In 1999, Arthur M. Langer, Ed.D., director of the Center of Technology Management at Columbia University in New York City, began collaborating with one of his students to train about 45 Harlem residents in fixing computers.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development provided a grant to train residents in the Drew projects in Harlem, and Langer's student, an African-American man who had graduated from Harvard and had a New York University law degree, volunteered his time to do the training with the hope that the residents would get jobs in the computer industry. The student asked Langer to help upgrade the training to improve the probability of employment. For four years, every Friday evening, the residents attended a ...