La Communidad
Washington, D.C. Others joining the launch included the Self Reliance Foundation, Inter-American Development Bank, Cali- fornia State University System, El Valor, Great Minds in STEM (formerly HENAAC), TODOS: Mathematics for All, the Parent Institute for Quality Education, the Advancing Hispanic Excel- lence in Technology, Engineering, Math and Science Founda- tion, and Loyola Marymount University.
The Hispanic STEM Initiative’s focus is to form strategic collaborations between stakeholder groups to expand educational opportunities for Hispanic students in STEM disciplines. Adam Chavarria, NAHE president and former executive director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans under President George W. Bush, argues that assets such as human ingenuity, talent, expertise and experience exist among Hispanic groups and organizations to drive the Initiative.
Acosta, who chairs The Hispanic STEM Initiative’s advisory committee, says the organizations involved all are national in scope with strong community ties. “We’re bringing diversity in the sense that all of us have a strong focus on Hispanic education and careers. We’re not just an office in D.C. or New York that’s not in touch at the grassroots level,” he says.
Michael Acosta
The Hispanic STEM Initiative is guided by a five-year action plan targeting seven focus areas: Families and Children, Pre-K-20 Partnerships, Professionals in the Classroom, STEM Development, STEM Education and Research, Teacher Educa- tion/Preparation, and Career and Workforce Development.
In meetings held in July 2010, The Hispanic STEM Initiative presented proposal ideas to the White House Office of Sci- ence and Technology as a way to drive coordination among federal agencies seeking Hispanic and Latino STEM workers in government.
What advocacy organizations are seeking to reconcile is a vex- ing gap in the participation rates of Hispanics in the technical workforce, says Jennifer Cano, former director of Education Programs for Great Minds in STEM, whose pilot STEM-Up Initiative works directly with schools, parents and students in Los Angeles.
Cano describes a dichotomy among Hispanics as marked by “the lack of presence when there is great opportunity” in STEM fields.
The USC study noted that in California alone the share of Hispanics and Latinos in the workforce is expected to grow to 40 percent by 2020.
The pilot STEM-Up Initiative is taking a community-by- community approach to increasing participation, Cano says. The STEM-Up Initiative works with 18 public schools in the East Los Angeles area, seeking to reach out to more than 80,000 stakehold- ers to promote greater STEM awareness in the communities while also preparing elementary, middle and high school students with better STEM skills.
Others involve include Hispanic-serving institu- tions such as California State University at Los Angeles, government agencies, corporations and other advocacy or-
ganizations. “We’re trying to tap into all the existing systems that bring people together,” she says.
In addition to participating in literacy nights, career fairs, parent workshops, assemblies with role models, field trips and other relevant activities, STEM-Up focuses on raising aware- ness among math and science teams about STEM careers.
“We are finding that teachers may have content knowledge in the STEM areas, but they don’t really have that real world career connection, and we’re trying to help them see that,” Cano says.
Advocacy organizations see STEM as an opportunity to im- prove educational access among Hispanics and Latinos. Many students eligible to attend to college do not do so because of cultural and family considerations, such going directly to work in limiting careers and jobs. Hispanic and Latino girls, whose familial roles are often are as caregivers, particularly suffer from a lack of educational access, according to Cano.
With an exploding Hispanic and Latino population in the United States, along with the growing recognition in the country of a lack of general preparation among all students in science and math, advocacy organizations are embracing opportunities to forge a STEM culture within Hispanic and Latino communities.
14 HISPANIC ENGINEER & Information Technology | 2010
www.hispanicengineer.com
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