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Why STEM?
Every day, our world is moving more rapidly toward technological advancement. Knowledge of math and science have become increasingly critical to remaining competitive in the workplace. While the rest of the US job market is overwhelmed with applicants, STEM employers are struggling to find qualified employees. An estimated 2.4 million job vacancies for STEM occupations existed in 2018.
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Despite this, interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (known as STEM) has decreased among American students in recent decades. A 2011 study conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement testing the math and science skills of 4th to 8th grades internationally found that the United States only produced average scores. Other countries such as China, Hong Kong, Korea, Russia and Japan consistently produced higher scores in all STEM skillsets for youths. The U.S. trails other developed countries in STEM degrees as a percentage of all degrees.
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Let’s Be Proactive seeks to address this gap of STEM knowledge and awareness by providing face-to-face learning experiences that demonstrate the value in and improve access to potential STEM career paths.
Underrepresented Minorities and STEM
Certain demographics and groups in the USA are falling even farther behind than the national average. In 2012, only 6.7% of female graduates from American universities studied a STEM field. Today, women only make up 13% of the engineering workforce and 25% of computer science careers. Minorities in STEM make up even smaller percentages, with African Americans and Latinos only accounting for 5% of the country’s entire STEM-based workforce in 2018. Compared to their global peers, U.S. students ranked 27th in math and 20th in science.
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There are many possible explanations for these alarming statistics: many children feel that science and mathematics are “too hard”, students aren’t aware of every-day careers available in STEM fields like data science, and a negative public perception that access to STEM requires expensive equipment and training from experts to reach a higher level of understanding. Underrepresented minorities (URMs) are less likely to pursue a degree in a STEM field for various reasons: schools in low-income areas with higher percentage of URM students often have fewer available learning resources and less-experienced teachers, URMs have few minority classmates in STEM courses so they may feel socially unwelcome, and URMs have far fewer role models in STEM fields.
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Immediate action is required to invest in our children’s futures and fill the void of qualified STEM human capital in the US based workforce today.
STEM Education
While the issues discussed above are all contributing factors to low URM STEM engagement in the USA, they each highlight that there is one major player at fault: our education system.
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Educational funding has been cut in the past few decades and teachers qualified in teaching science and other fields in public schools has dropped dramatically. The disparity between access to technology and industry trained professionals from STEM fields in public school environments is also significantly lower in underserved communities that have larger African American and Latino presence in the student body.[1] This lack of access leads to a lack of exposure, and a lack of exposure contributes to the overall lack of interest in STEM for many of our country’s youth.
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There have been numerous attempts to increase interest in STEM through federal funding. In 2006, President Bush set aside funding specifically for STEM classes and in 2009 President Obama created the Educate to Innovate Initiative for STEM education. But these federal initiatives take billions of dollars and many years to implement. The simple fact is middle and high schools in underserved communities are still not adequately preparing students to pursue careers in the STEM fields.
The Solution
Addressing federal funding and availability of STEM education in school is a significant issue, but a secondary solution is to support STEM education initiatives outside of regular school programming. STEM programs facilitated by community organizations can be just as important, or even more so, than schools in inspiring young people AND adults to develop a lifelong interest in science and technology; even 75% of Nobel Prize winners say their passion for science was first sparked in a non-school environment. These programs offer opportunities to explore STEM ideas via hands-on, real-world experiences and direct mentorship which build critical thinking, teamwork, communication, and other foundational skills. Unfortunately, a study by the Afterschool Alliance found that for every child engaged in an after-school STEM education program, there are two more waiting to get in. More options are desperately needed, especially for underrepresented minority students in underserved communities.
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Let’s Be Proactive seeks to address this gap of STEM knowledge and awareness by providing face-to-face learning experiences that demonstrate the value in and improve access to potential STEM career paths. We provide support and guidance to help students identify, enroll, and graduate from technical programs that will improve their work prospects. We also provide financial support and housing for them while enrolled in postsecondary school and pair them with successful industry professionals for one-on-one mentorship to begin their own entrepreneurial journeys.