SCIENCE sciencemag.org 30 AUGUST 2019 • VOL 365 ISSUE 6456 871PHOTO: MARLAYNA DEMOND FOR UMBC
B
uilding a diverse STEM (science,
technology, engineering, and math-
ematics) workforce is an enduring
priority in the United States, but
predominantly white institutions
(PWIs) have been slow to correct the
systematic exclusion of Native Americans,
Hispanics, and African Americans from
educational opportunities. In Making Black
Scientists, Marybeth Gasman and Thai-Huy
Nguyen examine African American access
to STEM careers through stories and data
that describe the successful experiences of
faculty, staff, and students at historically
black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
Whereas PWIs have failed to make sub-
stantial progress in ensuring positive edu-
cational experiences for African Americans,
HBCUs have been steadily “making black
scientists” (and technologists, engineers,
and mathematicians). HBCUs represent only
3% of postsecondary institutions but pro-
duce nearly a fifth of all bachelor’s degrees
awarded to African Americans in engineer-
ing and nearly a third in mathematics and
physical sciences, despite differences in size,
resources, and student preparedness.EDUCATIONBy Donna RileyBOOKS et al.
Lessons in black excellence
The book’s power lies in artfully shar-
ing the stories of HBCU students, faculty,
and administrators, inviting us into stu-
dent lives, faculty minds, and institutional
cultures. It is organized thematically, de-
scribing key overlapping and reinforcing
characteristics that create environments
supporting African American excellence in
STEM. These passages are bookended by an
introduction and first chapter that concisely
capture the landscape of racial inequality in
STEM education—a section worth reading
slowly, especially for faculty who are not
familiar with the history and context of
HBCUs—and a final chapter that distills ac-
tion items for PWIs to improve the experi-
ences of African American STEM students.
Gasman and Nguyen argue that African
American success in STEM begins with an
institutional commitment to the education
of black students. This notion, built into the
mission of HBCUs, is in many ways precluded
at PWIs through the history of segregation
in U.S. education. The book details how
HBCUs do not anxiously perseverate over
math preparation, test scores, and other du-
bious meritocratic measures. Instead, faculty
and administrators offer educational experi-
ences tailored to students’ needs. This entails
a variety of approaches, including making
STEM socially relevant, recognizing students’
life circumstances, highlighting student
strengths, beginning wherever K–12 prepara-tion left off, celebrating black achievement in
STEM, and believing in students even when
they might not believe in themselves.
The authors foreground the sense of com-
munity at HBCUs, describing how peer col-
laboration facilitates student accountability
and self-confidence. Emphasizing com-
munity success and intellectual generosity
rather than individual achievement and
competition contrasts strongly with tradi-
tional STEM education at PWIs.
HBCU faculty collaborate in putting stu-
dents first and innovating supportive learn-
ing environments. Achieving excellence and
needing help in learning are both normal-
ized and expected from each student rather
than viewed as aberrations. Faculty serve
as caregivers to students, creating a sense
of kinship and family that is rare in many
other institutions of higher education.
Gasman and Nguyen argue that PWIs
have much to learn from HBCUs’ decades
of accomplishment in black students’ STEM
education, a challenge to which I hope they
will rise. But critical questions remain: How
does one eradicate meritocratic thinking
and elitist policies that maintain de facto
segregation at PWIs? How does one radi-
cally upend reward structures and insti-
tutional budgets to truly put (traditionally
marginalized) students first?
I do not doubt the transformative power
of faculty showing up for African American
students or of institutional reform to im-
prove African American graduation rates
in STEM at PWIs. But moving beyond in-
cremental change requires striking at root
causes such as racism and classism and con-
fronting unjust relations of knowledge and
power in a system that reliably reproduces
inequality. This book provides a roadmap of
actions within individual faculty members’
control and sustenance for students, faculty,
and administrators engaging in the struggle
for racial justice in STEM education.
It may be helpful to read the book remem-
bering that HBCUs are both the product of a
racist system and a challenge to that system.
With this in mind, I could not help but won-
der what more HBCUs and their students
might accomplish if they were equitably re-
sourced, and what the appropriate moral cor-
rection might be for PWIs that have benefited
from decades of privilege. j10.1126/science.aay3052Naomi Mburu, a former Meyerhoff Scholar, is currently pursuing a graduate degree at Oxford University.Making Black Scientists
A Call to Action
Marybeth Gasman
and Thai-Huy Nguyen
Harvard University Press,- 253 pp.
Data and success stories reveal how to ensure that African
American students thrive in the STEM classroom
The reviewer is the Kamyar Haghighi Head of the School
of Engineering Education, Purdue University, West Lafayette,
IN 47907, USA. E-mail: [email protected]Published by AAAS