Encouraging the Next Generation of Astronauts
Ellen Ochoa, the fırst Hispanic woman in space, weighed in on the barriers women and minorities face in the STEM world.
Ellen Ochoa, Ph.D., never expected to be an astronaut.
“I didn’t originally start out in science,” she said. “I barely took any in high school. When I went off to college, I was thinking music, or maybe business.” For Ochoa, the fırst Hispanic woman in space and former director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, the space shuttle changed everything.
“A couple of years after the fırst flight, Sally Ride flew in space,” Ochoa said. “That was a huge deal for me.”
Barriers
While in college, Ochoa also experienced something women and minorities experience every day when they express interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers: resistance.
“I talked to a professor in the electrical engineering department who was the student adviser,” she recounted, “and he was defınitely not at all encouraging. He said, ‘Well, this is a pretty hard subject. You know, we had a woman come through here once.’ ”
Ochoa’s experience is one reason why STEM careers attract so few women and minorities. Recent research shows women occupy just 14 percent of engineering jobs and the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) reports underrepresented minorities earn just 12.5 percent of STEM degrees.
Solutions
To encourage more women and minorities to explore STEM careers, Ochoa suggests we start long before college.
“Programs that give kids hands-on experience so they’re not just reading a book, they’re not just memorizing vocabulary words, have been successful,” she said. “Another key component is mentoring.”
Ochoa stresses it’s not the responsibility of women and minority students to change how they’re treated in the STEM space.
“You can’t expect the community that’s being discriminated against to be the one that changes it,” she noted. “It’s really incumbent on the people in the majority culture to understand where they have — unintentionally — either not encouraged women and minorities, or put up barriers. That’s what needs to happen for things to change.”