Urban Smart
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Programs

Why is STEAM important?

 
 

As the world progresses, science, technology, engineering, art, and math will only advance with it. In addition, STEAM drives the economy and provides opportunities to those involved. Often STEM is overlooked as a viable career path for most groups but especially so for urban groups. The portrayal often is that there is no interest in STEM, but that is not true. There is genuine interest in STEM careers within the urban community. The real issue is providing our local communities the tools, resources, and education in STEM to feed that curiosity that for so long has been overlooked. Urban citizens are underrepresented in STEM, so to counteract that, we need to provide STEM role models and mentors excited to teach their community from the youngest to the oldest members. The stats on this page will paint the bigger picture, but we will see the interest is there by the end. We need to bring the resources to the people.

 

40% of black students switch out of STEM majors before earning a degree.

 

Black and Latino students switch out of STEM majors and drop out at higher rates than their white peers. In addition, because black and Latino students have a higher probability of being from low-income households, they do not have access to the same academic resources to relieve some of the pressure in the STEM pipeline.

 
 
 

Black workers make up 11% of the US workforce, but represent 9% of STEM workers.

United states workforce

 

Additionally, Latino STEM workers make up 16% of the workforce, but only 7% of all STEM workers. Of those employed adults who hold a bachelor's degree or higher, 7% are black workers, and 6% are Hispanic workers of the STEM workforce. Plus, recent headlines have exposed Silicon Valley's diversity problem and how much work there is still to do to improve equity in tech.(Stats via Pew Research Center)

 

Women make up only about 18% of computer science undergrads. 

 
 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that by 2026, computer science research jobs will grow 19%. However, only 18% of computer science bachelor's degrees in the US are earned by women.(Via computerscience.org)

There has been a negative connotation around women working in computer science for some time now. Since 1984 women working in computer science have declined from 37% to 18%. We must actively encourage our women of all ages to pursue their interest in computer science. This would build their confidence and allow many women to find proper representation and role models in the world of STEM.