About Diversity
Building and Strengthening A Diverse Community
In support of our educational mission, the School of Engineering has a long-standing commitment to building a community of faculty, students, and staff that is both world-class and diverse. It continues to actively pursue these goals now and for the future. The School has been working to develop and implement a range of programs and services that create an environment that promotes and achieves student and faculty diversity.
The Minority Introduction to Engineering and Science (MITES) program, a six-week summer residential enrichment program for rising high school seniors, is in its fourth decade. In 2002, the School began two new programs for high school students: the Saturday Engineering Enrichment and Discovery (SEED) Academy for local 9th through 12th graders, all of whom are from urban public schools; and the Women's Technology Program, a four-week summer residence program to introduce high school girls to the fields of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). In 2004, the School launched STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), a program for talented local middle school students who want to get ahead in math and science.
The aim of these programs is to support MIT's and the School of Engineering's mission to provide all of our students with the intellectual stimulation of a diverse campus community and to serve the nation's need for a diverse pool of highly qualified engineers, including underrepresented minorities and those from traditionally underserved segments. These programs work with a diverse pool of middle and high school students, including those from underrepresented segments, to equip them to enter and succeed in postsecondary engineering education.
In January 2002, we established the School of Engineering Recruitment and Retention Committee, which advises the Dean and Engineering Council on ways to achieve a more diverse faculty.
The number of diverse faculty candidates is affected by many factors. Understanding and influencing these pipeline issues is important to the success of our overall diversity strategy within our educational mission and our affirmative action plan. The School of Engineering's efforts to diversify the Engineering faculty are focused on finding and appointing the best talent, as the result of wide ranging, thorough, and thoughtful search processes.
The School of Engineering and MIT are committed by policy and action to equal opportunity for all candidates, including women, resulting in: the appointment of a number of women professors to academic leadership positions, increases in the number of women on the faculty, a more collegial environment, and new family/work policies for parents. We have developed recommendations for innovations in recruiting, achieving diversity at all levels of the Academy, and to addressing issues of marginalization.
In January 2002, our campus hosted the National Initiative on Minority Women Faculty conference. Minority women science and engineering faculty from around the country convened to discuss solutions to gender- and race-based career barriers, pipeline issues relating to hiring of faculty, and tools for enhancing the diversity of the academic community. Such discussions provide vital information and serve as a catalyst for continuing progress toward achieving greater diversity among our faculty.
In addition, the School hosted a workshop on diversity led by Professor Virginia Valian of Hunter College. This workshop examined factors leading to gender inequity and presented reasons why gender equity is desirable for an institution.
Why Diversity?
We all stand to gain. By working to ensure full representation at a university level of the many groups reflected in our national population — across gender, race, socio-economic level and ethnicity — we promote academic excellence for all students, safeguard the economic well-being of our nation, and promote social justice.
Some of the advantages of fostering a diverse and inclusive academic community include:
- The ability to prepare professionals with increasing skill levels, trained to cooperate and compete in a multicultural, internationalized economy
- Opportunities for growth for all faculty, students, and staff
- Enrichment brought by a variety of perspectives and new insights
- The creative resources of all will be available to develop knowledge, human potential, and new models of leadership, and satisfy the varied needs of an increasingly racially, ethnically, and gender-diverse world.
In an academic community such as ours, an increased number of scholarly contributions by women and underrepresented minorities stimulates and further strengthens our intellectual climate. Indeed, an important measure of our academic excellence for all our students relates directly to our effectiveness in both educating a diverse population and attracting and retaining a greater number of women and racial/ethnic minorities on our faculty.
At MIT School of Engineering, we've come a long way, but . . .
In 1970, only 32 of 1231 undergraduate engineering majors were women. Today, 665 of 1749 undergraduate engineering majors are women, an over twenty-fold increase to just over half of the undergraduate population. At the faculty level, only two of 370 engineering professors were women in 1970. The percentage of women faculty has increased from half a percent then to 14 percent today. In the past five years, 24 new female faculty members have joined the School, bringing the total to 51. We have more to do to achieve the necessary gender diversity to support our educational mission, but our efforts are making a difference.
Figures for underrepresented minorities also demonstrate improvement over the years. In 1979, less than 2.5 percent (17 out of almost 700) of undergraduate engineering degrees were granted to underrepresented minorities, and only 0.5 percent of engineering faculty (two out of almost 400) were underrepresented minorities. While the School of Engineering's community does not fully reflect the diversity we feel is necessary to achieve our mission, we are proud that our current community is significantly richer now, with the proportion of underrepresented minority students and faculty nearly ten-fold that of 20 years ago.
Indeed, during this period, many of our peer universities have made important progress towards diversity, and MIT is among the leaders in this area. A 2002 NSF report indicates that MIT is a very strong producer of minority engineers who go on to earn doctorates at the top engineering schools [see PDF table of 1995-99 black science and engineering doctorate recipients and PDF table of 1995-99 Hispanic science and engineering doctorate recipients], ranking second after the historically black colleges and universities and Hispanic serving institutions. This is an important contribution toward increasing the diversity of the academic pipeline and helping MIT to achieve our educational mission.
Engineering is a major driver of our nation's economy and competitiveness in the global economy. Considering that underrepresented minorities now make up 26 percent of our nation's population (with this number increasing) but earn a very small percentage of the engineering degrees, the numbers clearly demonstrate the importance to engineering education and to our nation of increasing the pool of minorities who pursue undergraduate and graduate education and careers in engineering. Engineering is a creative and collaborative endeavor. Diversity in the student body and faculty of MIT's School of Engineering is critical to the high quality of education we provide to all students because our students must acquire the skills to work productively with diverse colleagues and to identify and design solutions to the needs of a diverse society. While MIT has reason to be proud of the progress it has made, it cannot be satisfied with where it is. In the 21st century, it is all the more important that MIT maintain its leadership in this area.
