STEM Diversity at the Crossroads
Founded in 1979, the National Association of Multicultural Engineering Program Advocates (NAMEPA) is the national network of minority engineering programs, commonly called MEPs. MEPs are retention and academic enhancement programs for mainly under-represented engineering students. Located in nearly 100 engineering schools on university campuses, MEPs work to increase the number and diversity of students who graduate in engineering disciplines. This purpose is accomplished by building an active collaborative learning community among its student participants and maintaining effective linkages with the university community and the industrial community. In addition to NAMEPA, there are at least 14 other national organizations related to the professional development and employment of underrepresented engineering students: *
SHPE INROADS
NACME MESA
AISES GREAT MINDS in STEM (HENNAC)
MAES SACNAS
SWE SECME
NSBE GEM
WEPAN NOBCCHE
Not mentioned are the numerous local and regionally-based organizations related to the development of underrepresented STEM students such as the Los Angeles Council of Black Professional Engineers (LACBPE). When pressed, industry reps who work with and coordinate the array of career fairs, banquets, conferences, internships, scholarships, advisory boards, contributions, etc. that involve each of these groups will acknowledge how very challenging it is to do so. Challenging because this entails working on these activities with several different groups on any given campus in addition to working with any given number of campuses.
In the realm of capitalism and free enterprise, this conundrum might be just “what the doctor ordered,” enabling industry to truly identify the best and the brightest for its employment and utilization. And without a doubt the need to hire the best and the brightest, who can “hit the ground running” is an increasingly strong imperative for companies to maintain their competitive edge in the rapidly expanding global economy. And yes, engineering graduates are rising to the occasion and demonstrating the skills necessary to compete in this “flat world.” Changes in engineering education over the last decade have led to better skills among graduates.
“The areas of greatest improvement,” said J. Fredericks Volkwein, a professor of higher education at Penn State, “are in teamwork and communication skills and the ability to learn, grow, and adapt.” George D. Peterson, of ABET, said employers have sought those skills for a number of years. Multinational corporations, especially, “want students well versed in how to deal around the world,” he said. And with the rapid pace of technological change, companies want graduates “who have an appreciation for lifelong learning.” Without it, he added, “you’re obsolete in 5 to 10 years.”
Those of us who represent NAMEPA know that MEPs are responsible, at least in part, if not considerably, for the improvement of teamwork and communication skills that engineering students have acquired. We know that the collaborative methodologies developed specifically for underrepresented minority engineering students which we have implemented over the years have strongly impacted not only our own students but how our engineering schools in general do their business.
Nevertheless, the reality is that increasing the participation of minority group members in STEM has become a cottage industry of groups and organizations that have become dependent on this business for their livelihoods. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Having dedicated professionals working on the problem is the way to solve the problem. However, when the money gets tight, as it is and has been, the ability and willingness to collaborate diminishes in the need to survive and pay the bills.
Such is and has been the case with the aforementioned STEM diversity programs, organizations and consortia (SDPOC), of which this writer is a member. It is significant that there is no strategic organizational entity which oversees the totality of the effort to recruit, retain and graduate underrepresented STEM minority students, yet there are numerous SDPOC organizations working actively toward this effort, often in competition with each other for funding.
So, yes, we do find ourselves in competition with each other. And, we lament the fact that our contributions to the workforce are not well-known and acknowledged as we think they should. This is not due to any self-serving egotistic need. We have nothing against competition per se, but competition in our case undermines our ability to accomplish our mission of increasing the number of underrepresented engineers and computer scientists. Competition undermines our ability to demonstrate to our own students the collaboration we instruct, promote, and preach to them. And competition undermines our ability to move forward a strong collaborative approach to not only underrepresented students but students in general. And if the global competitiveness scenarios with which we are being barraged of late are even partially true, our need to work together, not competitively, is essential to our very well being. W. Edwards Deming, father of the total quality management movement, stated in his The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education,
“We have grown up in a climate of competition between people, teams, departments, divisions, pupils, schools, universities. We have been taught by economists that competition will solve our problems. Actually, competition, we see now, is destructive. It would be better if everyone would work together as a system, with the aim for everybody to win. What we need is cooperation and transformation to a new style of management….Competition leads to loss. People in opposite directions on a rope only exhaust themselves. They go nowhere. What we need is cooperation. Every example of cooperation is one of benefit and gains to them that cooperate. Cooperation is especially productive in a system well managed.”
It is vitally important that the spirit of cooperation and collaboration be associated with STEM diversity programs and not competition. Why? Because, we are not in completion with each other when it comes to the goal of increasing underrepresented minority participation in the STEM workforce. This is not a race to the top proposition. STEM is the acronym for the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics fields and the academic and support programs that prepare individuals for the STEM workforce. STEM, in the past five years, has become the new buzzword to refer to America’s technological competitiveness in the global arena. Presidential initiatives advocating STEM workforce production have charged both the non-profit and profit environments with new opportunities for obtaining resources. Now, everybody and their mother are aligning themselves with STEM! Last year I read about a workshop sponsored by the Concerned African American Parents (CAAP) titled, “Good Things Come to Those Who Work — Middle School — Focus on the value of higher education, the rewards for academic excellence, and the need to increase the numbers of underrepresented students in STEM majors/careers”
Diverse Issues in Higher Education reported, “Scholars, Lawmakers Call for Greater Focus on Recruiting, Preparing Engineers of Color.” “Engineering deans at many minority-serving institutions are among those calling for a new national initiative to help MSIs and urban public universities increase the number of engineers of color, whom they say are critical to the nation’s future economic growth.”
The Dean at Florida International University stated,
“Without diversity, we will not be able to reach our goals and targets,” said Amir Mirmiran, engineering dean at Florida International University, a Hispanic-serving institution based in Miami. Through their innovations, he told Diverse, engineers are critical “job multipliers” whose work can create more high-paying jobs in the nation’s economy.
Did he really say “a new initiative” when NAMEPA has been in existence since 1979?
The first MEP was started in 1973 at California State University, Northridge by Dr. Raymond Landis. https://www.csun.edu/engineering-computer-science/history-mep
It operated as the sole MEP in California until 1982 when the California State legislature appropriated funds to establish the Minority Engineering Program collaborative, under the auspices of the Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) program, at twelve campuses of the University of California and the California State University. The original appropriation of $932,000 for MEP came from the Investment In People (IIP) fund and was used to fund the establishment of a number of centers at private, UC and CSU campuses. My campus, Cal Poly Pomona was one of the original campuses. In 2000, the MESA Statewide office, within the University of California Office of the President, managed twenty-four (24) MEP sites, almost all of which were housed within a campus College of Engineering.
In 2000 the program served nearly 6,000 undergraduates and accounted for 90% of California’s underrepresented recipients of B.S. degrees in engineering and computer science. MEP works in collaboration with the MESA pre-college efforts and the MESA Community College effort to recruit prospective students to the respective four-year institutions. At the campus level the MEP also works in collaboration with the (UC) California Alliance for Minority Participation (CAMP) and the CSU Alliance for Minority Participation (AMP), both of which are funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). These projects have moved their focus to increasing the number of underrepresented students in advanced degree programs.
Given state budget cutbacks, MESA was unable to completely fund the MEP. However, MESA continued to seek additional resources for this important program and was hopeful that state funding would be restored to the MEP in the future. Meanwhile, MEP centers received the majority of funds from their host institutions and received additional support from local industry partners. MESA provided partial funding and internship/scholarship opportunities.
Main components of the MEP include:
· Academic excellence workshops. MEP students are clustered in the same core math and science classes and taught how to deepen their understanding of complex key concepts and maintain high academic outcomes through group study techniques.
· Orientation course for freshmen and transfers. The introduction to engineering class teaches special college achievement skills tailored to students pursuing these extremely difficult majors.
· Career advising. Students learn specifics about various engineering majors and job experiences. Industry mentors, job shadowing opportunities, career fairs, internships and field trips to companies are also offered.
· Links with student and professional organizations. MEP advises groups such as the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) and works closely with the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) to enhance their academic, leadership and professional development skills.
· Professional development workshops. Students participate in mock job fairs, develop resume preparation and interview skills, and learn how to find summer, part-time and, full-time employment.
· The student study center. This dedicated multipurpose space is used for individual and group study, and general interaction and information sharing. It is a key element to building a close learning community.
· Industry Advisory Boards. These boards offer valuable connections between students and industry leaders. Corporate representatives, including MEP alumni, participate on boards and provide scholarships, strategic planning, special summer internships, field trips and other resources.
· Summer Bridge Programs. Research has shown that students who participate in university transition programs such as Summer Bridge have accelerated progress in college math and writing in their first year. Participants have demonstrated a 20% improvement in retention and GPAs that are 5% higher than non-participants.
The Minority Engineering Program changed its name to MESA Engineering Program in 1996 to deflect attention to its minority focus in response to Proposition 209. In 2003 MESA defunded the MEP’s due to budget cuts under the acknowledgement that most of the MEP’s were institutionalized on their individual campuses, as was Cal Poly Pomona.
Such has been the experience with many of the MEP’s throughout the country as budget cuts and deepening political divisions have not enabled MEP’s to grow and maintain the resource base needed to continue to be visible and effective. See: https://www.academia.edu/19359356/DO_THEY_EVEN_HAVE_THAT_ANYMORE_THE_IMPACT_OF_REDESIGNING_A_MINORITY_ENGINEERING_PROGRAM
Frankly, other SDPOC entities have been more effective than MEP’s in asserting an organizational and marketing profile which gains the attention of funders. These organizations have devoted time to fund full-time Executive Directors and CEO’s whose primary responsibility is development, and fundraising and marketing. Ray Mellado of Great Minds in STEM was a 21year marketing/sales executive with the Xerox Corporation. As educators, it is hard to compete with that as we all vie for the attention of corporate America, grants and foundations.
Still, as I advocated to engineering-related companies years ago, many SHPE, NSBE, MAES AISES students are MEP students.
“Funnel your funds on the individual campuses through the MEP. If there are SHPE, NSBE, AISES, MAES, HENAAC students on a MEP campus, those students are MEP students anyway. Assist the MEP with engendering its collaborative programs that have led to the acknowledged teamwork and communication skills improvements by ABET. Insist to these organizations that they work through the MEP’s who work with these students on a day-to-day basis and are truly responsible for the nurturance and guidance that produce the positive and competitive career development industry values. Broker a meeting with these groups and inform them of your need for greater collaboration and resource utilization.”
Who best should be the recipient of the resources directed towards the nurturance and education of underrepresented minority STEM students? The direct service provider to the students, the educational institutions themselves or the external brokers? Or, more importantly, how can we all work together in much more effective collaboration than we are now?
A few years ago, Marion Clifton Blakey, president and chief executive officer of the Aerospace Industries Association, expressed need to attract home-grown and more diverse engineering talent to the U.S. aerospace and defense industry as if the NAMEPA’S and MESA’s were invisible.
Most recently, the Walt Disney Company announced it is donating $1 million to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America to help expand its STEM programs. https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/02/27/black-panther-success-leads-to-1-million-donation-to-stem-centers-in-oakland-other-cities/
Need I say more?
There are experts out there who know how to do this thing and have been doing so. How we get the attention of those who have the resources to move this further is a continuing frustration. I propose that a governing entity or at minimum, an organizational entity oversee, support, assess, and represent these disparate groups as the ideal and most effective solution to accomplish this goal. I would be more than happy to discuss this in much greater detail.
Please contact me at your earliest convenience at 323.240.9358.
Sincerely,
Milton Randle, Director,
Maximizing Engineering Potential (MEP) RETIRED
College of Engineering
Cal Poly Pomona
stemdiv2@gmail.com
(323) 240–9358
*SHPE (Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers), SWE (Society of Women Engineers) NACME (National Action Council of Minorities in Engineering), AISES (American Indian Science and Engineering Society), MAES (Mexican American Engineering Society), NOBCChE (National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers), NSBE (National Society of Black Engineers), INROADS, MESA (Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement), NAFEO (The National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher education), HACU, (Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities),
GREAT MINDS in STEM/HENNAC (Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Conference), WEPAN (Women in Engineering Programs & Advocates Network), SACNAS (Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science), SECME, Inc. (Southeastern Consortium for Minorities in Engineering), GEM (National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science).
