John Dimandja: The First Day Of Class
The Story Collider
Story Collider, Inc.
4.4 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 31 July 2015
⏱️ 15 minutes
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Summary
Professor John Dimandja is confused when his class begins snickering on the first day -- until he realizes it's because they weren't expecting him to be black. John Dimandja is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Spelman College. A native of Oxford, Ohio, John grew up in the US, Belgium and the Democratic Republic of Congo. His professional career includes work as an analytical chemist at the NASA/Ames Research Center and the CDC prior to joining Spelman in 2002. An internationally recognized leader in the field of multidimensional gas chromatography, John has given over 250 lectures around the world in the past 20 years. He enjoys cooking and travelling with his wife Ann, playing the piano (poorly) and golfing, now that his basketball days are over.
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Transcript
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| 0:28.2 | A science story, huh? |
| 0:31.4 | Is NYU scientist the... |
| 0:33.2 | I felt... |
| 0:33.8 | And I just thought, well... |
| 0:36.2 | It was that golden moment. |
| 0:39.3 | Because science was on my side. |
| 0:41.3 | Hi everyone. |
| 0:42.3 | I'm Ben Lilly, and welcome to the Story Collider, where we bring you true personal stories about science. |
| 0:58.8 | This week's story is from John Demange. It was recorded in March 2015 at the New American Shakespeare Tavern in Atlanta, Georgia, as part of the Atlanta Science Festival. Okay, so it was the spring semester of 1989 at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, |
| 1:25.6 | Illinois. |
| 1:26.6 | If you're wondering where Carbondale, Illinois is, it's in the southern part of Illinois, in what they call the Heartland. It's further |
| 1:33.1 | away than Chicago than St. Louis is, just a couple hours from Chicago. And it was my first |
| 1:39.9 | semester in graduate school. My first semester as a teaching assistant in graduate school, |
| 1:45.2 | and I was really looking forward to it because my dad is a history professor, one of those |
| 1:51.7 | long-winded history professors, you know the kind. And my mom is a trained psychologist, |
... |
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