In 2001, Judith Ramaley, a director at the National Science Foundation, coined the acronym STEM for education disciplines in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Since then, NSF and other public and private entities have provided numerous grants and incentives to support initiatives for STEM diversity in education.
However, almost two decades later, diversity among STEM faculty remains inadequate. Only 10.1% of STEM faculty is from underrepresented minorities, according to an NSF-funded report from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.
“It is clear we do not currently have a national STEM faculty that reflects the demographics of the students they are educating,” states the report titled “Strengthening Pathways to Faculty Careers in STEM: Recommendations for Systemic Change to Support Underrepresented Groups.”
Dr. Travis York, assistant vice president of APLU and co-author of the study, told Diverse that increased inclusion of underrepresented groups is necessary, not only for the sake of diversity but for the future of STEM professions.
“Our country is facing a huge deficit of STEM workforce; we need far more people to be graduating with STEM degrees in all areas, and in particular we need underrepresented scholars to be in those spaces,” York said. “That means our universities and our national systems need to serve those students well.”
Based on the findings, York said, “We need greater data transparency so that we can really understand where our systems are not serving these wonderful scholars and so that our systems can better work to increase the production of STEM scholars and the movement of STEM-qualified folks into the workforce.”
The report, which contains a companion guidebook for institutions, noted that one of the problems is a reduction in support for early career faculty in underrepresented groups. “Many universities have robust programs to support [underrepresented] students during their undergraduate and graduate careers, but that support appears to diminish at the post-doctoral and early career faculty stages,” the report states.
