Julia Keleher
- Director for Diversity and Inclusion
- jdkelehe@mtu.edu
- 906-487-2920
- Hamar House
The Center for Diversity and Inclusion (CDI) is often seen as a home away from home for many Michigan Tech students. Our close and welcoming environment is essential to our mission to support the retention and graduation rates of all underserved and underrepresented students on our campus. At CDI, we not only just provide educational opportunities and support for students, but we also provide students with a safe and supportive environment for them to be themselves and succeed while they are on our campus.
Diversity and representation in the STEM fields
We know that Michigan Tech is a leader in preparing students to work in STEM jobs
on an international level. STEM jobs are typically higher paying and job growth in
the STEM fields will soon be larger than those jobs in non-STEM fields (Fry et al.,
2021). A gap still exists, however, between the amount of workers who are white versus
STEM workers of color. According to the Pew Research Group, Black workers only account
for 9% of those working in STEM careers and Latino/a workers comprise 8% of STEM workers.
Workers who are Asian only make up 10% of the STEM workforce and Indigenous or Native
American workers do not even make up more than 5% of the workforce. There is also
a persistent gap in the amounts of women-identified workers compared to male-identified
workers in STEM. In the same study as above, the Pew Research Center cited that only
while women received 53% of college STEM degrees, the majority of those graduates
go into healthcare fields rather than engineering or computer science (Fry et al.,
2021).
The above statistics are often reflections of the current demographics for students
in STEM-focused higher education like here at Michigan Tech. At CDI, we have several
student support programs to help those underrepresented and underserved students during
their time on our campus. MiCUP Scholars Program, our summer bridge program for transfer
students, helps first-generation and underrepresented students follow their dreams
and pursue their education after attending community college here in Michigan with
one-of-the-kind hands-on research experience with faculty at Michigan Tech. In addition,
our Husky Connect Peer Mentoring program helps our incoming first-year students from
all walks of diversity to find their place at Michigan Tech and gain the essential
skills to succeed from their peers. These programs are just two examples of the work
we do at CDI to ensure that our underrepresented students feel welcomed, have the
tools to succeed on campus and graduate to join the workforce to make our world a
better place.
Work cited: Fry, R., Kennedy, B., & Funk, C. (2021). STEM jobs see uneven progress
in increasing gender, racial, and ethnic diversity. Pew Research Center.