career focus
http://www.todaysengineer.org/2013/Apr/career-focus.asp
The Importance of STEM Diversity
By John R. Platt
More than half of the employees in STEM professions today are white males. Experts say that
will need to change. Diversifying the STEM workforce will not only ensure that there are enough
talented employees to fill tomorrow's job openings, it will also drive innovation, sales and
profits.
Let's Look at the Numbers
The numbers tell a story. The population of the United States is rapidly getting more diverse, but
things aren't changing as dramatically in STEM professions, according to the latest edition of the
National Science Foundation's biennial report, “Women, Minorities, and Persons with
Disabilities in Science and Engineering.” The report looks at education and employment trends
for women and underrepresented minorities (which it defines as "blacks, Hispanics and
American Indians") as of the year 2010. Among its findings:
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51% of the scientists and engineers working in the U.S. are white males, even though
they only represent 31.3% of the U.S. population;
Although women represent 50.9% of the total U.S. population, they only account for 28%
of the science and engineering workforce;
The number of underrepresented minorities studying engineering and the physical
sciences has stayed relatively flat since the year 2000;
The percentage of women working in computer science and engineering is not just low, it
is declining;
Unemployment rates are significantly higher for minority scientists and engineers;
More black doctorate recipients go into agriculture and physical sciences than
engineering or computer sciences;
And minority students enroll disproportionately in 2-year colleges, which are less
equipped to prepare them for technology careers.
Why Diversity Matters: Jobs, Ideas and Sales
There's a flip side to these employment numbers: There simply aren't enough trained candidates
who are ready to take on the U.S.-based science and engineering jobs that will open up over the
next few years. This is especially true in growth industries such as computing, as well as in fields
that are poised to experience massive retirement shifts, such as power engineering and nuclear
energy.
"There are more jobs than you can shake a stick at," says Jane Chu Prey, a member of the IEEE
Computer Society Board of Governors who developed and implemented Microsoft Research's
Gender Diversity and Pipeline Strategy. "The percentage of computing majors graduating from
college will only fill something like 52% of the projected jobs that require computer people. We
just don't have enough bodies."
Having a diverse workforce also helps companies to attract — and keep — the best talent.
"Our diverse workforce allowed us to hire and team the best and brightest individuals," says Roy
Foreman, an electrical engineering manager in Northrop Grumman's Information Systems Sector
and recipient of the this year's Industry Professional Achievement award from the Black
Engineer of the Year Award (BEYA) STEM Global Competitiveness Conference. He says
having that top talent in place led to effective problem solving and successful program execution
while also reducing employee turnover.
Diversity has been talked about since the 1960s, but the business need behind it has changed.
"Diversity was the right thing to do in 1967, but in 2013 it's the sophisticated business thing to
do," says Shirley Engelmeier, founder of InclusionINC and the author of "Inclusion: The New
Business Advantage." In a world where companies compete for the best talent, Engelmeier says,
making inclusion part of a company's business strategy "helps to drive employee engagement,
productivity, innovation and retention."
Diversity also drives better ideas and teamwork, according to several scientific studies. One
recent study from MIT and Carnegie Mellon found that individual intelligence was less
important for successful projects than collective intelligence. The study also found that the group
performance improved when the proportion of women increased.
Similarly, having too many employees with the same background can limit both progress and
the growth of new ideas, says Rebecca Searles, social community editor for The Huffington Post.
Searles is one of the organizers of the publisher's new STEM mentorship program for young
women, which recently attracted 1,000 girls seeking mentors. "The more ideas you have
circulating and bouncing off each other, the better it's going to be," she says.
Having team members with different cultural points of view also has the potential to open up
new markets and drive sales. "It's important to consider the diversity that we have in this country
because that ultimately also determines what consumer demand looks like," says Laura Berrocal,
chair of Innovation Generation, a coalition dedicated to promoting broadband technology in
minority communities. "Greater diversity inside a culture helps to improve a company's ability to
understand the social implications of their work and that ultimately can also prove beneficial to a
company's bottom line."
Steps to Increase Diversity Today
So what can companies and organizations do to increase the diversity of their workforces?
One effective element is mentorship. Foreman runs mentoring programs at both Northrop
Grumman and his alma mater, Alabama A&M University, which he says has helped to both
attract and retain great employees. He suggests recruiting from historically black colleges and
universities (such as Alabama A&M) and using mentorship programs as a selling point for your
organization. "You show them that you have employee resource groups that emphasize
diversity," he says. He also recommends taking a diverse selection of employees to recruiting
events, which not only helps to illustrate that a company does not discriminate but also holds up
minority engineers as potential role models.
The awards that Foremen has received from BEYA and the National Society of Black Engineers
(NSBE) also help him "sell" his profession to students who aren't sure what they want to do. "It
kind of gives the profession a face," he says. "Students can see that I'm an electrical engineer
who has actually put products out there, and that they can do it, too."
Prey feels that companies should actively seek to improve their diversity. "Men need to
recognize that they have an opportunity to be more aggressive in recruiting women," she says.
"There are some excellent women out there, but maybe they're just not 'top of mind' as easily."
Although men currently working in non-diverse organizations might have more of a tendency to
think of other men for job openings, she says that will change as diversity improves. "If you can
get to 30 or 40 percent women, the gender bias disappears."
Some organizations may need to adapt their culture in order to attract and retain new employees.
"There's a risk for any group that's accustomed to working together and doesn't have a lot of
variety of opinion," Engelmeier says. "You might need to think about how a corporate culture
needs to shift organizationally to include different thought processes." Hiring someone for their
unique set of skills won't matter, she says, if nobody listens to that new employee.
As for employees looking for jobs, Engelmeier suggests emphasizing what she calls "unique
competencies" in resumes, "things like 'has worked cross-culturally' or 'has bilingual capability,'"
she says. This reflects not just diversity, but the business need for those skills. "For more of our
clients, 70% of their growth is happening outside the United States. The business paradigm tells
us that we need people to work in or with offices in Japan, Brazil, Europe and China," she says,
identifying one of the areas where those competencies might come into play.
Steps to Increase Diversity Tomorrow
Improving STEM diversity isn't going to happen overnight. It remains important to create a
pipeline that will provide the necessary employees five, ten and twenty years from now.
For underrepresented minorities, that may mean reaching students at a young age so they prepare
to study computer science, engineering or other STEM professions. The reasons are simple: once
students start studying something else, they may lack the means to switch majors. "Often times,
minority students don't have the financial means to complete their degrees," says Berrocal. "It's
important to make sure that students are really clear about what career path they're at least
interested in when they get into college, whether it's a community college or an Ivy League
school, so they have a better start at being able to complete that degree."
Amir Mirmiran, dean of Florida International University's College of Engineering and
Computing, says they frequently goes to high schools to talk about STEM professions. "Our
work in terms of making the students interested in studying engineering or technology or science
or math has to start before they get to a point to decide on the major." Their pipeline work has
helped Florida International University to become the country's largest producer of STEM
degrees for Hispanics.
Mirmiran and Laird Kramer, director of FIU's STEM Transformation Institute, say they try to
engage students with active learning. "It's not the guy who stands in front of the board and talks
to a class all day," says Kramer. "It's a person who helps facilitate this learning and tries to get
people to think about and really wrestle with the ideas of science. Some of our classes have no
lecture, it's all activity." This also allows them to give students continual feedback and to let their
students' voices be heard more than would happen in a lecture format.
Prey agrees with this method. "We aren't doing a good job in our introductory computer classes
to keep students interested," she says. "We teach them how to write code, but not why it's
important to write code. It's not a very exciting educational experience."
Searles recommends that companies make themselves known on campuses, so students can
become aware of all of the career options available to them. "A lot of people studying science
aren't quite aware of the options out there. I don't think that a lot of people my age realize that
they can be surrounded by and do the things that they love without getting their Ph.D. and going
into academics. If they're only listening to their professors, they might think that that's the only
career path available to them. Companies might want to start getting some ideas into students'
heads."
Conclusion
Diversity is likely to remain a pressing issue for STEM fields for several years. But as Prey says,
diverse employees will be needed sooner rather than later. "We have to start thinking about it
now. We don't have tomorrow to worry about it."
However things move forward, Foreman believes that talent is the most important quality for all
job applicants. "When you look for the biggest and brightest, there's no way to tag a color on
that," he says. "If you look at my resume and my bio, there would be no way in the world, if I
took out the BEYA and the NSBE lingo, that you wouldn't know who I was."
Finally, Searles says the Huffington Post's STEM mentorship program offers valuable insight
into the future. "Almost all of our applicants say they want to be engineers. I think that's a really
good indicator for this industry."
Additional Recourses & Reading:
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The job site Monster.com has put together a fantastic report, "Seven Tactics for
Successful STEM Diversity Recruiting"
Diversity Executive magazine asks, "Why Are Minorities Underrepresented in STEM?"
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A recent IEEE-USA report shows "STEM Visas Can Promote Diversity & Have Positive
Effect on U.S. Job Creation"
The National Center for Women in Information Technology has a great list of online
resources
And finally, First Round Capital shows "How Etsy Grew their Number of Female
Engineers by 500 in One Year" (read the article or watch the video at the end)
Comments on this story may be emailed directly to
Today's Engineer or submitted through our online form.
John R. Platt is a freelance writer and entrepreneur, as well as a frequent contributor to Today's
Engineer, Scientific American, Mother Nature Network and other publications.
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