Want More STEM Grads? Kill the Stereotypes

Since the 1950s, various groups have asked children in second grade and up to draw a scientist. For the past six decades the result has been remarkably the same: a white male wearing a white lab coat, glasses and facial hair.

Ask them what a scientist would be like as a person and the answer inevitably is an introverted, socially awkward person who is either “mad,” painfully meek or a condescending jerk. Add a crew cut and pocket protector and you get an engineer. Throw in arrogance and mental illness and you have a mathematician.

These are the tired stereotypes we have grown up with in the U.S. for people working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics: countless variations of Christopher Lloyd’s hyperkinetic Emmett Brown in “Back to the Future,” Russell Crowe’s schizophrenic John Nash in “A Beautiful Mind” or Benedict Cumberbatch’s surly Alan Turing in “The Imitation Game.”

The U.S. is making valiant efforts to lure more young people into STEM fields. Automakers and suppliers are among many industries desperately trying to recruit STEM grads with special programs and incentives. But it will be an uphill battle competing with countries that have cultures far more respectful of the sciences than ours.

Mike Mansuetti, president of Robert Bosch North America, cites tremendous opportunities for young people with STEM educations to obtain good-paying, rewarding careers in the auto industry.

But if you are a U.S. teenager looking at career choices, pop culture tells you being a scientist or engineer means you might get a good job, but you’ll be an unlikable nerd who has no friends and can’t get dates. And if you’re female or a person of color, your life will be worse still.

Even Silicon Valley icons have been turned into creepy eccentrics by movies such as “The Social Network” and the HBO satire “Silicon Valley.”

There are a few positive STEM role models in the U.S., such as astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is African American and a great communicator who makes science fun and interesting. But he’s no match for China, India or South Korea where STEM careers, rather than athletics or entertainment, are seen as the quickest route to wealth and social success.

“In India, being a software engineer is cooler than being a cricket player,” Stefan Jockusch, vice president-Automotive Industry Strategy at Siemens PLM Software told a meeting of automotive engineers recently. Cricket is the most important sport in India, the equivalent of baseball or football in the U.S.  In America, most software engineers could not compete with badminton players in a popularity contest, much less baseball and football stars.

Western civilization’s best hope for developing home-grown STEM grads may be young scientists such as Matt Taylor, project scientist for the European Space Agency, where he played a key role in landing the Rosetta space probe on a comet last month. Taylor is outgoing and friendly and covered with enough tattoos to front for a heavy metal band. He even likes to show off a tattoo of the Rosetta and its lander on his leg. He appears about 45 seconds into the video below.   

Taylor caused a firestorm of controversy on social media the day the spacecraft landed because while doing media interviews he wore a vintage sci-fi bowling shirt featuring illustrations of scantily clad women shooting ray guns.

Twitter exploded with outrage over the inappropriate attire – #shirtgate – and then a bitter debate ensued over the appropriateness of the outrage. Taylor made a tearful apology the next day for causing a distraction on the team’s big day.

For a while he’ll be known as the comet scientist with the bad shirt, but as time passes, I hope Taylor will be regarded as the person who shows the world what real STEM people look like: extremely smart, but also individualistic; flamboyant but not hyperkinetic or paranoid schizophrenic; confident, but not arrogant, and willing to admit mistakes. In other words, he is human and likeable despite his big brain.

Flawed and inked-up as he may be, Matt Taylor is a far better STEM role model than anything Hollywood ever has offered.

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