STEM
for All

Specifically, the statement refers to one of the most important takeaways from Lee’s research: the inability among many minority students to picture themselves as scientists in the first place. It’s what Lee and his colleagues want more students of color to be able to say, to themselves and to the world. Removing that barrier of vision, Lee says, will require “changing our culture, so that students feel welcome and can have that STEM identity.”

That’s one conclusion from a highly complex self-study (so called because its focus was on the STEM environment at Rutgers-Camden), “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in STEM.” The as-yet unpublished study took two years to complete and involved three Rutgers entities: Rutgers–Camden Driving Change—a grassroots group of faculty, staff, and students dedicated to increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) across the campus; the Senator Walter Rand Institute for Public Affairs (WRI), an applied research and public service center focused on southern New Jersey; and the Data Equity Group, charged with collecting data to advance DEI. The study’s principal investigator was Ross Whiting, WRI’s associate director, who oversaw two co-investigators and a five-person research team, with Lee providing guidance throughout.

Finding Faculty Role Models

Elizabeth Hardy benefitted from the mentorship of Kelly, a faculty member who happens to be Black. And the self-study made clear that a lack of STEM role models in students’ families and communities is a significant factor keeping them from envisioning a future in science. Student respondents expressed the need for greater racial, gender, and LGBTQIA+ representation in faculty and curricula, and faculty acknowledged that this is problematic. “When Black and Latinx students don’t see someone like themselves on the faculty to look up to, that’s a real problem,” Lee noted.

 Many faculty respondents observed that, despite an administrative push to hire more racially diverse faculty, accomplishing that aim is still a challenge, in part because of a lack of racial diversity on search committees and the relatively limited number of faculty of color in the STEM fields.

Overcoming a Prior Deficit

One of the significant barriers uncovered in the study, and acknowledged by both students and faculty, was that many minority students come to college ill-prepared for studying science. The researchers attributed this to “pre-university systemic inequalities”—put simply, it means that minority students are much less likely than their white counterparts to have received a strong background in science in middle and high school.

 As ways to overcome that lack of preparation, student respondents mentioned the need for more mentoring and academic guidance as well as something called “differentiated teaching”—a personalized approach that takes into account students’ diverse educational backgrounds and abilities. And many faculty felt that they needed greater training and resources to help promote DEI in STEM.