Engineering a solution for an inclusive STEM ecosystem

Life is full of doorways. Every choice, challenge or event leads us down different pathways to doors both old and new. Some of those doors are so broad and open that we hardly notice as we pass through. Some are hidden from view. And others are so narrow or heavy that we cross their threshold only with great effort and the help of others.

Doors that are open to some may be barred and locked to others. One person’s bright and inviting door can seem cold, dark and unwelcoming to someone from a different background, culture, class or even neighborhood.

Each of those doors represent opportunity. Opportunity to better one’s creative potential or economic future. Opportunity to connect, share and learn. And when it comes to science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the opportunity to contribute to tremendous breakthroughs and innovations that benefit our world.

In contrast, every darkened path, hidden entry or locked door is a lost opportunity — not only for our country but for the millions of people missing from our STEM enterprise.

That is why the US National Science Foundation (NSF) pledges to reach the missing millions — those talented people who, by circumstance or a lack of opportunity, are not yet engaged in the STEM workforce. That call to action resonates across the sciences, but as an engineer, I find it particularly poignant.

It is time for us to be engineers of opportunity: to build new doorways and repurpose existing doors and pathways to welcome people from all walks of life.

I have always believed that the study of engineering is valuable for everyone, even those who don’t want to enter the practice. Engineering teaches us to think creatively and collaboratively. We analyze problems, systems and data. We model underlying mechanisms and evaluate potential solutions. We optimize responses to address societal challenges. And most importantly, we iterate by innovating, testing, improving and repurposing so our solutions will have a meaningful impact.

The challenge of STEM diversity is in many ways an engineering problem.

Analyzing the problem

The STEM labor market is the fastest growing sector in the United States and among the highest paid. Yet according to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistic’s 2023 Diversity and STEM opens in new tab/window report, we would need to double the number of women with engineering bachelor’s degrees to match the proportion of women in the US population. Similarly, we would need to nearly double the number of Hispanic and Latino students and triple the number of Black students to accurately reflect their proportion of the population.

Why does it matter that so many communities are underrepresented in engineering and STEM more broadly?

Because the entire engineering community benefits from a broad pool of perspectives, ideas and experiences. A STEM ecosystem that reflects our population is more capable of innovation, both by understanding community needs, priorities and constraints and by bringing unique knowledge and experience to bear on grand challenges. It also enrichens collaborative work across the STEM disciplines, increasing communal knowledge and cross-cutting work. Lastly, and most importantly, it is the only way to capitalize on the immense wealth of talent that exists across every region, community and demographic in our country.

In short, the current state of our STEM enterprise diminishes our competitiveness in the world, weakens our national health and security, and deprives us of life-changing discoveries and inventions.

The engineer’s perspective

Engineering is a way of thinking of the world around you and seeing not just what is here but the possibilities of what could be. It’s time for engineers to focus our rigorous analytical approaches and high-yield design methodologies to recruit and retain a broad engineering workforce, including women and minorities as well as underrepresented rural and urban communities. In short, it’s time for action. We need to use the decades of reports about our challenges to broadening the engineering workforce as a basis to launch comprehensive and creative systems of solutions.

We have pockets of success, but why has scale up and scale out failed? One doorway may provide opportunity for some, but we must ensure that multiple doorways are open for others who — by chance, choice or necessity — take a different path.

How do we engineer a system of doors and opportunities?

Engineering a solution

As a woman studying engineering in the 1970s and 80s, I often had to forge my own pathway and unlock my own doors. Mine was just the 10th ever class of women at Princeton. My colleagues and I had to hunt just to find the women’s restrooms in the Engineering quadrangle. That experience taught me to look for the small, everyday things that signal inclusion. Those signals are a light in the doorway that welcomes people in.

While attending the University of Pennsylvania for graduate school, I created a group called Graduate Women in Science and Engineering. We didn’t have a budget to work with, but we did have each other. I learned that creating communities for people is a powerful way to ensure they are included.

At the Mayo Clinic, where I did my postdoctoral research in a clinical department, I struggled with the feeling that as an engineer, I did not have as much to offer as others. Then a mentor said to me, “You are a bioengineer. Figure out what you bring to the table.” He reinforced the value of cultivating diverse teams, which can leverage the experience of individuals to create a stronger whole.

At NSF, these guiding principles help shape our approach to diversifying America’s engineering enterprise. But there’s one other key to this challenge. We’re building the broad tactics for broadening participation, but we need local strategies to realize the full potential of that national-level work. Those local strategies can help in three ways.

1. Installing more doors

NSF already supports broadening participation through countless funding opportunities. We also invest in creative new pathways, roadmaps and doorways to bring even more people into engineering and the sciences. But that doesn’t mean that we’ve designed every door we need. We can’t just look at what doors we have; we need to look for what doors we’re missing and where doors are missing. That could mean creating an entirely new mentoring program, scholarship, curriculum or outreach effort. We value partners from industry, academia, advocacy organizations and even local government to help identify new opportunities and, most importantly, to help us tailor those opportunities to the people, professions and places that need them.

We must be strategic in creating new doors where they can benefit more people. Minority Serving Institutions often lack the resources to provide their students with the same engineering degree paths, research opportunities and hands-on training and equipment as their legacy counterparts. The same is true with regional disparities. Through the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) opens in new tab/window, NSF puts special emphasis on building up STEM capacity and capability in states and regions that are historically under-resourced. Bolstering local research and education resources creates new doors where people are, rather than relying on long and difficult paths away from their communities.

2. Broadening existing doorways

In 2023 alone, NSF supported more than 350,000 people across 11,000 awards. But are these awards broad enough, welcoming enough and accessible enough to deliver a STEM enterprise that fully realizes the potential of every part and population in America? This is where our engineering mindset must come in. Good mechanisms already exist, but how can we expand and integrate them to create systems of opportunity?

We must turn the research model back onto ourselves. To that end, we fund many opportunities in the research of broadening participation. From our Broadening Participation in Engineering opens in new tab/window program to Professional Formation of Engineers opens in new tab/window research, we are working to understand the local and translational challenges and successes of existing efforts to diversify the STEM workforce. That understanding cannot come from the mile-high perspective; it must be a collage of understanding comprised of thousands of local and community-based perspectives integrated to inform scale up and scale out strategies.

3. Repurposing existing doors

Lastly, we must apply those perspectives to all research opportunities to see how we can repurpose successful strategies for rapid expansion.

For example, an innovative program attracting students interested in climate resilience to environmental engineering could be a template for broadening participation by connecting other engineering fields to global challenges with societal impact. Here again, local and disciplinary strategies and tactics play an integral role in realizing our national goals. We must invest in opportunities to repurpose projects and funding both for fundamental research and for broadening participation.

This moment calls on us all to light up the pathways and open the doors to engineering and STEM careers.

If we all work to build, expand and repurpose doors of opportunity, we will create a more robust engineering enterprise for America — one ready to tackle the challenges of the future by leveraging the diverse talent and experiences our great country has to offer. As engineers, we are experienced in finding creative solutions to challenging problems. What we need now is shared accountability, engagement and coordinated action at every level to create a systematic approach to expanding the engineering workforce our nation needs.