To understand the challenges that minorities face throughout the STEM pipeline, it is critical to consider the current climate and historical events surrounding the underrepresentation of a culturally significant population in professions like engineering.
In recent news, the remains of hundreds of Indigenous people, mainly children, were found in unmarked graves that were part of the Canadian government’s cultural genocide through residential schools that started over 100 years ago. This cultural genocide had a major adverse effect on many thousands of Indigenous children and their families.
“Within the Native American community, a lot of our grandparents were forcibly removed from the reservation and sent away to a boarding school where they couldn’t speak their language, practice ceremonies. There’s still a mistrust when you talk about kids even going to school. They’re still in the back of people’s minds and that concern may never leave,” said Bill Tiger, who is a citizen of the Miccosukee Indians of Florida Tribe and a former plant manager at General Motors. “I talked with a group of Native American high schoolers in the Western New York area. I had this one young girl come up and she was talking afterward about how she is the top in her class and wanted to go to MIT and become a mechanical engineer. What she was struggling with was her mother didn’t want her to leave. Most parents would be thrilled if your kid had the opportunity to go to MIT and become a mechanical engineer. Her mother was afraid she wouldn’t come back. It’s hard to address that.… That trauma is still so real for so many people that it also creates an issue.”
However, the reluctance to leave home is one of many issues that indigenous people face in STEM. Others include not knowing they can be a STEM professional, the lack of preparedness for college or university and the costs associated with the education.
In the U.S. and worldwide, the government aimed to constrain education for black people during the days of slavery. After emancipation, education for black students was poorly funded in segregated schools. Fast forward to the end of the decade, and more black people were choosing to attend predominately white institutions than historically black colleges, where they often faced racism and discrimination.
To break this down: Hispanic students make up 10 percent of engineering bachelor’s degrees, while black students make up 3.9 percent, American Indian students make up 0.3 percent and Asian Americans make up 13 percent. Due to the large gap between the general public and people of color, there have been many initiatives to improve education and the quality of life for those who are underrepresented.
Progressing to a Brighter Future—Are We There Yet?
The civil rights and women’s movement pushed federal policymaking to help those who were underrepresented. In the 1980s, Janet Welsh Brown, head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Office of Opportunities in Science and president of the Federation of Organizations for Professional Women, advocated for policies and funding to address this underrepresentation, leading to the creation of the Science and the Technology Equal Opportunity Act of 1980.
In 1984, minorities accounted for less than 6 percent of engineering degrees. While there is some progress in terms of recruiting and retaining policies, minorities continue to face the same obstacles that were reported 50 years ago, such as discrimination, a hostile school environment and microaggression. However, cases are better documented today.
Due to widespread racism in both Canada and the United States, the governments of both countries have made the first step in addressing the issue. The Canadian government created the Supporting Black Canadian Communities Initiative run by a new External Reference Group. According to a government press release, the group will include “up to 15 members of African descent from the not-for-profit, education, public and private.” In the United States, the Biden Plan for Black America aims to invest in African American businesses as well as tackle racial inequity in the education system by expanding STEM in underserved school districts, improving teacher diversity and investing over $70 billion in historically black colleges and universities or minority-serving institutions.
Many companies have also taken action to combat or support anti-racism movements, such as Apple’s entrepreneurship camp for black software developers, Facebook’s commitment to double the number of black and Latinx employees in beginner and leadership roles, as well as Viacom’s Content for Change initiative that focuses on racial justice, economic empowerment, education, health and civic participation.
“We are having conversations that we wouldn’t be having a few decades ago. We are raising a generation that is better educated on racial justice than we are. At the same time, the progress is too slow. We can’t be happy with token victories. We can’t be satisfied with local progress only.… The priority should be improving diversity in the engineering community, regardless of whether we can hire that engineer to our own companies,” said Tektronix’s Vice President of Engineering Mehmet Aslan. “There is an inherent strength of diverse teams, as they inspire vital conversations, new questions and breakthroughs because people approach problems from different backgrounds and experiences.… Take AI or speech recognition software. If all the testing is done with white faces or male voices, applications will have a harder time recognizing darker faces or female voices. What we do as people thus is further perpetuated by machines.”
Today, people of color make up about 40 percent of engineering degrees, with Caucasians making up about 60 percent. There has been significant growth among underrepresented groups, namely Hispanics, with an 80 percent increase in representation, and Asian Americans and Blacks, with an increase of 35 percent each. The collective representation of Hispanics, Blacks, American Indians and Native Hawaiians is still significantly lower when considering the breakdown of all college students. A large reason behind the increase is the number of graduates from historically black colleges and Hispanic serving institutions. In fact, four Hispanic serving institutions were among the top 10 producers of bachelor’s degrees and seven were a part of the small-sized producers of engineering programs.
Amr Haj-Omar, an R&D Innovator and member of Black Excellence Matters at Tektronix who holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, said, “in the U.S., there are historically black colleges and universities that were a part of the civil rights movement, which sparked to help advance years of injustice where education was literally deprived.… The largest number of global majority, at least within the black population, does come from those HBCUs and similarly, there are Hispanic served schools as well. They proved themselves and they’ve been pushing the needle and it’s an opportunity for our leaders in the industry to learn from them and know how to support them rather than recreate the wheel.”
The Challenges of Institutional Racism and Prevalent Discrimination
As late as the 1960s, most African American, Latino and Native students were educated in segregated schools funded at rates lower than those serving white students. While there has been a substantial difference for equal funding, educational experiences for minority or low-income students have been separate and unequal. This may be because minority students often live in poor urban districts or in rural areas.
In some of these schools, such as Contrast MacKenzie High School in Detroit, word processing courses are taught without word processors, or East St. Louis Senior High School, where science courses are taught without labs, dissecting kits or laboratory tables. Often, these courses do not have a qualified teacher leading the class. In fact, The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future found that new teachers hired without meeting certification standards (25 percent of all new teachers) are usually assigned to teach the most disadvantaged students in low-income and high-minority schools. Minority students are often left with lower-quality books, curriculum materials, computers as well as larger class sizes. This often leads to a class that is not ready for college and has not made achievement gains in reading and math achievement.
A study that looked at whether STEM programs are retaining minorities found that only 22 percent of Latinos, 18 percent of African Americans and 19 percent of Native Americans complete their five-year degree. The study concluded that “unsupportive institutional policies” and “negative classroom environments” were the main causes behind these poor numbers. Further, the study found that minorities often reported experiences of isolation, self-doubt, negative interpersonal relations and favoritism toward majority students.
Since there are so few minorities in STEM, this cycle is perpetually continuing unless there are better resources for students in high school or elementary school. Many minorities may be unaware of or know very little about the world of STEM or receive no encouragement to go into the field.
“In Indigenous communities, we don’t have a lot of examples of professionals to look at in all of these various engineering fields. So, a parent can’t necessarily encourage their child to go into an engineering field if they don’t know about it.… We need to be able to have those role models and have people understand what it means to be an engineer,” said Lisa Paz, senior director of engagement and advocacy for the American Indian Science and Engineering Society. “Some systemic issues that face people of color and Indigenous people, in particular, are our lack of being able to access science, math and engineering courses in schools compared to the rest of the country.… Many of our students are first-generation college students, so that’s extremely difficult to learn how to navigate the college system. A lot of times, they’re not able to finish or maybe don’t finish with an engineering degree because it became so difficult and they’re unsupported since they do not look like other students in their classes, especially when you get into higher-level engineering classes, it’s important to have somebody to connect with.”
Many schools that are in areas with higher minority densities are seemingly underfunded or do not prepare students adequately for college.
“Reservations are remote or rural and getting staff for those schools is challenging due to funding. Even though the federal government is supposed to be funding those schools, there is a huge lack of funding and so having supplies for a science lab or computer classes... In fact, it’s pretty rare that they can do that because they literally don’t have the resources; they don’t have qualified staff sometimes to be teaching beginner engineering coding,” said Paz. “Funding is definitely the biggest issue here, which can be difficult, especially the schools that are run by the federal government.”
Larger companies can also find it hard to hire indigenous people since the pipeline is still very small. Tiger explains: “People wind up trying to find ways that may not flip the switch overnight, but they’re heading in the right direction. Along with that, we are so underrepresented that it’s difficult for companies or industries that want to hire and become more diverse because the pipeline is just not large enough. For instance, Native Americans represent about 2 percent of the population here in the U.S. and it takes about 4 percent up in Canada. When you look at the STEM pipeline, we’re about half a percent of the STEM pipeline, even if you set up all things to be equal.”
Shining a Light on the Dark Places
“There’s been a big turn recently … a lot of organizations are looking at themselves internally saying, ‘We are not as diverse as we thought’ or ‘We have not been doing as much as we have thought or have said,’” said Paz. “AISES [American Indian Science and Engineering Society] started about 45 years ago—at least there were enough scientists and engineers to get an organization started for us and since then, we’ve had tens of thousands of members come through and become professional STEM Indigenous professionals and that’s so exciting to see. We’ve definitely seen the numbers and representation grow.”
Haj-Omar added, “I would like to see more progress and more creativity the same way we’re being creative about building our products, building KPIs [key performance indicators], running our businesses to truly solve this problem. Not trying to reinvent the wheel by just dumping money on the problem but engaging with the thought leaders, listening and respecting the perspective of the global majority, and trying to solve the problems that we think are important rather than the problem that the industry wants to solve in terms of just recruitment.… Give the responsibility of training and development to the universities—it’s a partnership and really bridge that partnership to understand what’s needed to empower those professors and to empower those students.”
Undoubtedly, diversity is important in the workplace and post-secondary institutions. Luckily, there are many ways to achieve it.
To increase the number of underrepresented groups, Engineers Canada’s Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Strategic Partnerships Jeanette Southwood said, “we have a program on Indigenous access to engineering and we have done a study trying to estimate what the representation currently is in engineering.… We have a program to help us in different ways around Indigenous access and people of color to engineering so, for example, we have a network of engineering deans across Canada who are working with us to be able to increase access.”
Many studies have shown that increasing funding can improve outcomes. In fact, more than 35 percent of public school revenue comes from property taxes that favor funding in wealthier areas since people of color attend schools that statistically are more likely to be under-resourced or outdated. To solve the underrepresentation found in post-secondary schools, the government should look toward providing college assistance programs that cover more than just tuition. Low-income students, many of whom are people of color, often need more funds to help pay for basic living and other expenses that come with attending school. Policy solutions can also include canceling student loan debt and doubling the federal Pell Grant ($6,495 is the current maximum award).
Transparent funding policies at the state and local levels can help ensure that capital projects, programs and spending are equitable. Eliminating gift tracking can also help provide enrichment programs and rigorous coursework to all students.
Colleges and post-secondary institutions can also help efforts to increase representation by concentrating on communities of color and social justice by strengthening the African American studies departments and requiring students to take a course on ethnic studies or racial justice. For example, the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future as well as the federal Higher Education Act have created a blueprint for a comprehensive set of policies to help schools focus on obtaining more qualified teachers for all schools through such measures as reallocating resources from administrative superstructures and add-on programs.
Southwood added, “universities are looking at how can they contribute to making the profession more diverse [such as] the Indigenous and Black Engineering and Technology Momentum Fellowship, and they’re meant to expand the pathways for Indigenous and black students who are pursuing doctoral degrees in engineering to prepare for careers as professors and industry researchers.”
Aslan continued, “to increase representation in engineering requires a comprehensive approach—from ensuring early and equal access to education, to reforming the college curriculum and experience, to building support and leadership trajectories within the industry. The more mentorship we can offer underrepresented students, the more students we can retain within engineering programs and launch into engineering careers.”
Mentorship opportunities can often help make an environment feel more comfortable, allowing people of color to cope with any challenges or barriers they may encounter. Engineering associations can also offer education to those who are experiencing hostile work environments and salary negotiations or are in need of potential mentors.
Haj-Omar concluded, “education is the weapon that can eradicate racism. I think the tool that we could give the young generation is equal opportunity. When it comes to education, that’s truly what’s going to close the gap.”
How are you or your company addressing race and discrimination issues in the workplace or post-secondary institutions?