Change the image of who can be an engineer or scientist
If history is any indicator, The Martian, released earlier this month, will likely inspire a new generation of engineers. The diversity of the team of astronauts and engineers who come to the rescue of Matt Damon’s character is a positive sign—Jessica Chastain plays the mission’s commander, Michael Peña and Kate Mara play crew members, and Chiwetel Ejiofor and Donald Glover play NASA engineers on the ground. But we can do even more to inspire kids from backgrounds typically underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields, including women, African-Americans and Hispanics.
Women earned only 19.5% of engineering undergraduate degrees granted in 2014, according to the American Society for Engineering Education. Hispanic graduates earned 10.1%, and African American graduates only earned 3.5%. This is disappointing considering that these groups represent 50.8%, 17.4%, and 13.2% of the U.S. population in 2014, respectively.
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In the early 1990s, I was inspired by the book Contact by Carl Sagan, which was made into a 1997 major motion picture starring Jodie Foster as the lead astronomer-turned-explorer. I still vividly remember Sagan’s depiction of one of the other exploration team members, a black African physicist and Nobel Laureate credited with developing the grand unifying theory of physics (which real-life physicists are still working on).
These fictional role models had a huge impact on my ability to picture myself as an engineer and to persevere through challenging coursework to ultimately earn my Ph.D. in engineering from Stanford University.
The lack of strong leading roles for women and actors of color in Hollywood is a perennial issue. According to a UCLA study, women and minorities were underrepresented in leading roles in 2014 films by a factor of 2. The underrepresentation is even worse among writers, directors and creators.
But the impact goes far beyond equality issues in just one industry. Films like Apollo 13 and even The Matrix have inspired engineers and scientists. Such films have a strong impact on the technology industry and on innovation that drives economic development and job creation across the country.
Numerous scientific studies have demonstrated the superiority of diverse teams in business and technology to develop better solutions, respond better to customer needs, and increase the bottom line for their employers. This is in part due to the additional strengths that women and minorities bring to teams above and beyond their intelligence: empathy, teamwork, different perspectives, and a commitment to helping people. My own research has examined how to train engineering students to be better team members, particularly when diverse perspectives are represented.
We need more diverse engineering teams in movies, as well as in real life, to change the image of who can be an engineer or scientist.
Maura Borrego is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and a public voices fellow with The OpEd Project. She has been awarded grants from the National Science Foundation and serves on the board of the American Society for Engineering Education