Education

Companies across a spectrum of industries, from healthcare to retail to banking, face a common issue: building a skilled workforce ready to handle the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This technological movement will drive new discoveries in artificial intelligence (AI), rapidly changing how we learn and work.

The House of Representatives passed legislation to make STEM education and research funding more robust and accessible to students at tribal and historically black colleges and universities, as well as at minority-serving institutions, or MSIs. The MSI STEM Achievement Act, introduced by Reps. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, and Frank Lucas R-Okla., in September, passed by a voice vote Monday and moves to the Senate for consideration.

Categorizing concepts through binary thinking lies under the belly of the deeply rooted institutions within the field of computer science and technology. And unfortunately, the this-or-that distinction established by the binary code could easily be translated to us-or-them. This has translated to widespread discrimination across the STEM fields, but the gendered tropes underpinning the conversation around computing may be causing even the most forward-thinking minds to miss the forest for the trees.

Now more than ever, it’s crucial to harness the full potential of STEM to tackle climate change, address public health challenges and advance technology. And there’s a growing recognition that we won’t be up to the task if we don’t ensure all students have access to foundational math training, authentic STEM learning and high-level, career-relevant STEM courses. Right now, students of color and low-income students are too often shut out of these learning opportunities - too often because the courses and other opportunities are never made available to them.