Community Support, Partnerships, and Inclusive Environments for Black Students and Professionals in Science, Engineering, and Medicine: Proceedings of a Workshop (2024)

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Introduction

Individuals, institutions, and communities all have a role in strengthening representation of Black men and Black women in science, engineering, and medicine (SEM). The factors that can provide support include, but are not limited to, what happens along the educational pathway from K–12 through postgraduate training. The SEM workplace has historically not been an equitable space for students, faculty, staff, and professionals, but promising practices nationwide are changing that narrative. Other sectors of society also can impose barriers or, conversely, offer opportunity and access to the advancement of Black men and Black women in SEM. A diverse SEM workforce that supports the advancement of Black men and Black women yields benefits for society as a whole. And the various partners in the educational pathway from K–12 through postgraduate training have roles and responsibilities to promote a diverse SEM workforce. Higher education institutions, medical schools, legislators, and corporations/foundations have a duty to foster community partnerships to ensure inclusive and sustainable environments for Black students in SEM.

On September 19–20, 2022, the Roundtable on Black Men and Black Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a virtual workshop to examine local, regional, and national opportunities to engage with and leverage community support and mutually beneficial partnerships that build inclusive environments for Black undergraduate, graduate, and medical students and increase the representation of Black professionals in SEM.

Workshop participants helped identify practices, policies, and partnerships with demonstrated success; laid a foundation for collaborative dialogue that involves student involvement in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of SEM programs; and identified the resources and actions necessary to further positive change for Black SEM students and professionals.

CONTEXT FOR THE WORKSHOP

Welcome from the Roundtable Chair

Roundtable chair Cato Laurencin, M.D., Ph.D. (University of Connecticut) opened the workshop by welcoming participants, thanking the Roundtable sponsors for their support, and providing background about the Roundtable. As he explained, it was established in 2019 to understand issues affecting Black men and Black women in science, engineering, and medicine and to create new ideas for solutions, especially solutions utilizing the strengths in having Black men and Black women in these fields. The Roundtable builds from a 2017 workshop that focused on the dearth of Black men in medicine (NASEM, 2018). Each meeting has included data gathering, idea generation, a business meeting, and a public workshop organized by issue-related action groups. The action groups foster information gathering and development of evidence-based approaches; engage with key stakeholders and the broader community of scientists, clinicians, engineers, and administrators; and design and conduct workshops, produce publications, and other activities to facilitate meaningful change. The action groups and their focus are as follows:

• Racism and (Conscious and Unconscious) Bias—to address how racism and bias operate in crisis and identify mechanisms for intervention
• Financing—to address the financial barriers to higher education and the impact on students and families, address the financial crises that threaten education, and promote financial literacy
• Stakeholder Engagement—to determine how advocacy and public engagement can be utilized to bring issues to the forefront and to develop media and marketing strategies for increasing public awareness
• Mentorship and Advising—to build programs that are tailored to student needs and different styles of learning

• PreK–Graduate Education—to identify disparities in education and the educational pipeline and to establish early access and exposure to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines
• Health Equity/Disparities (previously, COVID-19)—to examine COVID-19 as it has impacted the Black community and discuss it from a community standpoint, including academic medicine perspectives
• Systemic Change to Overcome Psychological Barriers to Success—to understand reactions to racism and environmental stressors, and psychological factors that contribute to the dearth of Black students in SEM

Over the past several years, Dr. Laurencin continued, the groups have organized numerous workshops, beginning with a workshop in April 2020 on the effects of racism and bias on Black people pursuing careers in SEM. Proceedings of the workshops have been published or are in the process of publication.¹ Other activities include a “Living Legends” series that began with interviews with Louis Sullivan, M.D., and Shirley Malcom, Ph.D.

Dr. Laurencin reviewed the statement of task for the current workshop (see Box 1-1) and thanked workshop co-chairs Dr. André Churchwell, M.D. (Vanderbilt University) and Dr. Malcom (American Association for the Advancement of Science) for organizing it.

National Academies’ Welcome

John Anderson, Ph.D., became president of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 2019, around the time the Roundtable was being created. He said he and colleagues Marcia McNutt, Ph.D., and Victor Dzau, M.D., presidents of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine, respectively, were excited to see how it has become a major force on the national level. From an engineering perspective, Dr. Anderson said,

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¹ For more information on the work of the Roundtable, see https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/roundtable-on-black-men-and-black-women-in-science-engineering-and-medicine.

Quoting former NAE president William Wulf, Dr. Anderson said the opportunity cost of not including all voices results in “products not built,

designs not considered, constraints not understood, solutions not offered, and processes not invented.” Looking ahead to the workshop agenda, he welcomed finding ways to reduce barriers and find opportunities. “The connections we foster throughout this workshop will lead to models and actions to improve participation. We know the problems; now we need to take action to address them.”

“Progress has been positive, but slow,” Dr. Anderson continued. In 2020, Blacks received 4.5 percent of bachelor’s degrees in engineering among domestic students in the United States, constant or even at a small decline for more than a decade. While the percentage is not large enough, he pointed out the overall number of engineering bachelor’s degrees has doubled over the past decade, and thus the absolute number of Black engineering students has doubled, a sliver of light. Of the 12,400 Ph.D. engineering degrees awarded in 2020, 3.6 percent were awarded to Black students, down from 4.4. percent, which he observed was not promising in terms of recruiting Black engineering faculty.

“To speed up progress, we must look for new actions as well as go beyond only enrolling and graduating students, [moving] toward career development, advancement, and mentoring,” Dr. Anderson said. Two years ago, he established the NAE President’s Racial Justice and Equity (RJ&E) Committee, chaired by Percy A. Pierre, Ph.D. The committee is composed of 20 NAE members committed to the goals espoused in the workshop, and Dr. Anderson encouraged workshop participants to learn about the RJ&E committee’s actions.² One current effort is a tracking and linkage project. Linkages with universities and private companies are being developed to track the progress of Black and Hispanic students from high school to college and into the workforce. It has the promise to produce data to improve processes, he noted. Eighty percent of engineers work in the private sector, and he urged working with industry as partners. Other efforts include working with the 50K Coalition,³ community colleges, and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).

In 2021, NAE convened a workshop on community colleges as an underutilized resource for minority enrollment. As Dr. Anderson stated,

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² For more information, see https://www.nae.edu/238548/NAE-Presidents-Racial-Justice-and-Equity-Committee.

³ The 50K Coalition is a partnership among professional societies to increase inclusion in engineering education with 50,000 female and minority engineers by 2025. They have already exceeded their goal and are now pushing the bar upward. For more information, see https://50kcoalition.org/.

three points emerged from the workshop: (1) minority talent in community colleges is much deeper than assumed, (2) the enrollment in community colleges is much closer to the demographics in the country than are 4-year engineering programs, and (3) community colleges are positioned to help broaden the diversity of STEM enrollment in 4-year institutions.⁴ Dr. Anderson also called attention to training programs and resources developed by ASEE to root out exclusion and to use tools, measurements, and programs to support inclusion.

While there is no simple solution to increase diversity, Dr. Anderson reflected that one avenue is to promote the positive effect of engineering on society. He pointed to research by Ebony McGee, Ph.D., and Lydia Bentley, Ph.D., who found that Black and Hispanic college students look for careers in STEM that integrate social justice, climate concerns, and equity (McGee and Bentley, 2021). Engineering programs should recognize the value of these interests and integrate them into the curriculum, they argue. “We need to emphasize the creative rather than the analytical side of engineering to a greater extent,” Dr. Anderson said. “We too often forget about the creativity required to be a good engineer.” He concluded that NAE will continue to emphasize the importance of these perspectives in its activities. “I know the deans of engineering colleges are committed to a more inclusive and diverse student body, but it is incumbent upon us as leaders to make the engineering discipline an example of equity and inclusion.”

Dr. Laurencin, who is an NAE member, said the numbers are sobering, but he welcomed the work of the NAE, including the Racial Justice and Equity Committee and its linkages with private industry.

Remarks by the Co-Chairs

Workshop co-chair Dr. Malcom thanked Dr. Laurencin and Dr. Anderson for setting up the workshop. She called attention to the recent images seen with the James Webb Space Telescope—seeing far into space and back into time—adding that program director Gregory Robinson was a Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) graduate. “I began to reflect on the engineering that had to take place in terms of design, construction, testing, and deployment,” she commented. “The system had to work because it was beyond the reach for repair.” She compared

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⁴ For more information, see https://www.nae.edu/224594/Workshop-on-Sharing-Exemplary-Admissions-Practices-that-Promote-Diversity-in-Engineering-.

this “system” to the steps, experiences, and education across the life span to develop a scientist, engineer, or physician. “Unlike with Webb, whose sequencing was totally unforgiving, our people and communities are more resilient and open to intervention.” However, one similarity, as covered in the workshop, is the need not just to look at individuals but also to look at systems, organizations, institutions, and communities that make the steps toward SEM careers possible. “What does a healthy and inclusive ecosystem look like? What indicators for the health of the ecosystem do we need? How do we support resilience within and across the components of the system?” She explained that the workshop panels were designed to provide information and elicit discussion around optimizing different components of the system, unpacking elements known to be crucial in educational development and advancement, and attending to the systems needed to support success.

Workshop co-chair Dr. Churchwell called attention to the research that shows Black students are more prone to be successful in engineering, as well as in medicine, if social justice components are included. He noted that the workshop looks at a range of well-known and novel programs and partnerships to support student success. “We will examine community support in the broadest way possible, as well as what higher education institutions are doing to build inclusive educational and excellence opportunities,” he said.

ORGANIZATION OF THIS PROCEEDINGS

The remainder of this publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop. The workshop began with a keynote address by Valerie Montgomery Rice, M.D., president and CEO of Morehouse School of Medicine, which is summarized in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 brings together representatives of an academic medical center and community organizations to share ideas and best practices about involving the whole community in inclusive excellence. Chapter 4 adds the voices of students who are active in on-campus, community, and STEM-discipline organizations; Chapter 5 provides examples of how institutions can positively affect the trajectory of Black students; and Chapter 6 highlights a panel composed of four institutional leaders who shared their personal journeys and diversity, equity, and inclusion work at their institutions. Community-oriented health and engineering perspectives are captured in Chapter 7. Chapter 8 focuses on how institutions can become more porous through mutually respectful interactions with the community. In Chapter 9 Dr. Malcom

and Dr. Churchwell share concluding thoughts. The workshop agenda and biographical sketches of the speakers can be found in Appendix A and Appendix B, respectively.

In accordance with the policies of the National Academies, workshop participants did not attempt to establish any conclusions or recommendations about needs and future directions, focusing instead on issues discussed by the speakers and workshop participants. In addition, the planning committee’s role was limited to planning the workshop. This proceedings was prepared by a rapporteur as a factual summary of what occurred at the workshop.

REFERENCES