Dr. Giti Javidi received her Ph.D. from University of South Florida in Tampa. Prior to joining the Information Technology program, College of Business, at USF, Sarasota/Manatee, she served as a full professor of Computer Science at Virginia State University, where she played a pivotal role in developing and advancing the Computer Science program for women and minorities. Dr. Javidi’s primary research is grounded in methods found in the field of Human Computer Interaction and its intersection with data visualization with many dimensions over a wide variety of data types. Methodologies that promote cross-disciplinary education is also of great interest. She also has interest in biases and barriers to participation and/or success of minorities and women in STEM. Her work has been published in several peer-reviewed national and international journals and she has presented at several conferences and summits as keynote speaker. Dr. Javidi has also been the recipient of a number of prestigious Google, NSF and NASA grants. A long-time advocate for increasing participation and retention of women in STEM fields, Dr. Javidi has worked tirelessly on a number of projects in this domain over the past 13 years. She serves as an active member of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT). At the national level, she has worked to develop new curricula and programs for computer science education with the goal of engaging a wider audience, particularly women and minorities. Dr. Javidi is very well-respected in the community as a great scholar and was recently recognized as “Women-of-Influence, 2017."

The purpose of this talk is to present the idea that cross-disciplinary education in STEM and Entrepreneurship as a new trend in education has the potential to equip students with the necessary skills for solving multidisciplinary problems. STEM graduates should not only possess technical, but also social, cultural and entrepreneurship skills like innovation, creativity, teamwork and leadership. These new profiles compose the 21st century skills and cannot be developed with the traditional methodologies. STEM disciplines have inherent limitations that need to be corrected by the presence of disciplines such as social entrepreneurship to help STEM students become prepared for solving multi-disciplinary social and global issues.