Dickey and Huang support several local causes, including Boise State Public Radio where Huang is on the community board. They are also funding a STEM initiative at Garfield Elementary School in Boise. Dickey and Huang have long-held interests in the STEM fields. Their son Nicholas is pursuing a Ph.D. in physics at the University of California Berkeley and Huang taught computer science at Boise State in the 1990s. Dickey became familiar with Associate Professor Brian Jackson after reading a story in the Idaho Statesman about Jackson’s restoration of Boise State’s observatory on the roof of the Education and Science Building. When Jackson began his successful fundraiser to buy a mobile planetarium to further astronomy education in Idaho public schools, Dickey and Huang donated to the project.
“Nicholas and how his future was shaped by the teachers and opportunities available to him in the Boise School District were a large part of why we wanted to support the mobile planetarium in less-advantaged areas of Idaho. We saw the potential to ignite the same sparks that caught fire with our son,” Dickey said. “In my previous job as director of a youth suicide prevention program for the state, I saw the inequality of opportunity between urban and rural school districts. There needs to be some mechanism to equalize opportunity. Our donation to the mobile planetarium was a small contribution towards that.”
