afro.sax.gurl

Hi all, thank you for your comments. I agree with one poster who wrote that most engineering majors/jobs have been geared towards white males, so that URMs and women did not have the opportunity to accelerate in this field. Also, engineering and most sciences in general ARE deemed too "dorky' or "geeky" by most kids and URMs. NE Wayz I really appreciate everyones comments

P.S. i still plan to major in engineering even with the small numbers of minorities in this major.

afro.sax.gurl

Sax: Thank you for your inspirational words of encouragement. Oh, by the way do you play the saxophone or is that just your screen name? Ive been playing the tenor saxophone for 8 years now so I was just wondering.

afro.sax.gurl

Dr. Reynolds,

I have never been discouraged from majoring in engineering directly. But when i tell people what I want to major in an almost inperceptable (sp??) look crosses over their faces. One like why is She majoring in that or they'll ask me do I understand how hard engineering can be etc. It's very subtle and barely noticiable. Anways, Ive always been interested in the sciences, specifically chemistry because that's what my dad majored in. But he was the one who encouraged me to consider engineering. He explained it as the application of physics, chemisrty etc. Essentially he's the one who got me interested in the field.

CH121S

Aha I am a URM (African-American) in Eng. (More specifically CS) And could comment on some of this.

There is no complete answer to this however Ill try . First off, I dont believe you can compare all URMs to each other, like Asian's are not the same as African Americans (Hell half the time their not even a URM in engineering). I think a lot of the rolemodel issues people associate arent really a URM thing, but more of a poor person thing, which though many URMs experience not all actually are poor believe it or not . I think with URMs we have to come mroe down to statistics.

I think engineering and app sciences itself is a minority and when you add in a minority and in some cases an extreme minority, your going have an extremely low amount of URMs in eng/app sci. Then take in the fact that statistically A Minority tends to test lower in a room full of white people.....well then you can begin to understand this complex issue huh? . (Its a short a brute answer, but an answer nonetheless)

Jason1117

From my perspective,Asians are more likely to major in Engineering than whites.It's really about your own interest. If you are interested in it,go for it.And your performance has nothing to do with race.Maybe other blacks just don't like engineering?

sakky

Yet I wonder why it is that many poor Asians who also go to the same bad school districts (because they can't afford to live anywhere else) still exhibit unusual academic success and a strong prediliction to enter science and engineering in college. Nobody needed to "identify" them, they just somehow identified themselves.

As a case in point, Sowell once pointed out (I believe in his book "Race and Culture") that back in the days of colonialism, Chinese students in Hong Kong outperformed white students in Hong Kong in standardized math exams despite the fact that practically all of the white Hong Kong students were rich because they were inevitably children of the ruling British imperial class who attended elite private boarding/international schools, whereas the Chinese were stuck with the public school systems.

hinmanCEO

not to be mean... but in my high school, the black kids who hung out with each other(only with other blacks) did not do so well in academics. whereas the black kids who hung out in a more diverse group did better.

there are exceptions, one of my black track teammates from high school, who also goes to UMCP, is majoring in ENEE, and is doing extremely well even though he is in the first group of blakcs i referred to and he mainly hangs around ppl who go clubbing, party, and drink every weekend.

i think that when young black students are together, they love to talk about hip-hop, basketball, other sports, cars, and girls. going to a "black" middle and high school for 7 years, and being on the track team, allowed me to hear what their conversations were about, and rarely was academics brought up. but the ones in a more diverse setting, or the student with more educated parents, such as afro.sax.girl then they are more inclined to listen and hear discussion that focus on academics. truth is, culturally, asians care more about academics, thats why even if an asian kid was dumb, he would still try to major in engineering, maybe fail out, but since he had encountered something as hard as engineering, when he switches to business for example, he would do well.

haha just my opinion, if you got any questions, I can clear things up.

steevee

I knew I wanted to say a specific word but it just wouldn't come out... CULTURE was the word I was thinking of. I completely agree with hinmanCEO with regards to Asian culture. I don't know much about African-American culture, but academics is defiitely not a priority based on what I observed in high school.

VTjas81

It is true to some degree but that alone will not account for it. Their high level of success in terms of academics is attributed also because many are SMART. No more of this politically correct stuff. Asians perform well on a variety of standardized tests including IQ. The psychology community overwhelming agree with their success in measuring aptitude.

Now if your black that should not deter you from pursuing whatever you want. Statistics say nothing of the individual, it just provides probabilities. There are plenty of smart black people but a lot more not so smart. Just like their are a lot of smart white people and not so smart ones. But the proportion for white ppl's IQ distribution is skewed to the right by about a standard deviation. This also applies to reaction time and digit span.

goat4d

The fact is, if you are a engineer you really need to know your stuff because well, you could kill people if you mess up bad enough, It happens. Sure there are guys who check your work, but sometimes things slip thorgh, so there is no room for letting a guy throgh just because they are poor or black.

I am white, and a male. I went to Herbert H. Lehman HS in Bronx, NY. My HS was about 60% Hispanic, 30% black and 10% white. of course there were some other races, but that was the general amount.

The level of Education students received was incredibly low, especially in math and science. I mean You would graduate just learning factoring polynomials in math. So for this reason, with the majority of Blacks & Hispanics being in Major cities, such as NYC I can definalt see how Engineering is not really looked at. When I told my college advisor that I wanted to be a Engineer she said I was crazy and out of 641 graduating seniors, other 3 of us were going for engineering, science or math. The Rest were going for easier majors like Business, English or History. Though 97% of my class went onto college, most chose the easier route.


Now I was told I was crazy by teachers and advisors, but I am still in it and love it.


BTW it took me 3 semesters of school just to catch up in math, my school didn't even have any Ap's when I graduated. So I can defiantly see where and why nobody Black, white or Hispanic would want to go into engineering, its just to dam hard and would take to much work.



At school there are a few Blacks whom are my good friends, 5they are some of the most brilliant Engineering students I have ever met. Though they all came from Upper NY and not NYC.

auscguy

There is a role model for URM. Shirley Jackson, female african american physicist, is president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is the first african american woman to earn PhD in MIT

There is story about when she got in MIT undergrad, no one want to work because of her gender and skin color. She couldn't find study group and wasn't taken seriously by professors.

http://www.girls-explore.com/bios/shirley-jackson.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley...28physicist%29

Jason1117

I am a typical dumb Asian major in engineering....

hinmanCEO

i am as well. i got the lowest gpa among my peers

racnna

The black kids in my high school were not on track with the curriculum-lmao. They weren't doing very well at all and kept failing and retaking classes like algebra 1. I was taking this really simple english class where you just read a couple of books and do a few assignments- like summarize the book, etc. - i only took it because it was very easy. There were 3 black kids in the class who got like 50's/40's.They were always cracking jokes and were very funny. The class was very small and the teacher used to yell out our grades. I felt guilty because I couldn't contain myself anytime i heard their grades and I would put my palm over my mouth and turn away so noone saw me..but one time i burst out in laughter when i heard the teacher say '46'...everyone in the class looked at me and started laughing(including the kid who got the 46)- i mean it was just ridiculous--all you have to do is pick a short, really easy book and read it- even if you don't want to read it you can go on sparknotes- plus there was tonnes of extra credit. Nothing has changed since i came to college- all the african americans in engineering are either doing bad or are taking remedial classes. and most of the black engineering kids at my school are africans. I know some of it has to do with where i am (pennsylvania) and i'm hoping if i transfer to a school in NY or Cali, i'll meet some high performing black kids who aren't african.

hinmanCEO

africans tend to do better than african-americans in engineering.