Argelia Velez was born in Cuba in 1936 yo Pedro Velez, a man who worked in the Cuban Congress under Fulgencio Batista. Argelia attended a Roman Catholic primary school and demonstrated an ability in mathematics at an early age. After winning an arithmetic competition at the age of 9, Argelia focused her interest on mathematics. In Cuba, she said, there was no racial discrimination excepting in places owned or controlled by U.S. citizens. Further, her professors were women with doctorates. After gaining her Bachelor's Degree from the Marianao Institute in 1955, Velez-Rodriguez continued on to graduate studies at the University of Havana. Argelia obtained her Sc.D. in Mathematics at the University of Havana in 1960 as its first Black female doctorate graduate.
Velez married Raul Rodriguz in 1954 while she was an undergraduate student and had two children before their divorce. In 1959, Fidel Castro controlled Cuba and this leader began to dismantle the capitalist structure in Cuba to introduce a Soviet-styled Communist government. Velez-Rodriguez became increasingly uncomfortable with this goverment and, in 1962, when the Communist government took over the school where her seven-year-old son was attending, Velez-Rodriguez decided to emigrate from Cuba to the U.S. Her husband, however, was unable to leave with her, and he was forced to remain in Cuba for the next three years.
Her first teaching assignment was at Texas College in 1962, and in 1970 she because involved with the science education programmes of the National Science Foundation, a move that would define her life's work. In 1972, Velez-Rodriguez became an American citizen and began to teach at Bishop College. She was a professor at Bishop and she was appointed chair of the Department of Mathematical Science from 1975 to 1978. She continued to experiment with ways of teaching mathematics which would be particularly beneficial to minority students and disadvantaged students. In 1979 she took leave of absence from Bishop College to become a programme manager with the Minority Institutions Science Improvement Program in Washington, D.C. and, in 1980, she became program manager of the Department of Education's Minority Institutions Science Improvement Program.
The turn that dictated Velez-Rodriguez's experiences began when she entered the U.S. during a time when extreme prejudice toward professional women and blacks was prevalent. She fought through these prejudices and sought to help minority and disadvantaged students build math and science careers. She was successful with her children as well as with many other students. Her son became a surgeon and her daughter became an engineer and earned an M.B.A. from Harvard. Despite a brutal welcome from racist and gender-biased U.S. citizens, Argelia Velez-Rodriguez focused her efforts on helping the disadvantaged so they could have the same opportunities she had as a child. |