Arthur, Matthew McAlister

According to seek.org, when it comes to lower-level, lower-paying STEM positions, 37% of database engineers, 46% of biological scientists, 78% of clinical laboratory technologists, and 91% of registered nurses are women. The problem isn’t that these industries don’t want to employ women, but that they cannot find qualified women to fill the positions. STEMCareer.com says this is because of a long-standing but now non-existent bias toward women in the industry. Because women haven’t been encouraged to pursue these careers, they haven’t received the education, and end up filling in lower-level positions than they’re capable of earning.

STEMJobs.com has great news for any woman thinking of studying a STEM field in school: 78% of surveyed STEM employers say they want to hire more women in the future. If you’re interested in a STEM career, there’s never been a better time than now to pursue it.

We put together a list of the top-paying STEM careers, including the education you’ll need, what they earn, and what they do. All of these industries are expected to grow, meaning that, by the time you graduate, there will be even more positions to fill.

 
View remainder of article at http://www.careerglider.com/blog/high-paying-jobs-degrees-for-women-in-science-technology-engineering-math/?utm_source=STEMCareers&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=outreach

January 26, 2009
Discover prominent African Americans in the field of veterinary medicine.  These areas are important to learn so we can educate students regarding the endless possibilities.

Written by Paula Allen-Meares
Learn about the impact of African Americans decline in STEM degrees.


March 22, 2013
Author Beryl Lieff Benderly
Journal of Science

Researchers seeking to explain why women are less likely than men to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers long focused on females' purported inferior mathematical prowess. But new research suggests a very different explanation: women's superior abilities in other areas.

In "Not Lack of Ability but More Choice: Individual and Gender Differences in Choice of Careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics," published in Psychological Science, psychologists Ming-Te Wang, Jacquelynne S. Eccles, and Sarah Kenny of the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania argue that women who are fully capable of doing STEM work have broader career options than those available to men because their verbal abilities are superior, on average. Those women, the study's authors suggest, often take other opportunities, which they apparently find more attractive. (As Science Careers has repeatedly reported, much research finds that many scientifically able women act on values that are different from the majority of people who choose STEM careers.)

Studying 1490 people who had participated in a longitudinal study, the researchers found that "mathematically capable individuals who also had high verbal skills were less likely to pursue STEM careers than were individuals who had high math skills but moderate verbal skills." They emphasize this "notable" fact: "[T]he group with high math and high verbal ability included more females than males."

The people who ended up in STEM fields tended to have "high math and moderate verbal abilities. Thus, math may play a more integral role in these individuals' sense of identity, drawing them toward STEM occupations," according to a press release from the Association for Psychological Science, which publishes the journal.

Instead of working to improve women's mathematical abilities, Wang suggests in the press release, the secret to bringing more women into STEM fields may lie in making those fields more attractive to multitalented individuals.

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2013_03_22/caredit.a1300052

Publisher Luis Grumet, The CPA Journal

JANUARY 2008 - Congratulations, the accounting profession has gained ground on the medical and legal communities in minority recruiting! A number of years ago, according to the then-available statistics, less than 1% of the CPA profession was African American, Latino, and Asian. Today it’s 8%, consisting of 4% Asian/Pacific Islander, 3% Hispanic, and only 1% African American. Applaud the progress, but more needs to be done, and the issue is even more important than ever.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that, with 100 million ethnic minorities in the United States, about one in three residents is a minority. By 2050, minorities will account for nearly half of the U.S. population, according to the U.S. Bureau of Statistics. Diversity in the workplace is not only a business issue, it is also a social issue. If a third of the faces walking down the street are reflected in only 8% of a profession, that profession fails the clientele it serves and its own staffing needs. As the population becomes more diverse and multicultural, professions must mirror those changes. New ideas and perspectives do not thrive in a vacuum of homogenous groups.

The NYSSCPA first touched upon the need to increase minority recruitment in 2000, by suggesting the statewide expansion of our Career Opportunities in the Accounting Profession (COAP) program. This five-day summer program, now held at college campuses throughout New York State, is focused on minority groups historically underrepresented in the CPA profession. Now in its 20th year, COAP has 10 programs across the state, with 375 students participating every summer.

In my September 2003 column, I used the book A White-Collar Profession: African-American Certified Public Accountants since 1921, by Theresa Hammond (University of North Carolina Press, 2002), to open a discussion on the profession’s track record in reaching out to the African-American community. Our focus then was on a 1965 survey which revealed that fewer than 150 CPAs nationwide were African American. Since that column, the accounting profession has made strides. Today, according to the National Association of Black Accountants, more than 200,000 African Americans are participating in the field of accounting, with more than 5,000 CPAs.

According to the American Medical Association, the American Bar Association, and the AICPA, minorities make up 14%, 10%, and 8% of their respective professions. Parity exists among the three professions; however, each has failed in truly reflecting the changing landscape.

Twenty-two percent of accounting graduates are minorities (including African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Hispanic or Latino). This was not true previously, signifying these students are now finding jobs and would not be gravitating toward the profession if it were not the case. According to U.S. News & World Report, City University of New York’s Baruch College has been the country’s largest and most diverse business school accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) for the last nine years. More than 600 accounting students graduated in 2007. African American and Hispanic students made up 25% of the class.

Paralleling the percentage of accounting graduates, new hires by CPA firms were 23% minority, with 12% Asian/Pacific Islander, 8% Hispanic or Latino, and only 3% African American. Even more discouraging, the professional staff employed by CPA firms at all levels is only 10% minorities, with 5% Asian/Pacific Islander, 2% African American, and 3% Hispanic or Latino. Only 5% of partners or owners are classified as minorities. That includes 2% Asian/Pacific Islander, 1% African American, and 2% Hispanic or Latino.

Since the passing of the Uniform Accountancy Act, 150 hours of college education are required in order to sit for the uniform CPA examination. Some say the mandatory 150 hours is the largest obstacle to the recruitment of minorities. However, the legal profession is drawing more minority recruits despite the three years of additional graduate work it requires. Are we saying that two additional semesters of graduate work is a larger obstacle than three additional years?

To be fair, the legal profession and medical profession profit from being continuously depicted in television and film. When was the last time “Must See TV” focused on the forensic accountant or the diligent tax preparer? In addition to their members’ depictions in the media, the medical and legal communities also have the advantage of routine encounters with the general public. While everyone’s yearly checkups and treatments for colds and fevers act as the perfect recruiting campaign for the medical profession, families without large incomes rarely deal with CPAs.

In November 2007, the New York State Education Department’s Office of Professions held a forum to discuss how professions can reach out to the minority community. The NYSSCPA made a presentation on the success of its COAP program. But this discussion should not be confined to the boundaries of our state or Society. Let’s extend invitations to our neighbors, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, and come up with a plan.

Traditionally, accounting has been a profession that was a bridge for first-generation immigrants or first-generation college graduates to enter the “professional” business world. The idea held true with the first wave of immigration—Jewish, Irish, and Italian immigrants—but the second wave has not been as well received by the profession. An analysis would reveal that our profession is denying itself the opportunity to grow its human capital, the collective sum of attributes, life experience, knowledge, inventiveness, energy, and enthusiasm that people choose to invest in their work. Although statistics have shown that the accounting profession has improved in its recruitment of minorities, the number of minority accountants falls short in proportion to the general population.

Congratulations are indeed in order for the progress we have made. However, the goal is not to be content with progress to date, but to surpass it.

February 13, 2014, Author Elizabeth Krigman, US News

Breaking down the walls between art, hard sciences and math, a new crop of educators is designing curricula that allow these subjects partner with one another, encouraging holistic learning.

Across the country, teachers and administrators are coming to a similar conclusion: art informs science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and vice versa. Consequently, they are pioneering new methods of teaching that combine disciplines which have been isolated from one another under traditional educational models. And they are just getting started.

Gaskins targets student populations that have traditionally under-performed in STEM using a unique method that she calls “culturally situated art-based learning.” It starts by first engaging students with art that speaks to their ethnic or cultural identity and ancestry.

n Annapolis, Md., 8th grade students at Wiley H. Bates Middle School learn about Mexican mosaics and math at the same time. The students study traditional turquoise mosaics and create their own versions with bits of paper. Their classmates then collect sample sizes and use them to predict the number of tiles used in the artwork.

Studying and observing the art first, without the fear of getting something wrong, encourages confidence and risk-taking in the classroom, says Laura Brino, the art integration specialist at Bates Middle School.

View remainder of article at http://www.usnews.com/news/stem-solutions/articles/2014/02/13/gaining-steam-teaching-science-though-art

Nature/Nature Jobs/Column
Published online June 11, 2014
Authors:   Casey Miller & Keivan Stassun

Universities in the United States rely too heavily on the graduate record examinations (GRE) — a standardized test introduced in 1949 that is an admissions requirement for most US graduate schools. This practice is poor at selecting the most capable students and severely restricts the flow of women and minorities into the sciences.

Test disparities

The misuse of GRE scores to select applicants may be a strong driver of the continuing under-representation of women and minorities in graduate school. Indeed, women earn barely 20% of US physical-sciences PhDs, and under-represented minorities — who account for 33% of the US university-age population — earn just 6%. These percentages are striking in their similarity to the percentage of students who score above 700 on the GRE quantitative measure.

The remainder of article can be viewed at http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj7504-303a

Arthur, Arthur Jones
October 20, 2013

 

While ethnic and racial groups that have historically comprised a minority of the U.S. population are growing in size and influence, they remain underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics both nationally and at Brown.

Administrators and higher education experts said this gap in representation poses an alarming problem not only to universities but also to the nation as a whole.

According to 2010 data from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Census Bureau, underrepresented minorities earned 18.6 percent of total undergraduate degrees from 4-year colleges, but only 16.4 percent of the degrees in science fields and less than 13 percent of degrees in physical sciences and engineering.

Haily Tran / Herald

The University’s statistics reflect this trend. Groups traditionally underrepresented in the sciences include students who identify as American Indian or Alaska Native, black, Hispanic or Latino, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. At Brown, these students received 13.5 percent of undergraduate degrees in spring of 2013 but only 5.6 percent of the degrees in the physical sciences and 9 percent of the degrees in engineering, according to data provided by the Office of Institutional Research.

“STEM has the toughest time keeping pace with changing demographics. If you look at the business world, the sports world, the arts and politics — they seem to be doing a good job of keeping pace, but we haven’t seen that kind of change,” said Andrew Campbell, associate professor of medical science and program director of Brown’s Initiative to Maximize Student Development.

The remainder of article can be found at http://www.browndailyherald.com/2013/10/30/minority-groups-underrepresented-stem-fields/