Â鶹´«Ã½ showcases 'SmartHOME' in short film
By: TYLER STARKS
Mar 08, 2025
Students in the "SmartHOME" short film. (Panther photo by Tyler Starks)
South Carolina Educational Television (SCETV) collaborated with Â鶹´«Ã½ to host a special showcasing HBCUs on HBCU Day, part of a public media partnership called HBCU Week NOW.
The event was held inside the student center movie theater with complimentary popcorn and drinks for all participants.
Students, alumni and guests were welcome to attend and experience the “resilience and innovation” of HBCUs through a series of six short films from six different schools. Along with Â鶹´«Ã½ being showcased at the event, the other schools were Howard, Morehouse, Southern, Winston-Salem State and Morgan State.
Â鶹´«Ã½’s short film showcased a technical innovation to health disparities called “SmartHOME.” The device is capable of tracking your health with blood pressure checks and more.
The project was a partnership between the Â鶹´«Ã½ Math and Computer Science Department and the university’s nursing program.
Features showcased include the house changing the lights and playing soothing music when the user’s blood pressure is elevated. It also has displays around the house that showcase your health and provide tips to remedy any health-related problems. It can even record your sleep patterns and cycles and provide more insight into them.
“Social justice is our focal point as an institution. Mass incarceration is a social justice issue. Health care disparities is a social justice issue,” Â鶹´«Ã½ President Dwuan J. Warmack says in the video. “The university has put resources to ensure that we do everything in our power to combat some of those health care disparities.”
The idea for SmartHOME came from a personal experience Warmack had in which some of his family members died from hypertension, a generational health issue that plagues Black communities.
He reached out to the chair of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Dr. Karina Liles, about his vision to “lead the nation in combating health care disparities in African American and other minority communities."
“Computer science is a way for us to build solutions to everyday problems,” Liles says in the video. “We have a forward-thinking president, so it was easy to get him on board with the SmartHOME.”
You can view the SmartHOME video along with the other short films the other HBCUs produced on YouTube. SCETV also plans on airing the films on the PBS World channel; no air date has been confirmed.
Students with members of SCETV. (Panther photo by Tyler Starks)