SEAS Struggles to Attract Minority Students

The number of undergraduate concentrators in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences has grown rapidly over the past three years, rising by more than 39 percent over that period.

Yet amidst this rapid growth, the school has seen its proportion of African-American and Latino students remain substantially below the proportions in the overall Harvard population.

With 415 students currently concentrating in SEAS, only 4.8 percent identify as African-American and 2.4 percent identify as Latino. Among all Harvard students, the corresponding percentages are roughly 11 percent and 10 percent, according to statistics from the Admissions office.

While SEAS makes some formal efforts to attract minority students, “we haven’t gone and tried to get internal recruitment,” says Harry R. Lewis ’68, former dean of the College and a professor of computer sciences.

Despite its struggle to attract underrepresented minority groups, SEAS has done well in drawing foreign national students and Asian and Pacific Americans. Eighty-seven foreign nationals—many from African nations—are pursuing an engineering or applied science concentration, as are 91 Asian or Pacific Americans, according to data published by SEAS.

As the school projects further expansion and nears SEAS Dean Cherry A. Murray’s stated goal of capturing 600 undergraduate concentrators, the question remains as to how SEAS can attract more students from underrepresented minority groups.

NATIONAL TRENDS

The underrepresentation of African-Americans and Latinos in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields is a problem that is not unique to Harvard.

A recent study published by the National Academies found that African-Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans hold only 9 percent of American jobs in STEM-related fields, despite comprising about 29 percent of the population.

And according to data provided by the American Society for Engineering Education, African-Americans comprised, on average, about 5.2 percent of national engineering students between 2000 and 2008, while Hispanics comprised about 5.8 percent.

The corresponding averages among Harvard students in SEAS over that period are very similar—about 5.1 percent for African-Americans and 4.5 percent for Hispanics.

“This isn’t a problem for Harvard so much as this is a problem in STEM in particular,” says Computer Science Professor Margo I. Seltzer. “It’s not clear that we’re going to be able to fix this single-handedly.”

Seltzer says she thinks that by the time these students arrive at college, they may be disinclined from studying a STEM field, an obstacle for colleges that wish to draw talented minority students toward fields within engineering or applied science.

“If someone had figured out...some recipe to get more minority students [to concentrate in STEM], it would be fabulous,” Seltzer says. “But at the end of the day, students get to pick their concentrations.”

AFRICAN OR AFRICAN-AMERICAN

As of last spring, only 20 African-Americans are concentrating in SEAS, according to SEAS data. But a far higher proportion of concentrators in engineering, applied math, and computer science self-identify as black because this group includes students who directly hail from Africa.

Most students contacted for this article say that they believe a higher proportion of black SEAS concentrators were African, rather than African-American.

In interviews with a number of black students within SEAS, a number of trends emerged which may shed light on why more African students than African-Americans may feel drawn to engineering and applied science.

Many African engineering concentrators pointed to cultural expectations as a primary motivation behind their decision to take on their major.

“In the countries where we come from, the economies are not really well-developed. The best way to get a stable job is in the physical sciences,” says Leonard C. Kogos ’12, a Kenya native who is studying engineering sciences. “There is a perception that when we go to school, we should study something like engineering.”

Nigerian student John Yusufu ’12 echoed this view, noting that engineering and some of the applied sciences are viewed as “prestigious” in Africa.

Yet some African-American students say that their engineering studies stem from individual interest. Hilton H. Augustine ’13 says he has always been interested in technology and electronics, and Ainsley E. Faux ’13 says he has “always been interested in understanding how things work and building things.” Both students plan to declare concentrations within SEAS.

Based on her experiences with African and African-American friends, Nigerian student Olumurejiwa “Mureji” A. Fatunde ’12 says she believes that the latter group is more receptive to choosing majors in the humanities simply because they have a broader sense of acceptable career options.

Even if cultural forces may encourage more African-American students to major in the humanities, no students indicated that any institutional barrier exists to discourage African-Americans from majoring in SEAS.

“I don’t see anything inside SEAS that is creating the discrepancy,” Augustine says.

DIVERSIFYING THE FACULTY

Murray says that one potential method to increase the number of African-American and Latino concentrators within SEAS is to attract a greater number of faculty members from underrepresented minority groups. Such efforts have shown to be successful among graduate students, she notes.

According to SEAS Director of Communications Michael P. Rutter, some efforts to diversify the faculty are already underway.

“I would say that we have begun to think about ways to further improve our efforts to diversify our junior faculty,” Rutter writes in an e-mail, adding that any diversification plans are still “nascent” and “in development.”

Several black SEAS students say that they noticed the relative lack of black professors within the school, though most say that the issue has not affected their perception of SEAS.

“I have not yet seen a black SEAS professor, but it hasn’t really been an issue for me,” Augustine says.

Several SEAS professors say they are skeptical as to whether these efforts would actually draw more African-American or Latino students.

“I’d love to see some data...It’s one of those issues that is somewhat speculative,” Lewis says, adding that he himself has never seen any evidence that underrepresented minority students did not study computer science because of a dearth of minority faculty in CS.

Seltzer also expresses doubts about the efficacy of such a plan, drawing on her own experience teaching introductory computer science as a female professor.

“When I taught CS50, I had no better success recruiting women than any of my male colleagues,” she says. “From my experience, diversifying the faculty is not enough.”

ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS

Besides faculty diversification, Murray says that she hopes to attract underrepresented minorities to SEAS by dispelling the notion that the school is a “Darwinian” place of intense competition and interminable problem sets.

“I would like to get away from [the] notion that you have to go over many hurdles before you can become an engineering concentrator,” Murray says. “I think if you make those first few courses more exciting, then it will be more inclusive.”

According to Lewis, SEAS makes “special efforts” to get in touch with minority students who have been admitted to Harvard and mentioned an interest in engineering or applied sciences in their applications.

Even if some African-American and Latino students choose majors outside of those offered by SEAS, Rutter, the SEAS communications director, says that popular introductory classes still allow the school to reach out to them.

“SEAS doesn’t educate just concentrators,” he says.

—Gautam S. Kumar contributed to the writing of this story.

—Staff Writer Evan T.R. Rosenman can be reached at erosenm@fas.harvard.edu.