This article is part of the magazine, "The Future of Science In America: The Election Issue," co-published by LeapsMag, the Aspen Institute Science & Society Program, and GOOD.
By the numbers, American college students who major in STEM disciplines—science, technology, engineering, and math—aren't big on voting. In fact, recent research suggests they're the least likely group of students to head to the ballot box, even as American political leaders cast doubt on the very kinds of expertise those students are developing on campus.
Worried educators say it's time for a rethink of STEM education at the college level. Armed with success stories and model courses, educators are pushing for colleagues to add relevance to STEM education—and instill a sense of civic duty—by bringing the outside world in.
"It's a matter of what's in the curriculum, how faculty spend their time. There are opportunities to weave [policy] within the curriculum," said Nancy L. Thomas, director of Tufts University's Institute for Democracy & Higher Education.
The most recent student voting numbers come from the 2018 mid-term election, when a national Democratic wave brought voters to the polls. Just over a third of STEM college students surveyed said they voted, the lowest percentage of six subject areas, according to a report from the institute at Tufts. Students in the education, social sciences, and humanities fields had the highest voting rates at 47%, 41%, and 39%, respectively.
Students across the board were much less engaged in the mid-year election of 2014, when just 28% of education students surveyed said they voted. STEM students again stood at the rear, with just 16% voting.
(The report analyzed whether more than 10 million college students at 1,031 U.S. institutions voted in 2014 and 2018. At the request of this magazine, the institute at Tufts removed non-U.S. resident students—who can't vote—from the findings to see if the results changed. Voting rates among STEM students remained among the lowest.)
Why aren't STEM students engaged in politics? "I have no reason to think that science students don't care about public policy issues," Tufts University's Thomas said. Instead, she believes that colleges fail to inspire STEM students to think beyond lectures and homework.
Enter the SENCER project—Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities. Since 2001, the project has taught thousands of educators and students how to connect science and citizenship.
The roots of the project go back to 1990, when Rutgers University microbiologist Monica Devanas was assigned to teach a general-education class called "Biomedical Issues of AIDS." She decided to expand the curriculum to encompass insights about a wide range of societal issues. Guest speakers from the community, including a man with a grim diagnosis, talked about the disease and its spread. And Devanas's colleagues in a wide variety of disciplines offered course sections about AIDS and its role in areas such as literature, prisons and law.
"I always tried to make a connection, hoping to create scientifically engaged citizens by explaining the science to them in ways that they could understand."
When she first taught the class, 450 students signed up instead of the expected 100. Devanas, who'd only ever taught a few dozen students with a blackboard, suddenly had to figure out how to teach hundreds at once with the standard technology of the time: an overhead projector.
Devanas, who taught the hugely popular class for the next 18 years, said the course worked because it linked the AIDS epidemic, a hot topic at the time, to the outer world beyond immune cells and test tubes. "You really need to make it very personal and relevant. When you talk about treatment for AIDS or the cost of drugs: Who pays for this?" she said. "I always tried to make a connection, hoping to create scientifically engaged citizens by explaining the science to them in ways that they could understand."
How can other educators learn to create compelling courses? The SENCER website offers dozens of model classes for college and K–12 educators, all with the aim of making STEM classes relevant. An engineering course, for example, could expand a discussion about the nuts and bolts of automated vehicles into a conversation about whether the cars are a good idea in the first place, said Eliza J. Reilly, executive director of the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement, where SENCER is based.
SENCER, which is government-funded, holds regular conferences and has conducted research that supports the effectiveness of its programs. "This is an educational and intellectual project rather than a get-out-the-vote project. It's not intended to create activists. Instead, it's intended to help students understand that they have power as citizens," Reilly said.
What about long-term change? Will inspiring college students to engage with politics turn them into lifetime voters? Reilly said she's not aware of any research into whether STEM students continue to vote at lower levels after they graduate. That means there's no way to know if limited civic engagement in college translates to lifelong apathy. We also don't know if lower voting rates in college may help explain why few people with STEM backgrounds run for higher office.
There's another big unknown: If more people with STEM degrees vote, will they actually support fact-based policies and candidates who listen to science? The answer is not as obvious as it may appear. At Rutgers, professor Devanas pointed to the research of Yale University law/psychology professor Dan Kahan, who found that the most scientifically literate people in the U.S. also happen to be among those most polarized over climate change. In other words, a scientific mind may not necessarily translate to a pro-science vote.
Regardless of the ultimate choices that STEM students make at the ballot box, advocates will keep encouraging educators to connect science to the world beyond the classroom. As Tufts University's Thomas explained, "it just takes a lot of creativity and will."
[Editor's Note: To read other articles in this special magazine issue, visit the beautifully designed e-reader version.]