Raising STEM Awareness Among Under-Served and Under-Represented Audiences

The African-American community’s relationship with science and research communities has been fraught with many challenges. Despite the economic promise of science plus technology and engineering careers, African-Americans make up less than 10% of the Science & Engineering workforce. Despite opportunities to report on important topics such as energy, the environment, and health technology or on discoveries made African-American scientists, science-related journalism directed to minority audiences is most non-existent. In this presentation I will discuss some the communication challenges that need to be bridged between science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) communities and the journalism communities, specifically ethnic media outlets. Specifically I will outline some of the strategies proposed by the National Science and Technology News Service, a newly media literacy project involving minority scientists, engineers, medical professionals, journalists, and press outlets.