SWE Sends DEI Statement to State Legislators

Dear State leaders,

On behalf of the national engineering professional societies signed below, we are writing to express our views about pending state legislation targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion. We have concerns about proposals impacting our on-campus chapter members and engineering faculty and staff supporting students pursuing careers in the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

Particularly, we are concerned with legislative language that could be interpreted as eliminating access to funding resources for student organizations and engineering education programs due to the nature of their mission and which would disenfranchise underrepresented communities in STEM on college and university campuses. This would undermine the quality of K-12 STEM, engineering education at all levels, the workforce, and U.S. competitiveness.

We are non-partisan non-profit organizations dedicated to attracting, advancing, and increasing the participation of students in historically underrepresented groups in STEM including but not limited to Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, women, and persons with disabilities, in all STEM disciplines and emerging technologies. Collectively, our societies serve more than 100,000 members, providing young professionals with diverse backgrounds who are either first-generation college students, military veterans, people identifying as disabled, transfers from community colleges, or come from families with minimal resources. For thousands of engineering educators, we provide them with resources, professional development opportunities, and peer-reviewed research to expand their education and better support students.

Our missions are to build highly skilled generations of STEM leaders by focusing on often overlooked communities and providing them access to nationwide networks of endless mentorship, career, and professional development benefits that fortify their road map to successful and fulfilling jobs. Together, we add an essential component to meeting the dire need for a stronger domestic pipeline of a skillful workforce in STEM and all related national security industries in the U.S. economy.

To further our collective missions of growing the STEM education and workforce pipeline, our societies engage with local communities at high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools to support, enhance, and complement current K-12 STEM learning. Through community outreach, our members connect with young students to increase STEM education access and awareness, while improving pathways to college readiness. Our members reinforce these pathways at the higher-education level through research grants, academic journals, conferences, and professional development workshops that support faculty preparing future engineers, including those from traditionally overlooked groups who help to ameliorate America’s engineering shortage.

We strongly recommend that the state legislature does not intentionally or inadvertently risk cutting off funding for student chapter organizations and sections, and higher-education engineering programs supporting students from diverse backgrounds. The critical role that our organizations play in growing the short-term and long-term STEM education and workforce pipeline is critically beneficial to the State’s economy.

We appreciate the opportunity to share our recommendations and thank you for your consideration of our priorities.

Sincerely,