Mentoring Students in STEM--Key is Changing Organizational Culture

There is no doubt that America must dramatically increase the number of scientists, engineers, technicians, and mathematicians that we produce each year in order to remain competitive internationally. Yet, how do we proceed?

Several states have increased math and science requirements in high school. Unfortunately, most states are having difficulty finding enough qualified and credentialed teachers to cover the required courses. This is especially true in low income schools. There is also a problem in attracting science and math majors to pursue careers in teaching at the high school level.

Additionally, the talent pool is more diverse, with more women and minorities majoring in sciences and math. Even so, very few minorities and women enter the ranks of the academy as professors. A variety of institutional and cultural barriers still exist, sometimes discouraging women and minorities from obtaining tenure track appointments in their fields or for obtaining tenure and promotion.

The American Association of University Women recently issued a report that found women continue to face barriers in STEM fields from attitudes and practices that persist in education and industry. This limits the number of young women who seek careers in STEM fields, as well as those who advance in the ranks of science, industry, and the professoriate.

To promote the discussion, I am sharing the thoughts of a friend, Patty Lopez, who is an Hispanic woman engineer with several patents under her belt. She currently works as a Component Design Engineer for Intel. I met Patty Lopez almost ten years ago, while serving as Provost of New Mexico State University. At the time, Patty worked for HP and was an alum of NMSU. She serves on the Electrical Engineering Advisory Board and their Electrical and Computer Engineering Academy. Patty has consistently worked to recruit women and minorities into STEM fields. She has also mentored many students and engineering professionals.

The following is written by Dr. Patty Lopez:

I wanted your insight on what I believe is the key to changing organizational culture in technology, which starts with changing the culture of higher education. Through my many board roles (at NMSU and elsewhere) and mentorship, I have found that many engineering colleges are inhospitable to women and minorities.

To be truly competitive, our tech workforce needs to be diverse. There are three gatekeepers for under-represented minorities (URM’s) in STEM that exist in K-12, higher education, and professionally.

The first gatekeeper is pedigree, and by this I mean where you were educated. In K-12, the pedigree of your high school determines which colleges you will be accepted into, in higher education, the institution from which you received your BS, MS, or PhD determines where you can go next, and how much you will inevitably earn. ACT and SAT scores will cull those high school graduates without adequate preparation and success in math and science, but many who would succeed lack adequate financial resources to enter the better colleges and universities. Many departmental graduate school selection committees use pedigree as their first “cut” at culling the list of applicants.

The assumption is two-fold: having a pedigree is an accurate predictor of future success, and the lack of one is an accurate predictor future failure. We know from many successful entrepreneurs that this is not the case. Unfortunately, many times pedigree is used as a selection criterion without thought to the fact that it is selecting out some very talented candidates who may not have the mentorship and sponsorship to make their case. Yes, they can write a letter that details their accomplishments and their “distance traveled”, if they know enough to do so. But many unfortunately do not.

The second gatekeeper is organizational culture – the mechanisms at work that generate glass or concrete ceilings. We see it at work in technology, where it also affects women, not just URM’s. Where does this culture come from? Our K-12 teachers have mandatory multicultural education training in their degree programs that prepare them for how to avoid bias and prejudice in the classroom. Higher education does not have any such requirements.

The key to changing organizational culture in industry, government, and research institutions begins with multicultural education and micro-inequities awareness training at all levels of academia – and must be supported at the highest levels of administration. Once we have experienced our own biases and how we use them in our daily lives, we can start to see how they permeate everything we do, how we make judgments based upon them, and how we exclude. Graduates will hopefully take their new awareness with them to their employers, wherever that may be, and thus the organization culture within technology companies would change.

The third gatekeeper is environment – and by this, I mean the environment in our colleges and workplaces. No doubt you have read the physorg.com article “Of Girls and Geeks: Environment may be why women don’t like computer science”. If you look inside most tech companies, you will see aisles and aisles of cubicles, and standard layouts for cubicle desks and equipment. If you walk down the halls of many engineering departments, many lack art of any kind, much less art that is culturally inclusive.

I took my 14-year-old daughter, 14-year-old nephew, and 18-year-old niece to UCSD last week to visit the engineering department there. Though the external campus was beautiful, we walked through the Jacobs School of Engineering and the majority of walls were bare, aside from some highly technical posters on various subjects. In the new Computer Science and Engineering building, again, very little art to entice shy, young, aspiring computer scientists and engineers into the building. We walked down the halls of the second floor, and while the interior offices might be highly personalized, the exterior halls were not, save for one post-doc with a cartoon on the door labeling himself “indentured servant”.

To the prospective student who has had mentors and sponsors in STEM, that experience alone would not deter them from entering. To the URM who has experienced many “closed doors”, it increases the sense of not belonging, not feeling welcomed, and that this is not a place where they can be successful. Never mind that they may be more resourceful, resilient, and just as talented as their pedigreed peers, but perhaps not as polished.

All three gatekeepers can be addressed through awareness. I have had the unique opportunity to experience all of them (in particular, barriers to academic positions upon receipt of my PhD), which is why I am so passionate on these issues. Perhaps you’ve had a chance to read Dr. Richard Tapia’s article on hiring and developing minority faculty at research universities (link is below).

Richard’s article strikes a chord when he shares the story of his talk "Why the Berkeley Math Department Would Never Hire Me." I could give several variants on that talk, from my own experiences. The irony is that I’m just the sort of person that industry and academia need – the sort of person who can be the diverse voice, the person who offers inclusiveness, sponsorship, and mentorship, the change agent that is needed to move women and minorities forward, if only the gatekeepers would let me pass through.

To implement a multicultural education program within a university, it must be supported at the highest levels, and training must happen at these levels on down the chain of command to the lowest level. How feasible is such a program? What are the advantages a university with such a program can demonstrate? How can they market themselves to compete for the best and brightest students? What if funding agencies would give priority to funding universities with this designation? What if accreditation organizations used this as a factor in accreditation decisions? I think this would certainly accelerate the adoption of such programs, leveling the playing field across the board.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Patty Lopez

At the HACU Conference--Serving Hispanic Students

This week I attended the 23rd Annual Conference of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU). I've been going to HACU conferences off and on for two decades.

At the Business meeting Sunday afternoon, I was elected to the Governing Board of HACU. This is a great honor, as I was nominated and elected to the position by fellow presidents.

HACU was formed to represent the interests of Hispanic Serving Institutions. At Monday's lunch, HACU recognized Dr. Max Castillo, former president of UHD, for his many years of service to HACU. He was also one of its founding members. HACU has grown to be one of the major higher education organizations in the nation. It now has 225 member universities (to be a member requires that at least 25% of student enrollment is Hispanic), over 100 associate members (colleges and universities with less than 25% Hispanic student enrollment), 49 international member universities, 57 corporate and agency partners, and 23 Hispanic Serving School Districts.

The U.S. Dept. of Education (USDE) provides special federal funding to eligible HSIs, and most federal agencies (such as USDA, DOI, DOE, and DOD) provide paid internship opportunities, co-ops, and specially-designated grants for HSIs. HACU has the largest internship program in the country. This year 680 interns will be placed with government agencies and corporate partners. HACU helped obtain funding for special programs, such as, Title V funding to support HSIs, including a new program which helps HSIs fund start-up costs for new graduate degree programs, especially in health care and STEM fields.

UHD is the only HSI in the UHD system. This is important because the University of Houston-Downtown is eligible for designated HSI grants or can be the lead organization in multi-university grants because of its HSI status. We are currently working with the UH System and the Vice Chancellor for Research to develop several multi-institutional grants with UHD as the lead partner.

The HACU annual meeting provides an important opportunity for colleges and universities to learn best practices, share experiences, network, and partner with corporate sponsors. During my trip I quickly reconnected with many old friends from New Mexico, California, New York, and Texas, as well as presidents, provosts, and deans from other institutions. I attended several workshops on recruitment, K-12 partnerships, work with first generation students, and STEM students. I also made contacts with several corporate sponsors that will be helpful to UHD.

In Spring 2010, UHD will host "HACU on the Road," where HACU representatives will come to Houston to showcase its work and programs. UHD will partner with local school districts, community colleges, four-year institutions, and CBOs like Houston Prep and Project Grad Houston, among others to host HACU.

HACU is a great organization and it's wonderful to be a member.

Latinos and America's Future

This past week I spoke on the Julie Stav Show, a nationally syndicated, Spanish, talk-radio program about financial matters; attended a western regional conference focused on STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) with educators and legislators, and hosted and was a panelist at the preview showing of the upcoming CNN special, “Latino in America,” which airs October 21st and 22nd. At these various events, I have raised several key points, some of which are in the book I co-edited, Latino Cultural Citizenship.

First, Latinos have come to America for the same reason that others have-- to create a better life for their families. We are Americans, but we also have the strong desire to retain our ethnic heritage and identity. Most of us speak English as our main language of communication, even so, we want to retain Spanish and encourage our children to learn Spanish.

Latinos are transforming America, just as they are transformed by it. That is the central thesis of Latino Cultural Citizenship, the notion that as Latinos claim space and rights, they also define themselves. How the country as a whole comes to grips with the growing Latino population is vital to the future of America. How so?

Currently, there are 46 million Latinos in the U.S. One out of every two new births in this country is Latino. That number will grow significantly by 2050. But, if Latinos continue to be under educated with high dropout rates and with lower college attendance rates and lower college graduation rates, it will cost this country billions of dollars.

A Pew poll found that 80% of Latino youth feel that college is important but only half feel they will ever attend college. According to U.S. census data, in 2006 of 100 Latino 9th graders, 53 will graduate from high school, 27 will enter college right after high school, and only 10 will graduate from college within six years of entering college. Ten out of 100!

According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, if the U.S. does not close the achievement gap of Latinos and African Americans, by 2020, it will cost the U.S. about $805 billion in lost revenues, taxes, productivity and income. By 2030, that number could grow to $1 trillion!

A recent study of U.S. workers in the global economy projects that by 2020, the U.S. will lack 15 million skilled workers, most of them in the STEM and high-knowledge areas, but also in health care and education. By 2030, the shortfall could reach 35 million. The Committee for Economic Development projects a decline of .29 percentage points a year, affecting incomes and Gross National Product, unless we increase college graduates, particularly in STEM fields.

The Latino population in this country is younger than the whites, Latinos currently account for 13 percent of the labor force. By 2020, Latinos will represent one-of-every six workers in America and one-fourth of new college applicants. By 2050, Latinos will account for one of every four workers in America and could represent one-of-every three students in college.

The future of America is bound up with the future of Latinos in America. So, we must increase the number of Latinos graduating from high school and going on to receive a college education. We have to address this issue. The future is here.

[By the way, 53% of those responded to our poll felt that the main obstacle to Latino success remains economic barriers and discrimination.]