SCIENCE SPECTRUM
Titans of Science continued
curious,” he said. “It’s something about asking good questions that can lead to increasing success.”
While those are personal things families can do to nurture STEM inter- est in their children, Hrabowski also is aiming for larger policy and institutional changes along with innovation in the way STEM subject matter is taught and pre- sented in education. He bemoans the fact that only 20 percent of underrepresented minority freshmen who major in science and engineering graduate in those majors; but, he notes that the same numbers for white and Asian American students also are relatively low at 33 percent and 42 percent, respectively. “Large numbers of students begin in
science and engineering with an interest in becoming doctors and engineers and they are not successful,” he said. “It shocks people to learn that only 33 percent of whites who begin in science and engineer- ing actually graduate in those fields.” The most troubling result of this,
Hrabowski says, is that America will have difficulty filling key positions in criti- cal defense and intelligence industries. Foreign-born STEM students are flooding U.S. graduates schools, but many of them are not able work in defense and intel- ligence because they cannot gain security clearances and, subsequently, they tend to go back to their native countries to work. “We need more people from this country who are going to be living here and working here to be prepared in sci- ence and engineering,” Hrabowski said. “That’s where our challenge is.” Hrabowski does believe that fed- eral and state government officials and congressional leaders are beginning to understand the gravity of the problem and are targeting resources to improve STEM education, such as increasing the numbers of math and science teachers in primary schools and increasing teacher training. Hrabowski recently chaired a top-
46 USBE&IT I SPRING 2011
level National Academies committee that offered strategies for increasing the number of minority scientists and engi- neers. Recommendations in the panel’s September 2010 report, “Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation: America’s Science and Technology Talent at the Crossroads,” mirror many of the approaches already being used at UMBC through school’s acclaimed Meyerhoff Scholars Program.
The program emphasizes innovation in teaching, especially during the fresh- man undergraduate year, and includes the use of collaboration and technology to spark learning. “The emphasis must be on teaching students how to collaborate, how to be more proactive in the learning pro- cess, how to have faculty members serv- ing more as facilitators rather than simply trying to give students knowledge, how to emphasize teaching students how to think rather than simply than teaching them to solve a problem,” Hrabowski said. The National Academies report culls the best practices of majority institutions like UMBC, Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic-serving institutions in urging, among recommen- dations, that higher education institutions create programs that provide minority students in STEM with strong financial, academic and social support. The report, which builds on a 2005 National Acad- emies publication, “Rising Above the Gathering Storm,” on STEM education, estimates financial support of about $150 million annually is needed today and is expected to grow to $600 million annu- ally as more students are included and complete their degrees. Hrabowski’s report sets a goal of in- creasing the percentage of all people with undergraduate degrees in science from 6 percent today to 10 percent and calls for the country to double quickly the number of minority students with STEM degrees from about 80,000 to 160,000.
UMBC MEYERHOFF SCHOL- AR IN SELECT COMPANY
NASA GODDARD ENGINEER KAMILI JACKSON IS OVER- JOYED TO BE IN SOME SELECT COMPANY
Kamili Jackson will forever be a
Meyerhoff Scholar from the Univer- sity of Maryland at Baltimore County, graduating with bachelor’s and mas- ter’s degrees in mechanical engineer- ing in 1997 and 1998, respectively, before completing her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in 2002. That puts Jackson in an exclusive club of minority students who received extraordinary academic assistance in their quest to become engineers. Today, Jackson works as a product assurance engineer at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. The Meyerhoff program was co-founded in 1988 by current UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski III and philanthropists Robert and Jane Meyerhoff. The program accepts high- achieving students committed to pursu- ing advanced degrees and research careers in science and engineering, and advancing minorities in these fields. Jackson, 36, is among more than 1,000 students who have gone through the program with 700 alumni work- ing across the nation and 300 others currently in graduate and profes- sional programs. This gives UMBC the distinction as the top producer among predominantly white institutions for preparing African Americans who went on to complete doctorates in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Coming to UMBC from Chopti- con High School in St. Mary’s County, MD, Jackson could count on one hand the number of black students with
www.blackengineer.com
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