How Can Physics Help?
The underrepresentation of women, African Americans and Latinos is well known in the fields of engineering and other science-based fields. The Extended Physics program at Rutgers University has been part of a successful university-wide effort to improve the degree completion of students from groups underrepresented in STEM majors (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) for nearly 20 years. In this talk I will address the issues known to contribute to the low representation of women and some ethnic minority groups in engineering, with an emphasis on the importance of discipline-specific reforms in attaining equitable representation in STEM professions. I will describe Rutgers’ Extended Analytical Physics courses, which offer an alternative to and run parallel to the mainstream first-year introductory physics courses for engineers. Students enrolled in these courses have significantly lower Math SAT scores, but at the end achieve the levels of conceptual understanding and prob
