AT&T gives Louisiana Tech Foundation $20,000 to teach courses in the community

RUSTON, La. (KNOE) - Louisiana Tech is receiving $20,000 from AT&T to help improve digital literacy in the Ruston community.

“Where I’m from, not a lot of people are technically savvy,” said Da’Voznik Armstrong, a junior at Louisiana Tech. “For instance, your grandma, mom, or dad: ‘Baby, how do you do this? How did you make this? Can you fix my TV?’”

Armstrong is one of four Reginald F. Lewis Scholars at Louisiana Tech and will help teach the courses.

“If they need to make a resume, something with Word, Excel, searching on Google,” Armstrong told KNOE. “Simple as that.”

Devonia Love-Vaughn, Tech’s Dean on Inclusion Initiatives, says the courses will include information they get from current students.

“We know that our students come to us already with some lens or some experience with technology, but not always how to be safe on it,” said Love-Vaughn. “How to protect their identities and how to share that with their families.”

Love-Vaughn says one of the workshops will be aimed at younger students.

“We’re targeting middle school and high school because they have technology that has been gifted to them,” said Love-Vaughn. “In our school system, they have Chromebooks and things like that. They have firewalls that impact that, but their phones don’t have that.”

Another workshop will focus on educating older residents receiving broadband access for the first time.

“As we build in the infrastructure, we build in the capacity so that our residents in Louisiana understand how this new technology can make their quality of life that much better,” AT&T Vice President David Aubrey explained.

Tech hopes to begin the workshops sometime in March.

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