A shortage in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workers is threatening to push the United States from its global leadership position as a key innovator in these fields, say CEOs and other executives at Fortune 1000 STEM companies.
Most of the executives agree that more minorities and women must enter STEM fields to solve the talent deficit. At present, Blacks, Hispanics and American Indians account for only 8 percent of employees, according the executives surveyed in a new Bayer Corporation study examining diversity in STEM fields. Women make up 20 percent.
Across the board executives blamed the pre-college school system for low representation of women and minorities in science and technology fields.
Dr. Mae Jemison, who made history as the first Black woman to go into space, agrees that grade school experiences play a major role in determining how many women and minorities go into science and technology.
Nearly all the executives surveyed say the best way for students to learn science is through a hands-on approach. Jemison agrees, and goes on to explain that every child finds science fascinating. “But then we go into school, it’s drilled out of us because we don’t teach science in exploratory way ... kids are just taught to memorize things.”
Each day high-school science teacher Hau Tran struggles to teach chemistry to his students, who are mostly Black and Hispanic and attend West Potomac High School in a Virginia suburb just outside Washington, D.C. Students need science literacy. Otherwise, “if they never learned science well that major is closed off to them” once they enter college, Tran says.
Tran says the solution is to introduce more science in elementary and middle school. “They didn’t have it in their younger years so they don’t have an interest to study it later.”
In his native country of Vietnam, Tran studied biology, chemistry and physics starting in middle school and through high school. He credits this early exposure to science as the reason he chose to complete a college degree in chemistry.
