Expanding underrepresented minority participation: America’s science and technology talent at the crossroads

Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation calls for a larger and stronger science and engineering workforce in the United States.As the authors themselves note, calls to increase the number of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduates have been made over the past six decades because of perceived connections between STEM workforce development and our nation’s health, prosperity, and security.Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation adds to the existing argument the idea that the science and engineering workforce must be made more diverse-that it must draw on the minds and talents of underrepresented minorities because they are both the fastest growing segment of the population and the least likely to pursue STEM degrees.The United States stands again at the crossroads: A national effort to sustain and strengthen S&E [science and engineering] must also include a strategy for ensuring that we draw on the minds and talents of all Americans, including minorities who are underrepresented in S&E and currently embody a vastly underused resource and a lost opportunity for meeting our nation’s technology needs.(p. 2)