NACME CEO Talks About “The New American Dilemma”
CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:
STEM: The New American Dilemma
Kellye Whitney, 09-28-2009, Diversity Exective
American business and industry is operating from a seriously lacking position with regard to science and technology, and a key to turning the situation around may be found in promoting pre-engineering activity for traditionally underrepresented minority groups.
According to Irving McPhail, president and CEO of NACME Inc., the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, the deterioration of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education offerings and student participation is of primary concern to the business community because it directly impacts the state of American competitiveness and innovation.
“Some of the major national reports issued in recent years, such as ‘Rising Above the Gathering Storm,’ have described a crisis in America that the STEM business community needs to be concerned about. These issues include the decline in the state of our competitiveness and innovation in the global marketplace; the low performance of our nation’s middle and high school students, particularly in math and science, as compared to their peers in other developed countries; the shortage of native-born computer scientists and engineers that has led to an increasing need to import talent from foreign countries; concerns about reductions in research and development spending by the federal government, as well as industry; and a growing pattern of outsourcing and offshoring that is being pursued by American industry primarily for economic reasons,” McPhail said.
“When you take these factors and look at them as a whole, Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has described this current situation as a quiet crisis, which she defines as the inexorable erosion of our scientific and technological capacity at a time when science and technology are the major determinants of a nation’s ability to be competitive and economically strong.”
McPhail said the message to business and industry is clear — activate the hidden workforce of young men and women who have traditionally been underrepresented in STEM careers: African-Americans, American Indians and Latinos.
“It is in America’s best interest,” he said. “It affects the quality of life of our nation and assures that America will be able to maintain a cutting edge with regard to our global competitors in science, technology, engineering and math.”
NACME, one of the largest private providers of scholarship support for underrepresented minority students pursuing degrees in engineering, has supported more than 22,000 students and awarded more than $114 million in scholarship support in its 35-year history.
The organization actively partners with companies such as Qualcomm to promote pre-engineering activity. For instance, Qualcomm, in connection with the San Diego Community College District and the University of California at San Diego engineering school, funded a project to look at best practices when facilitating students moving from community colleges to engineering schools.
Right now, many organizations are looking for short-term wins. A natural response to the economic crisis is for leaders to seek out ways to illustrate that their efforts are creating bottom-line impact in restricted time frames. Diversity executives are no different. But McPhail said it’s imperative to look at this type of talent pipeline-building strategy with an eye on the long term.
“Building a diverse engineering workforce is a long-term commitment and requires a long-term value proposition,” he said. “Diversity executives need to realize this is in fact a journey and not a sprint. We need to be concerned about the quality of K-12 education. We need to be concerned about model schools [and] identifying best practices in educating underrepresented minority students. We need to be concerned about removing stereotypes that women and minorities are not good in STEM disciplines, and [we must] work hard in collaboration with K-12 to ensure that STEM is infused throughout the K-12 curriculum via project-based, hands-on learning pedagogies and approaches.
“Business and industry need to continually be involved with higher education. The focus needs to be on removing all of the systemic barriers that underrepresented minorities face attempting to participate in college, with a particular focus on issues related to financial aid and admissions policies, as well as using the political capital that business and industry bring to push government policies that open doors to post-secondary education for underrepresented minority students.”
“American demography is changing in some very significant ways,” McPhail explained. “And if our companies are going to be successful, more people need to be developed. Diversity executives can really become the lightning rods to reach out to all of the other sectors that need to be engaged to resolve this American dilemma.”
