How the STEMM Opportunity Alliance Will Help Achieve Scientific Excellence through Equity
By Sudip Parikh and Sam Gill
In the last year, America has seen historic, bipartisan investments that have massive potential to transform our entire economy. The thread that binds recent investments like the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act, CHIPS & Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act is that their success depends on a preeminent U.S. scientific enterprise. However, without some intervention, we are currently not on track to deliver the scientific talent we will need to create and capitalize on these transformational innovations now or in the future.
Complex problems require multifaceted, creative and innovative solutions. Studies show that total U.S. innovation would quadruple if women, people of color and low-income Americans had greater access to participate in the science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM) ecosystem.
While there is important work being done across the country to close opportunity gaps and bring new voices into STEMM, they have not caught on at scale and are often hindered by fragmentation, limited visibility and lack of investment and accountability. This has left critical gaps across the system that we can’t afford not to address.
That’s why we recently launched the STEMM Opportunity Alliance (SOA), a comprehensive national initiative dedicated to creating an equitable ecosystem that ensures that each and every person in this country has the same access and opportunity to enter a STEMM field.
Since our launch in December 2022, SOA has been laying the foundation for “a Year of Action on STEMM Equity and Excellence”. Doing so will require clarity: constructing a national STEMM equity strategy, inclusivity: building partnerships to strengthen and expand our reach, action: developing technical assistance and partnership support capacities to identify impact opportunities, and responsibility: building systems to track our impact.
This unprecedented collaboration across disciplines will address structural barriers at every phase of life to streamline pathways to STEMM careers. With commitments from business, academia, philanthropy and advocacy organizations, SOA will work in a concerted and coordinated effort to smooth the road to STEMM success for Americans and build a talent pipeline that meets our future needs.
This is a powerful moment to revitalize the STEMM ecosystem to bolster our economic competitiveness. SOA will capitalize on new and unprecedented investments to meet the Biden-Harris Administration’s call to elevate equity in STEMM as a national priority. By centering coalition-building, accountability and shared learning, we’ll make sure that what works to diversify a physics laboratory can be shared to create more inclusive high school calculus classrooms.
Together, we’re committing to creating a national initiative to help build a future that ensures everyone can participate in our STEMM ecosystem and use their knowledge and expertise to fuel progress. We want to live in a world where a child born today anywhere from St. Louis, Missouri to Redding, California to New York City could one day be a top scientist and never realize that 50 years ago this might not have been an option for them. But we need your help to make this a reality. Learn how to get involved at stemmopportunity.org/commitment#form
Sudip S. Parikh, Ph.D., is the chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and executive publisher of the Science family of journals. Sam Gill is the president and CEO of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.