Declining Number of Blacks Seen in Math in Science

 It was different when he was growing up on the black side of segregated Beaumont, Texas. He was raised by his grandmother, who had a third-grade education, and his grandfather, who laid concrete pipes. There was a black pharmacist in his neighborhood, and Francisco worked part-time in the shop. There was a black doctor, teachers, a college professor. That changed when he went to the University of Texas and then MIT, where there were few black faces.

In a 2010 Bayer Corp. survey of 1,226 women and underrepresented minority chemists and chemical engineers, 40 percent said they were discouraged from pursuing a STEM career. Sixty percent said college was where most of the discouragement happened.   

 

 Jemison, the astronaut, says that while at Stanford, “some professors were not that thrilled to see me in their classrooms.”

 

“Stereotypes impact the people who have an opportunity to influence your career,” she says. “They don’t see you as a peer.”

After receiving his PhD, Francisco had several job offers. He chose Wayne State University in Detroit, and would later become president of the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers.  “I saw an opportunity at Wayne State to do good science in a supportive place that gave me the flexibility to make a contribution to the community,” he says. “To give something back, to a black community.”

 In the world of atoms and numbers, does the color of the person who studies them really matter?

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