MMAE Seminar - Meritocracy, Democracy, Technocracy: Understandings of Identity in American STEM Education

Armour College of Engineering Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering Department will have a joint a seminar with the Humanities, Psychology and Social Sciences Departments featuring Amy E. Slaton, Professor History at Drexel University. She will present Meritocracy, Democracy, Technocracy: Understandings of Identity in American STEM Education.

Abstract

A half-century after the Civil and Voting Rights Acts of the 1960s, the nation finds racial, gender and other forms of equity yet to be attained in virtually all occupations. In Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields, the under-representation of women, minorities, LGBTQ persons and persons with disabilities remains stark. How can our most intellectually modern enterprises remain among the most socially static? We will consider how notions of rigorous science or engineering in universities, industries and government preclude authentic address of practitioner identity, supporting the privileges of majority group members and of select "model" minorities. It is not conscious bias in any simple sense that begins to become visible, but instead seemingly neutral models of skill and expertise bearing powerful discriminatory effects.

Biography

Amy E. Slaton is a professor of history at Drexel University in Philadelphia. She holds a PhD in the History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Race, Rigor and Selectivity in U.S. Engineering: The History of an Occupational Color Line (Harvard University Press, 2010), and produces the blog, STEMequity.com, centered on equity in technical education and workforce issues. Current projects include a study of sub-baccalaureate nanotechnology programs emerging in response to U.S. "skills gap" rhetoric, and research on historical understandings of disabilities in science and engineering occupations.