Why STEM Matters at NYU Tandon
A 2018 study by the Pew Research Center reported that STEM employment grew 79 percent since 1990, and computer jobs saw a 338 percent increase over the same period.
But diversity in STEM professions is not keeping pace: African Americans represent just nine percent of STEM workers, and Hispanics just seven percent. By contrast, nearly 30 percent of STEMNOW participants this year are African American and 14 percent are Hispanic. Eighty-five percent of students who are ultimately served by STEMNOW — thanks in part to teachers who participate in its teacher training programs — come from communities historically underrepresented in STEM disciplines.
STEMNOW also aims for economic diversity: A third of students this summer come from families in which no one has attended college, and more than a third come from households earning less than $40,000 per year.
The opportunity gap in STEM is not just racial and economic. Nationwide, only a quarter of the labor force in STEM fields are women. According to the Pew research, women constitute only 14 percent of the engineering workforce and a quarter of computer science occupations. According to a 2017 study by Frost & Sullivan, they fill just 11 percent of global cybersecurity positions.
By contrast, young women constitute 65 percent of this year's STEMNOW participants. STEMNOW reflects the course for NYU Tandon, which has decreased gender disparity among undergraduate engineers. Women make up 42 percent of the class of 2022 – more than 20 percentage points better than the national average for all engineering undergraduates.
Injecting Ethics and Humanities into STEM
STEMNOW infuses science, math, and engineering with humanities and even acting classes:
- Dimensions of Scientific Inquiry: Part of the ARISE syllabus, this course explores science writing and ethical and moral considerations raised by contemporary research.
Brendan Matz, professor of science and technology studies at NYU Tandon and the NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study, and
Leah Aronowsky, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign challenge students to think about such issues as the use of autonomous drones in warfare, how race and gender affect research funding and how we set scientific priorities, and how we teach a self-driving car to make a snap decision about what to collide with when there is no other choice.
- Acting techniques taught by the renowned Irondale theater company: The Brooklyn-based theater company teaches improvisational acting skills to help students in the ARISE, Science of Smart Cities, and ieSoSC classes prepare for their final presentations to audiences of engineers, urban planners, businesspeople, and smart-cities experts.
Teaching Those Who Reach the Next Generation
This summer, teachers take part in:
- COSMOS: In this six week program school teachers will delve into
COSMOS ("Cloud Enhanced Open Software Defined Mobile Wireless Testbed for City-Scale Deployment") a collaboration with three universities and several organizations to develop a city-scale advanced wireless test bed in New York's Harlem neighborhood. Teachers will carry out cutting-edge research in the field of wireless networks with graduate students and develop web-based laboratory curricula that they will use in their classroom in the upcoming year. The program will encourage them to publish or present the curricula at the regional or national level, and materials they develop will be posted online for other teachers to use.
- Cyber Girls: This brand new, three-week cybersecurity intensive for high school teachers immerses them in information security fundamentals to launch cybersecurity clubs and classes for young women at their schools. Learning side-by-side with CS4CS participants, the teachers in this NSF-funded program participate in hands-on, collaborative activities, join field trips, and hear presentations by female cybersecurity professionals. Back at the six participating schools, NYU Tandon students will help teachers with technical assistance and mentor girls in various activities throughout the year.
- Discovery Research (DR) for Teachers: Ten middle school science and math teachers will spend three weeks at NYU Tandon as part of a comprehensive year-round STEM professional development program, funded by a $2.5 million grant from the NSF DRK-12 program. NYU experts in robotics, engineering, education, curriculum design, and assessment make robotics central to and sustainable in the city's science and math classrooms. Math and science teachers will return to their schools supported by NYU Tandon graduate students. This summer, teachers who previously completed the program return to develop curriculum manuscripts that will be widely shared.
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ieSoSC-SONYC: This unique four-week program immerses middle school science teachers in the NSF-funded SONYC research project. The SONYC team is deploying specialized sound sensors in key locations around the city to analyze ambient noises, from trucks and construction to crowds and bars. After two weeks of helping researchers identify patterns in the noise (and learning skills in data visualization, computer science and more), the teachers will work with student-instructors and a group of 24 upper middle school students, who will have just completed the ieSoSC program to conduct research for SONYC.
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ITEST Robotics and Entrepreneurship: Robotics and engineering drive professional development and educational enrichment for high school teachers and their students. Teachers, each joined by two of their students, learn about business planning, new-product development, intellectual property, and fundraising in this NSF-funded program. Students will participate in entrepreneurship competitions, develop working models in STEM, and improve their laboratory skills. At the program's end, teachers will receive a kit of robotics equipment for summer courses that they take back to their schools.
- SMARTeR (Science and Mechatronics Aided Research for Teachers with an Entrepreneurship Experience): This NSF-funded program gives teachers, almost all from public schools, a chance to enhance their STEM curricula with a hands-on, mechatronics-based exploration of mechanical engineering, control theory, computer science, and electronics. Participants also learn such entrepreneurship skills as business planning, social entrepreneurship and technology, new product development, intellectual property, and fund-raising. During the last four weeks, teachers conduct engineering research alongside graduate and undergraduate researchers and faculty.
STEMNOW receives generous support from Con Edison, DTCC, ExpandED Schools, National Grid, the NSF, the New York Building Foundation, Northrop Grumman, The Pinkerton Foundation, and the Siegel Family Foundation.
For more information on STEMNOW, visit http://engineering.nyu.edu/k12stem. For information on summer credit courses, visit http://engineering.nyu.edu/highschoolsummer. To register for Tech Kids Unlimited, visit http://www.techkidsunlimited.org/register. Join the conversation at #STEMNOW.
About the New York University Tandon School of Engineering
The NYU Tandon School of Engineering dates to 1854, the founding date for both the New York University School of Civil Engineering and Architecture and the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute (widely known as Brooklyn Poly). A January 2014 merger created a comprehensive school of education and research in engineering and applied sciences, rooted in a tradition of invention and entrepreneurship and dedicated to furthering technology in service to society. In addition to its main location in Brooklyn , NYU Tandon collaborates with other schools within NYU , one of the country's foremost private research universities, and is closely connected to engineering programs at NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai. It operates Future Labs focused on start-up businesses in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn and an award-winning online graduate program. For more information, visit
http://engineering.nyu.edu .
