Issue date: 2/26/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Jeremy Northum Jacques Richard, senior lecturer in the aerospace engineering department became interested in the fluid physics aspect of aerospace engineering and will be lecturing about his research on electric propulsion May 1 as part of the First Friday Lecture Series. [Click to enlarge]

Jacques Richard and his family overcame socioeconomic and sociopolitical oppression to come to the U.S., where he learned English by watching sitcoms.

The senior lecturer in the aerospace engineering department immigrated from Haiti with his family in the early 1970s. At that time, dictator Papa Doc was consolidating power for his son to take over when he died, Richard said.

"The brain drain of Haiti I guess. I came here before I was 10, so I wouldn't remember what that first time was," Richard said. "I don't remember how old I was, but it's been a while."

His family eventually settled in the Boston area and he began to teach himself English through television.

"That wasn't a good way to learn English," Richard said. "In high school, I mean I was always different, but then again I had that problem all the time because I was also younger than anybody else in school. I think it was the language and the age, I was always about a year and a half younger than everyone else."

Richard attended Boston University as an undergraduate. He started out as a physics major intending to go into the aerophysics field, but said it was discouraging because he knew there were more jobs available in aerospace engineering.

"Being in aerospace engineering was where I got more interested in the fluid physics part of aero more than anything else," Richard said.

In 2007, nine out of the 421 faculty members at the Dwight Look College Engineering were black, according to the Office of the Vice President and Associate Provost for Diversity.

These statistics are similar across the field of aerospace engineering.

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