First, I want to give you some facts [Slide 1] so that we are all on the same page and we know the urgency and the criticality of these issues.  Then I will be introducing the panelists and they will each be talking for seven to ten minutes or so.   I have asked them to  identify two to three critical issues in their particular area of expertise—talk about that and then we will open it up to discussion. 

To begin, I focused on three areas—the pre-college area, the college area undergraduate and graduate, and the workplace.  There are a myriad of statistics volumes, and volumes, and volumes and I have narrowed it down to what I consider some compelling issues that will help us in our discussion today.

[Slide 2] Nearly two-thirds of seventeen year olds report taking Algebra II, Pre-Calculus or Calculus.  Girls and boys are taking science and advanced math courses at about the same levels.  Girls are prepared to go into the quantitative professions—they’re just not.  And white students are almost twice as likely to take Pre-Calculus or Calculus than Hispanic students and almost four times as likely to do so than African-American students.  

Ten years ago this was not the case for girls.  Girls were not prepared to go into engineering and science.  They were not taking courses at those same levels and there needed to be a lot of inertia and movement to get girls to improve their course taking habits.  They are now doing so again but they are not going further than that.  A lot more work needs to be done at these levels for minority students and part of the problem is that a lot of the school systems don’t even offer these courses.  There is more interest than availability of courses.

[Slide 3] This is a graph that shows the intended majors of SAT-takers, that all-famous test.  Those tiny little green bars indicate all students, so male and female students, only eight percent or so of all male and female students, even indicate that engineering is of interest to them. So we are starting with tiny numbers.  Now out of that eight percent, over eighty percent of those students who clicked-off, “I am interested in engineering,” are male.  So that’s what those graphs represent.  It is the same in computer engineering and computer science. About five percent are even interested in considering those areas as a major and then there is a huge disparity between female and male students.  Even tinier numbers in math and science and there is more equality in gender in those areas.  But we are starting with tiny, tiny numbers.

[Slide 4] For Bachelor's degrees granted in engineering, I gave you percentages where the keys are.  Those are actually the percent who graduated in 2001.  So these numbers, again, we are talking thousands and this is in the entire country, It’s just hard numbers to grasp because they are so small, but for women in particular, 20.2 percent is representative of that number.

[Slide 5] In computer science, and I chose these two areas because the fellowship programs support a lot of people in these areas, computer science does a little bit better, but again, the numbers are very small and again this is over time.  Actually in 1984, that number for women hit above thirty percent.  I think it was something like thirty-seven percent, so there was a steep decline of women in that field and now we are moving up again somewhat.  But again, we are talking nine thousand degrees.

[Slides 6 and 7] Now we go to the tiniest of tiny numbers.  Doctoral degrees granted in engineering.  For Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans, they all hover between zero and one hundred  people in the country.  That’s why we are here today.  And again these numbers are even smaller.  At the top that represents 120 people and the 18.8% of women, 3.9% of Blacks and 2.8% of Hispanics represents 2000 data.  And I did not include Native Americans in there because they are less than five people.

[Slide 8] Now in terms of retention, there is no source nationally that actually collects retention data.  Universities will say that they collect retention data, but everyone does it so differently that there is no continuity.  There is no uniformity, so there is nothing that is very dependable.  People will say that they have 105 percent retention because in junior year they have an influx of transfer students so nobody tracks that initial count of freshman students.  But there have been a couple of studies that have shed some light on this issue and one was by Adelman in 1998 that looked at the most competitive institutions in the country and there is a persistent twenty percent gap between men and women’s completion rates in engineering and NACME did a nice study in 1999 that talked about under-represented minorities being retained at a 36.5% rate and non-minorities at a 68.3% rate.  If we work so hard to get these folks into the pipeline, we need to work even harder to keep them there.

[Slide 9] We alluded to this in the morning session, tenure, tenure-track engineering faculty—this is not just tenure these are people, assistant professors, as well—8.9% women, 2.1% African-American and 2.9% Hispanic.  That is abominable and nothing has changed in those past twenty years that is appreciable.  And again, this is throughout the entire United States.

[Slide 10] In terms of the labor force, the next graph shows engineering in the green and computer and mathematical sciences in the blue.  Obviously we are doing a little better in the computer and mathematical sciences but the numbers are much smaller.

[Slide 11] I believe John Slaughter mentioned this in the morning or maybe it was Jose Mejia, it is very interesting to note that women in other professions that draw from the same pool as engineers have made so much more progress.  Look at lawyers, and doctors, and bio-life sciences and chemists.  Why does engineering lag so far behind?  It’s a question we need to talk about and we will address it at the panel.

[Slide 12] Demographic trends indicate that by the year 2005, 62percent of the new entrants into the U.S. labor force will be women and 51 percent, minorities.  If this is the case, male Caucasians are not going to fill the jobs that are available.  The next slide [Slide 13]shows that 270,106 petitions for H1 visas were filed and 154, 672 were approved during that time period.  Half of those visas went to people in engineering and computer science-related fields.  We need to grow our own.  They are available in this country to grow and we need to find out how to do it.

[Slide 14] This takes a look at job growth projections.  Everything in the quantitative professions is going up.  And my last slide [Slide 15] is an interesting graph; if we do nothing differently; this is the projection of what will happen by the year 2050.  So I hope that sets the stage somewhat.

I would like to introduce our panelists.  They are all experts in their fields.  They have a wealth of experience that actually transcends what they are going to talk about.  They could each have the day, I am sure. And after I introduce each one, each will give a discussion about two or three items that they feel are critical to accelerating the pace of change for women and minorities in the quantitative professions.  And then,  this afternoon at the break-out sessions, each of these panelists will lead those break-out sessions so the topics on these topics.

We will begin with Dundee.

Dundee Holt is Vice-President of Communications and Acting Vice-President of Development for NACME, the National Action Council of Minorities in Engineering, and John Slaughter is his boss.  Mr. Holt also served as Vice-President for Pergan Development and Management for three years.   Dundee.