From an early age Mojique Tyler found himself entranced by math and science. While his parents are both artists, they fostered his love of these disciplines; he remembers them reading to him from his favorite science encyclopedia at night. The public schools he attended helped deepen his interest in sciences but he longed for more challenge in math, and in 4th grade he received a scholarship to take self-paced online math programs from Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, enabling him to explore and excel far beyond his grade level.
In Middle School Mojique found a new talent that he would build upon for the next seven years: Debate. While he continued to excel in math, joining classes a year ahead of his grade, his debate team reached the semifinals of both city and state championships.
At Bard High School Early College, Mojique continued his passion for debate, helping to grow a team from a small discussion group to one that has won first and second place at city championships. As a leader of the team, Mojique worked on building skills and confidence, enabling them to compete in tournaments at the college level. He has won 1st speaker two years in a row at Bard College’s Annual HS debate tournament.
At Bard, Mojique also developed his love of science and math. Upon graduation he will have taken 19 semesters of STEM subjects, including three independent studies. He has undertaken mathematical research with a professor and spent his last two summers doing research in science and engineering. Last summer he interned at the Holford Laboratory of CUNY’s Hunter College. He learned valuable techniques in Biochemistry such as mass spectrometry, and developed experimental procedures. The previous summer he gained a place in the Cooper Union’s High School Summer Engineering Internship. In the program he and a team of four peers conceived, developed and built a prototype for solar desalination for use in water-deprived communities.
With a growing awareness of the problems facing black communities, Mojique has become involved in community organizing. He is working with others at his school to create a full day student run teach-in on Race, Power and Activism. In his free time he plays piano in the school jazz band, starts as a left back for the school soccer team and attended Splash programs at MIT and Yale. He was accepted into MIT’s WISE Diversity Fly-in program, and is a National Achievement Scholarship and National Merit Scholarship finalist. He has been admitted Early Action to Yale. Mojique has a strong desire to give back, which has led him most recently to help other students excel in physics as part of his independent study, TA’ing for Physics with Calculus, a class for seniors which he took in his junior year. He hopes to become a physicist or engineer, to develop solar desalination programs to end water shortages around the world, and to start a program exposing minorities to STEM.
