There's a new blog available for those interested in engineering outreach, started by Celeste Baine, called the Pre-Engineering Blog. This blog has been started with the premise that marketing is a, if not the, major problem for recruiting underrepresented groups to engineering. Underrepresented groups in engineering means just about anyone who is not a white male, since, let's face it, the profession remains a predominantly pale male enterprise.
I will concede that engineering could stand to have a better marketing effort on its behalf. It does remain, as many have called it, the "stealth" profession for few outside it know what engineers actually do or how we contribute to society. Young kids in particular don't easily see how engineering can be a "helping profession", something that's often important to members of those underrepresented groups engineering educators say they want to reach.
But if marketing is the solution - then what's the problem? Marketing as a solution implies that the problem, the reason that engineering remains so persistently, stubbornly pale and male, is that we just haven't gotten the word out about how exciting engineering is. If only those "others" knew how much fun it is to do engineering, they'd show up.
Aha. So then. The problem, as we suspected all along, lies solidly with the underrepresented others. There's nothing wrong with the culture of engineering education or the engineering workplace, right? There are no cultural messages being sent to young girls or to young boys of color that engineering's not for them, or that they are not wanted, right?
I'll get back to you on that one.
3:16:55 PM 
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