Flip the Argument for Equity in STEM Education

“There is also a moral imperative to engage in these efforts. The demographics of the United States are rapidly changing. For the first time in 2019, most new hires of prime age workers (ages 25-54) were people of color.?In 2020, the U.S. population under the age of 18 became “majority-minority”, where the collective number of racial and ethnic minorities exceed those of white backgrounds. It therefore makes sense that the workforce of tomorrow is predicted to encompass much more racial and ethnic minorities and include more female representation.

A large portfolio of long-term solutions will be needed to remediate these issues, but we must examine accessible solutions within reach now that promote immediate action while concurrent, longer-form efforts strive towards a more just future.”

https://ebrc.org/actions-to-enable-an-equitable-and-innovative-us-bioeconomy/

Almost every biotech company has a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee.?Recently there has been an addition to the descriptors:?Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging.?I use the acronym BEAD, with the first letter representing Biomanufacturing.?Or I’ve seen these letters rearranged for the more memorable acronym of JEDI: Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.?This effort is a specific part of the larger societal discussion promoting racial justice and equality.?This discussion has both philosophical and hard-nosed pragmatic economic components:?justice demands that we involve everyone in the emerging economy; and if we don’t involve the currently underrepresented part of our population in the bioeconomy, we simply won’t have a large enough workforce to accomplish this promise to change society.?We need to change society in order to change society.???

A google search for Equity and STEM (Science Technology Engineering, and Mathematics) education yields many discussions about “bringing Equity into STEM education,” and I spent quite a bit of time discussing that subject with my colleagues last year.?Last year my colleagues at Solano College ran a program/ discussion group called Teaching for Equity, T4E.?This discussion group gave us homework, a group of readings and podcasts, and we met every other week to discuss them.?We read works by the major authors who are writing about anti-racism.?And I added many other books by these authors as well: bell hooks, Ijeoma Oluo, Robin DiAngelo, Ibram X. Kendi.?And I had the opportunity to go see Dr. Kendi at UC Davis.???The group tried to strategize how to apply principles covered in these readings about anti-racism to bring social justice to the classroom, and in turn, develop tactics to close demographic achievement and completion gaps.

I also read the latest book by John McWhorter, a self-described “grumpy liberal,” that denounces the anti-racism movement as a “religion” and denounced the “anti-racism industrial complex” (I’ll be honest that I don’t know if he exaggerated to be an provocateur and to make a point.) ?Kendi and McWhorter criticize each other – OK, it’s more like they insult each other - in their books.?I recommend all of these authors as contributing important points to the national conversation (I especially recommend Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram Kendi), but I’ll admit that I’m predisposed to like Dr. McWhorter since I have taken so many online linguistics courses from him.?I knew that he, as an African American scholar, wrote about race as well as linguistics - but I had only ever read his books on linguistics.?I thought that where McWhorter gained an advantage in argument over the other authors was that while they pointed out historical and current inequities, McWhorter gives specific pragmatic prescriptions on how to move forward. ?He advocates vocational training – an approach that places individuals into high paying careers and an effort that makes a real difference in the real lives of real people.?And that’s what I’ll advocate as well.?

So I would like to flip the priorities to argue that we can bring Equity through STEM Education.?The most important thing that we can do to promote social justice is to provide quality education that leads to a life-fulfilling career.?This makes a real difference in the real lives of real people.?This is practical and doable and simple to understand – that isn’t saying that it will be easy.?Succeeding where 50 years of intense effort has failed will be very difficult to put into practice.?One advantage is that the subject is non-partisan: providing education and jobs might be the only thing that everyone can agreed about in a currently divided country.?And it’s American – it embodies the American dream, the American myth, the American ethos.?

Of course I’ll focus on biotech.??

Biotech has a lot of work to do.

I would like to offer a strategy to work toward social justice:?recruit, retain, educate, and place all members of our society into all parts of the bioeconomy.?The solution seems clear to me:?the bioeconomy is red hot and poised to dramatically expand, the field provides a livable wage and the opportunity for upward mobility, and the educational pathways are in place or could be expanded.?The components are in place, and it seems like what that we need is a coordinating strategy.?And aggressive outreach.?Our target audience currently doesn't know about these fields and these opportunities and we had better change that tout de suite. ????????

???????????The graphic from the Biospace “Diversity in the Life Sciences” report above points out what we all know – we are falling short - there are demographic disparities among Life Science professionals.??That report constitutes a shouted urgency to take action.?Luckily, I think that the path is obvious:?recruit more students of color into a biotech career.?The developing career opportunities are vast – if we can harness everyone in service of this goal.???

I have been using the $30 trillion global bioeconomy by the end of the century number in talks since the Schmidt Futures Bioeconomy Report came out, but that’s a really, really big number.?Every time that I do I think “that’s a really, really big number. ?Is it real?”?Yes, I think that it is.??

Brian Deese, the Director of the National Economic Council wondered the same thing:?

“BCG (Boston Consulting Group, one group of consultants – and it isn’t the only one - that generated this huge number) looked into this and said that they project that the economic opportunity in the bioeconomy is on the order of $30 trillion by the end of the decade.??That’s a really large number and it’s hard to get your head around.?In fact it’s so large that I asked the team to go back and make sure that it was actually right.?To put it into perspective, you know, the entire GDP of the country is about $21 trillion.?So we’re talking about over a decade growing in our industry that’s about 150 percent of the entire US economic output today.”??

So that IS the number and we are talking about a fundamental transformation of industry and society – for the better.?That’s the number, and we’re stickin’ to it.?With that increase in economic activity we will need to dramatically increase the workforce focusing on this industrial sector.?This presents a great opportunity. ? In the next decade we need to recruit hundreds of thousands of workers at every level.?If we recruit in the right places, we have the opportunity to make real societal change.?There are some “best practices” to emulate, especially pioneered by the nation's community and technical colleges.?But that is a topic for another discussion.?