BALTIMORE–The engineering field is failing in diversity.
That was the opening message at “Priming the Pipeline: The Push for Diversity at Engineering Schools” Thursday at the U.S. News STEM Solutions Conference. In 2013, African-Americans made up just 3.6 of the engineering workforce, Hispanics made up 6.6 percent, and women made up 14.8 percent, according to the National Science Foundation.
But some institutions are succeeding more than others at promoting diversity and inclusion. That is where Julia Myers Ross, Kevin L. Moore and Karl W. Reid come in.
Ross is the dean of the College of Engineering and Information Technology for the University of Maryland—Baltimore County. She says that UMBC, whose student body is about 50 percent white, 20 percent underrepresented minorities (primarily black), and 30 percent Asian or international students, has no gap in graduation between different demographics. She pointed to two reasons: the fact that the half-century-old school was never segregated and the existence of its Meyerhoff Scholars program.
Ross says that “because of Meyerhoff, the culture shifted about 15 years ago for faculty to expect students of color to be at the top of the class,” regardless of whether those students are part of the program. She credits that shift in expectations with helping to close the retention and graduation gap that exists at most universities.
Rather than diversity, Ross says that “inclusive excellence” is what gets discussed at UMBC.
“Diversity is, ‘Who comes in our door, who do we enroll; who’s here?’ Inclusive excellence is, ‘What experience are those people having when they’re here? What is our climate?’ That’s the inclusiveness,” Ross says. “And the excellence piece is, ‘What are our outcomes?’ We have very high standards. It includes diversity, but it’s more than that. … Are our students from all different backgrounds being successful at equal rates?”
Moore serves as the dean and a professor at the College of Engineering and Computational Sciences at the Colorado School of Mines. He says that they decided in 2002 to focus on recruiting women and have recently directed those same efforts to underrepresented minorities.
One of the tactics the Colorado School of Mines has used is creating dedicated admissions councilors for women and for underrepresented minorities. The school also has a full-time faculty director and a part-time faculty adviser that works with their campus branch of the Society of Women Engineers, which is the country’s largest. Moore says this level of engagement from the school is part of why about half of the women there are members of SWE.
Reid also says that the average unmet financial need for African-American students in engineering is about $6,000 and that, according to the United Negro College Fund, providing that amount would increase the graduation rate by 8 percentage points.
One other thing that school faculty can do to help inclusion, in Reid’s view, is to use love and acceptance to make sure students feel encouraged to embrace their full identity.
“The student has to feel like they can bring their full self onto campus,” Reid says. “Diversity is the first step but … [identity] really deals with the implicit bias.”
Other stats and takeaways:
• Fifty-five percent of UMBC’s 11,000 undergraduate students are in STEM majors, according to Ross.
• Historically black colleges and universities make up less than 3 percent of universities but graduate more than 19 percent of black science and engineering majors, according to research from the University of Pennsylvania’s Marybeth Gasman.
• Reid says that 31 percent of African-Americans who start college in engineering finish within six years, which is the lowest among reported demographics (though Native Americans are probably lower).
• With more than 31,000 members, the National Society of Black Engineers is one of the largest student-governed societies in the U.S., according to Reid.
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(Photo at top by Martin Cron, used under Creative Commons)