Lessons From Miss America - It is Cool to be Smart!

 

By Stephen Portz 

 

Nina Davuluri was the first STEM graduate to be crowned Miss America.  During her reign as Miss America, Nina made it her priority to encourage STEM Education across our Nation.

 

I had the privilege of meeting Nina Davuluri this past summer in the House Science and Technology Caucus Room. She was meeting on Capitol Hill to talk about STEM education and she made a request to meet with the Einstein Fellows.  It was fabulous to meet her and discuss STEM Education, particularly as it applied to women and minority participation.

Nina Davuluri meeting with the Einstein Fellows to discuss STEM Education and broadening participation in the field.

I started off the question and answer portion of our meeting by asking Nina what it was about her background that made STEM interesting for her as a field of study?

She made three important points:

1.  "The high school that I attended had strong STEM academic course offerings.  We had AP physics, chemistry, calculus, statistics etc...  You could get through the school without taking those classes, but I wanted to challenge myself and see if I could do them."

2.  "I have parents that have high expectations of me.  If I came home with a 95% on a test, they would ask why I didn't get a 100%."

3.  "I had good friends.  We would hang out by studying and helping each other understand the work. I tutored other students who were struggling and it helped me understand the material better."

My next question was a little more pointed:  "As STEM educators we struggle constantly with female enrollment in our classes.  It is disappointing to see capable female students frequently choose glamor over substance and often deselect themselves from STEM classes and the subsequent career choices that would lead them to high paying, high demand jobs.  What would you suggest to help with this challenge?

To this, Nina talked about changing the culture at the school:  "It has got to be cool to be smart."  It doesn't have to be an either or proposition. When the students see student leaders in the school taking tough classes and qualifying for university it creates a culture of excellence and it exerts positive peer pressure on other students to follow their example.

Meeting Miss America - Nina Davuluri, on Capital Hill

The takeaways from our meeting with Nina:

It is a mistake to teach to the lowest common denominator.  Students need to be challenged in coursework and see strong student role models around them.

Parents play a key role in what students value and care about.  I don't know many parents that would be quite as extreme as Nina's but the message is essentially that:  "As your parent, your education is important to me and as a result, it should be important to you." Nina is fortunate to have professional parents - her father is a doctor and her mother is a computer programmer, but the essential ingredient for strong students is parental engagement and a valuing of education, not necessarily a house full of degrees, as the following examples tend to illustrate:

For Dr. Ben Carson, the esteemed neurosurgeon's mother worked three jobs in Detroit to provide for her two sons.  She didn't have much of an education and she couldn't even read very well, but her sons did not know that and she made them read and write book reports for her weekly.  She clearly valued education and saw it as a means of empowerment for her children and the value was unmistakeably transmitted to Ben.

Dr. Cora Marrett was raised in a poor tobacco farming community in Virginia.  She was the twelveth child of parents who only ever completed the sixth grade, yet she became a voracious reader. Cora got her Bachelor's Degree from Virginia Union University and went on to the University of Wisconsin to receive her PhD.  She would go on to advocate strongly for science education, shaping the Education and Human Resource (EHR), Department at the National Science Foundation and eventually became the Acting Director of the NSF.

Meeting with Dr. Cora Marrett at the NSF.

I am thankful for Nina's example and advocacy and happy to have spent some time discussing these issues.  We can make significant progress in our efforts to advance STEM Education with our students - these successful STEM role models are showing us how.

Links:

http://www.usnews.com/news/stem-solutions/articles/2014/07/23/miss-america-goes-to-washington-to-talk-stem

http://www.politico.com/morningeducation/0714/morningeducation14723.html

http://theweek.com/speedreads/index/265155/speedreads-miss-america-being-smart-is-cool