheny
  and Beaver Counties, as opposed to the entire 10
  county region

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Issues with the Project
GIS Related

• Lengthy amount of time needed to obtain data

• Even more lengthy amount of time needed to
  convert the data into a usable format for the GIS

• Lack of resources from which to work with more
  specifically, the lack of available computers due
  to other classes, and lack of hard drive space to
  save our findings

• Limited timetable with other class work and
  outside work

• Constant changing of maps due to indecision of
  client, leads to reformatting of existing data
  and ultimately a return to square one

• Basic questions of what looks the besti.e. what
  classification scheme, and layout

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• This is one of the first maps we did with a
  portrait page setup and a quintile classification.

• It looks ok, but could be improved upon

• We go from this

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To this
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What did we find?

• African Americans did in fact had lower
  attainment than Whites

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What did we find?

• African Americans did in fact had lower
  attainment than Whites

• Poverty rates higher among African American
  population than Whites

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What did we find?

• African Americans did in fact had lower
  attainment than Whites

• Majority of the county is in some sort of poverty

• Virtually no whites inside the inner city limits
  of Pittsburgh, virtually no Afr. Americans
  outside the city limits

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What did we find?

• African Americans did in fact had lower
  attainment than Whites

• Majority of the county is in some sort of poverty

• Virtually no whites inside the inner city limits
  of Pittsburgh, virtually no Afr. Americans
  outside the city limits

• Some of the data for Afr. Americans is not
  available

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What did we find?

• African Americans did in fact had lower
  attainment than Whites

• Majority of the county is in some sort of poverty

• Virtually no whites inside the inner city limits
  of Pittsburgh, virtually no Afr. Americans
  outside the city limits

• Some of the data for Afr. Americans is not
  available

• Many drop out after obtaining a High School
  degree, and fail to proceed to college

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What did we find?

• African Americans did in fact had lower
  attainment than Whites

• Majority of the county is in some sort of poverty

• Virtually no whites inside the inner city limits
  of Pittsburgh, virtually no Afr. Americans
  outside the city limits

• Some of the data for Afr. Americans is not
  available

• Many drop out after obtaining a High School
  degree, and fail to proceed to college

• In general Whites tend to continue to a higher
  level of educational attainment

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In a perfect world

• The client would have some basic knowledge of GIS
  to understand what he/she wants before the
  project is set into motion.

• Appropriate resources would be available for the
  project to be produced sufficient storage
  space, available computers, and programs that
  work without crashing.

• We wouldnt have other class work and prior
  commitments to work around, and all time and
  efforts would be concentrated on this project.

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Sources

• United States Census Bureau
• www.census.gov
• Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access
• www.pasda.psu.edu 
• American FactFinder
• factfinder.census.gov
• Pennsylvania Department of Education
• www.pde.state.pa.us
• Kelly Prince
• Research Associate Center for Competitive
  Workforce Development
• Duquesne University