NACME - Beyond the Dream | Post-Roundtable Report

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Post-Roundtable Report

NACME has announced a sweeping plan that would create greater opportunities for students to receive engineering degrees and bolster American competitiveness in science-related professions.

The NACME plan resulted from the Beyond the Dream national roundtable that included almost 40 engineering, science, and mathematics academic leaders. It focuses on the country’s community colleges, where more than half of all underrepresented science and engineering bachelor’s and master’s degree recipients began their post-secondary careers. In the comprehensive action plan, NACME identified three important steps:

Adjust existing community college math curricula to allow students to learn engineering-related skills and to advance to higher level math courses;
Identify funding sources to implement curricula changes;
Launch several pilot programs at leading community colleges.

“When it comes to the sciences and engineering in particular, the United States is frankly falling far behind other nations and regions,” said Dr. Irving Pressley McPhail, CEO and President of NACME. “We know about some of the major hurdles students face in receiving engineering degrees – or even being educated about and exposed to the industry – so we have identified fairly easy, but far-reaching steps that community colleges can implement to start to curb this competitive crisis.”

The roundtable, led by Dr. Paula Hudis, Director for Pathway and Curriculum Development, ConnectEd, is the first step of a multi-year effort by NACME to heighten awareness about new initiatives that can be launched to put engineering at the forefront of students’ minds. The plan calls for a greater focus on engineering-related projects in developmental math courses and increased awareness of engineering professions to remedy two key hurdles to underrepresented minorities in engineering.

In what NACME identifies as the “New American Dilemma,” fewer than 12 percent of engineering degrees are earned by minorities, despite much higher underrepresented representation in the overall student populations at U.S. colleges and universities. Currently, African Americans, American Indians, and Latinos constitute 30 percent of the nation’s undergraduate students – a number that is expected to grow to 32 percent in 2010 and 38 percent by 2025.

“We are suffering a competitiveness issue globally and yet we are denying this huge population, either by benign neglect or at worst active discrimination, opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics,” said Dr. McPhail. “Never mind how we got here; we must take action today for these students, these groups, our nation and a global economy. It makes sense for everyone to care about and remedy this crisis.”