Promoting diversity in STEM
Some years ago, a Ph.D. holder with a successful nonacademic career told me how her postdoc supervisor gave her permission to leave the lab. After watching the trainee become more and more dispirited by repetitive experiments, the lab chief gently told her, “You know, my dear, there’s more to life than this”—words that liberated the young scientist to pursue totally different, and ultimately very satisfying, endeavors.
STEAM education, currently introduced to individuals during their college years, is set up to teach students how to thinking critically, enabling them to problem solve effectively and use creative thinking to drive forward and complete projects using new methods, tried and tested solutions and using their own initiatives.
In the journey to increasing diversity within the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics fields, minorities have come far but they are not there; and only by providing the resources, mentoring, and including everyone will the United States become No.1 in STEM worldwide.
