Diversity Summit Background

Increasing the number of women and people of color who pursue careers in science, math, engineering and technology is a critical and common goal of the business community and engineering societies, organizations and associations. While efforts have been developed by both individual companies and engineering societies, little collaboration currently exists across these entities. This results in allocating limited resources across multiple initiatives, more thinly than is optimum, and potentially limiting the scale and impact that these initiatives might have. There is unrealized potential and opportunity in increased linking of initiatives for greater leverage and impact. The summit began exploring this possibility by collecting information on current activities and convening representatives of engineering societies to discuss their key areas of focus, current initiatives and future plans.

Some engineering societies have a long history of involvement in efforts to increase the participation of women and minorities in engineering, while others have begun to address these issues more recently. The April 2003 summit was designed to help engineering societies increase the impact of existing programs and identify new ways to strengthen the engineering profession through increased diversity. Prior to the April meeting, AAES collected information from the invited organizations on their current diversity policies, programs, and activities. A second meeting will finalize plans for follow-up activities. Many discussions have previously focused on these issues at a broad level; this summit was a working session intended to result in concrete outcomes and increased impact. Participants were asked to develop specific action plans for their organizations as well as collaborative activities.