Founder of the Black Males in Engineering project, Brian A. Burt, is leading research into how Black men are often excluded from science, technology, engineering and mathematics — or STEM — industries. Through BME, Burt hopes to emphasize that Black mens’ journeys throughout STEM need to be aided by many people throughout their lives.
Burt focused his research on the experiences of Black men in STEM, ranging from childhood to careers after education. Black men make up around 1-2% of total enrollment in STEM programs according to Diverse Education.
“When you boil the stories down to people, disregarding the level of education and institution, feelings of [lack of ] encouragement and community [are commonly] found in STEM education for Black men,” Burt said.
Burt’s research uncovered various avenues in which Black men in STEM lacked the support often experienced by their peers. Black men from underprivileged backgrounds may be pushed further away, as they may not have the same parental support or need to work to afford school. Through his research and exploration of these stories, Burt found that the absence of community might be a key factor limiting the growth of Black men in scientific education.
“Black men in STEM do not have the same built-in community that many students may have, especially at a predominantly white institution like UW-Madison,” Burt said.
The BME project consists of a series of short-form videos, which he chose because his project landed around the end of the pandemic and he believed that many people had “zoom fatigue,” Burt said.
“I understood the changing media climate and took advantage of the fact that these videos could be consumed and understood by a wider audience,” Burt said.
Burt also created videos to evoke emotion and enact behavioral change. Each video centers around an aspect of a student’s life — childhood, parents, K-12 education, college and building a career.
“No one says it’ll be easy, but it’s worth it,” Burt repeated throughout each of the six videos, creating a narrative that calls the viewer to challenge their own understanding of how to aid Black students throughout their lives.
“Students can be discouraged from science in many ways, a child may not be given an avenue for curiosity, a student may become discouraged without a mentor and a professional carries all of these hardships with them,” Burt said.
Handouts Lead for BME and PhD student at the University of Wisconsin, Curtis O’Dwyer, created handouts based on Burt’s research as well as the project’s videos. The handouts he created are each based on and oriented toward the subjects outlined in the videos, parents, k-12 educators, college educators and mentors.
O’Dwyer said the greatest challenge in the research process was condensing the extensive data from the articles and video narrative into a format that was both digestible and informative.
“[Burt’s research made me] realize that if this curiosity had been fed as a child I could have been on a journey in STEM sooner, creating more confidence and opportunities for myself as a young black child,” O’Dwyer said. “I gained inspiration from experiences as a child when I experienced unfed scientific curiosity, which I was not able to explore till I started my biology degree.”
O’Dwyer’s work as a middle school science teacher and with the BME project gave him the tools to be able to guide teacher candidates at UW, O’Dwyer said.
O’Dwyer said these experiences helped him understand how important it is to teach critical consciousness in science education. By employing this knowledge, teachers will better understand science in a playful way that allows every child — no matter their confidence — to better engage and understand science at all levels.
Through the combination of narrative and statistical data, Burt and his colleagues are able to create an informative model in which people garner empathy and create a course of action in order to help Black males through their journeys in STEM education.
