ANN ARBOR—Cinda-Sue Davis, director of the University of Michigan’s Women in Science and Engineering Program, has been named to the national Blue Ribbon Panel on Best Practices in Higher Education: Increasing the Participation of Under-Represented Groups in Science, Engineering, and Technology. The panel is one of several established by the Building Engineering and Science Talent (BEST) Initiative established by the Council on Competitiveness and funded by seven federal agencies including the National Science Foundation.

Davis recently returned from the panel’s first meeting, where representatives from industry and foundations, as well as the nation’s leading colleges and universities, began developing the foundations of a plan to increase the representation of women and people of color throughout the entire science and engineering enterprise, both in the educational pipeline and in the work force. “One of our members calls this group ‘the underrepresented majority,’ because together women and people of color make up 2/3 to 3/4 of the country’s population,” Davis said.

While the committee’s initial focus was on identifying best practices and determining which might be applicable on a broader scale, Davis said it quickly became clear that most in the group felt that studying the problem had been going on for many years. “For many, the next step should be to identify major policy issues and focus on getting that information to Congress and other leaders in, for example, the White House science offices,” Davis said.

The group also discussed who best can apply leverage to increase the participation of women in university science and engineering programs. “A decade ago corporate America realized that entry-level engineers had trouble working in teams and put pressure on engineering schools to include teamwork in their curricula,” Davis noted. “If those same companies were to say that they need more diversity, the engineering schools would soon find way to provide it.

“The work force of the future is perhaps our most pressing national problem, and so the ‘affirmative opportunity’ question has grave economic and defense ramifications along with its fundamental moral implications,” Davis said. “We have to think hard about how we train that work force, and if necessary, be prepared to change the paradigms that have governed scientific and technical education in the last two centuries.”