This week Hearsay Social CEO Clara Shih (@clarashih) had the special privilege of speaking at Fortune Brainstorm TECH, one of the world’s premier technology and innovation events, on the growing demand for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education.
Other prominent speakers at the conference included CEOs John Chambers of Cisco, Daniel Ek of Spotify, Aaron Levie of Box, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Jonah Peretti of BuzzFeed, and Kevin Systrom of Instagram, as well as Starbucks Chief Digital Officer Adam Brotman and JPMorgan Chase & Co. Vice Chairman James Lee.
On Tuesday, Clara joined John Chambers (CEO, Cisco) and Maria Klawe (President, Harvey Mudd College, @MariaKlawe) to discuss the state of STEM education in a session moderated by Colin Bodell (Chief Technology Officer, Time Inc.). See Fortune’s coverage of the panel here; our key takeaways and full video are below.
The growing demand for STEM education
Maria kicked off the session, describing how Harvey Mudd College transformed its student body from 27% females in engineering and 30% females total to, in the class of 2014, 56% females in engineering and 46% total. And that took just eight years.
Changes implemented by the college to spur that transformation were simple. The college’s recruiting materials showed 50% females, tour guides were 50% female, and today the faculty is 40% female. As Maria explained, “We just made it really clear that being a female engineer, physicist, mathematician, computer scientist—that’s normal.” Not only that, but their courses placed an emphasis on creative problem solving.
“I have yet to meet a young person who doesn’t want to be creative and who doesn’t like problem solving,” said Maria.
It’s an incredible accomplishment for Harvey Mudd but, as Cisco CEO John Chambers explained, there are still many steps until we will see changes like this globally. “K-12 is broken,” he said, and it will require major rethinking of education and identity to fix it.
“When you do a Google image search for ‘computer scientist,’ it’s all white male.” said Clara. “And that’s the societal view of it right now, so there’s an issue of identity.”
Clara spoke to her personal experience as an immigrant and women in the science and math fields. As she argued, parents, teachers, and the students themselves are responsible for cultivating a new, disrupted educational landscape where technology is not something to be intimidated by, but something to embrace.
Watch the full conversation here and see tweets from the session below:
Great to see #multicultural talent represented at @brainstormtech @sbp04 @clarashih @ad_Rise #FortuneTech pic.twitter.com/C9KricbmPb
— Steven Wolfe Pereira (@wolfepereira) July 15, 2014
Entering era where many jobs are going away, need to reskill for Big Data, machine learning @clarashih #FortuneTech #STEM @brainstormtech
— Michelle Haworth (@MichelleHaworth) July 15, 2014
Sigh! RT @pattiesellers: @clarashih @HearsaySocial: #Google image search for #scientist = all white males. #fortunetech @FortuneMPW #gender
— Susan Arnot Heaney (@SusanHeaney) July 15, 2014
Loving listening to @clarashih talk about empowering girls to study computer science #FortuneTech #rolemodel pic.twitter.com/4fdeQHt6Jb
— Linda Mills (@LindaJMills) July 15, 2014
@clarashih almost stealing show with impressive panelists Maria Klawe and John Chambers. #FortuneTech talking STEM
— Adam Lashinsky (@adamlashinsky) July 15, 2014
.@clarashih @HearsaySocial says do a Google image search for scientist and it's all white males. #fortunetech @FortuneMPW
— pattiesellers (@pattiesellers) July 15, 2014
"Doing a google search on computer scientists results in all white males. This is a problem." @clarashih #FortuneTech
— Laura Mather (@LauraMath3r) July 15, 2014
Building blocks to improve #STEM. We had it at our dinner table, fostered by my parents. @clarashih #FortuneTech
— Mack (@mackmckelvey) July 15, 2014
@clarashih: STEM shouldn't be at odds with being a woman or a minority #FortuneTech
— Michal Lev-Ram (@mlevram) July 15, 2014
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