Diversifying Science and Engineering Faculties: Intersections of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender

The fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) drive economies worldwide. In such knowledge-based economies, no nation can afford to use its human resources inefficiently and ineffectively. Faculties exert a great deal of influence on the science and engineering (S&E) enterprise insofar as they conduct cutting-edge research as well as educate and train the S&E labor forces. This article focuses on the dynamics of the intersections of race/ethnicity and gender on diversifying S&E faculties in colleges and universities in the United States, and the criticality of disaggregating data to better understand these dynamics. Failure to disaggregate race/ethnicity data by gender, and gender data by race/ethnicity, masks important distinctions among groups. Failure to systematically take into account these distinctions results in policy, programs, practices, and institutions that are both inefficient and ineffective in developing and enhancing the S&E labor forces.