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Round-up: 15 STEM Stories, from Chinese Hackers to London Mums

Eric Iversen

Stories about being a young black male strong in STEM studies, Chinese hackers in Happy Valley, and “London Mums” encouraging engineering for their daughters highlight a rich range of engineering-related items in this week’s round-up.

"Racialized and gendered narratives"

On the diversity beat, stories about African-Americans and women caught our eye. It becomes painfully clear, reading these pieces, how important are the stories we tell ourselves about who “belongs” in science and engineering fields. And who doesn’t.

Megan Smith, US Chief Technology Officer

A global context

From various angles, the next set of pieces illustrates the great importance people attach to both engineering activities and accomplishments.

The pathways into engineering are many

Approaches to getting more students interested in engineering and science fields ranged from the personal to the programmatic.

Light on the black classroom box

Understanding what’s really going in a classroom can prove tricky. These pieces try to shed some light from various angles.

That’s all for now. Please feel free to share with any interested friends or colleagues.

If you have any items of interest to pass along or thoughts on these, please add a comment or contact us directly.


Eric Iversen is VP for Learning and Communications at Start Engineering. He has written and spoken widely on engineering education in the K-12 arena. You can write to him about this topic, especially when he gets stuff wrong, at eiversen@start-engineering.com

You can also follow along on Twitter @StartEngNow.

And don’t forget to take a look at our popular K-12 engineering outreach books, Start Engineering, and Dream, Invent, Create.


Photos: Gregg Richards, used by permission; Joi, used by permission; Chris Poole, used by permission.