Revenge of the Nerds: Encouraging Science

WHY do students in applied math, engineering, physics and other hard sciences feel uncomfortable discussing their concentrations with non-science Harvard students? Why do almost 50% of the freshmen who arrive at Harvard/Radcliffe intending to concentrate in one of the hard sciences eventually switch departments?

Unfortunately, part of the answer lies in the fact that many Harvard students are not sensitive to students in the scientific fields. Those who choose to study hard sciences are regarded by many students as "nerdy," "uncool" and "too intense." Yes, the engineers and physicists among us do have to work hard; their classes are cumulative and involve time-consuming labs and problem sets. By no means, though, can these students be stereotyped as single-minded, homogeneous individuals.

For the past six months, I have been working on a thesis project that studies the perspectives of Harvard-Radcliffe students in the hard sciences, specifically seniors in physics and the engineering sciences. The main reason for conducting such a study is to find the reasons why a large percentage of science students transfer out of these disciplines and into humanities-related fields.

As a social anthropology concentrator who put off fulfilling her science cores until senior year, I also had the misconception of science students being "intense" or "grindy." Soon after I began interviewing students and professors in these disciplines, however, my ideas about science students drastically changed. The students I spoke with had enormously varied interests and backgrounds; there was a football player from Hawaii, a female violinist from New Mexico, the captain of the Harvard men's sailing team, a Canadian woman active in nuclear war deterrence, a female ROTC member whose sister fights fires in Chicago, and a gregarious Black woman engineer who is involved not only in many campus organizations, but also maintains two jobs in Boston.

Aside from their interest in science, these students have something else in common. Over the past three years, each of them has heard comment like "Oh, you're in physics, you must be a brain" or "Why didn't you go to MIT instead of Harvard?" or "I didn't know that Harvard had an engineering department." Coming from Harvard students, supposedly known for their well-roundedness, these remarks sound closed-minded and inane.

LACK of sensitivity toward science students not only occurs here, but at colleges all over the United States. A male science student at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma. Washington wrote an article for News-week on Campus that discussed the difficulty of being a scientist at a predominantly liberal arts college. The author wrote, "On the rare occasions when I do speak from my knowledge of engineering, there is a language barrier. I can't talk mathematics to the people in my core classes because most of them don't understand it."

Statistics compiled by Radcliffe College show that the shrinking numbers of students who both enter and remain in the fields of physical science and engineering are representative of a national decline. Here at Harvard efforts are being focused on keeping students--both male and female--with the desire and talent to continue in mathematics and science within those departments. Organizations such as Women in Science serve as support groups for female science concentrators at Harvard-Radcliffe by sponsoring a big sister-little sister network for women scientists, as well as other programs.

A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, warned that the United States must actively encourage more students, particularly women, to enter the scientific fields if America wants to remain a competitive technological force in the world. "Colleges are expected to lose one-quarter of their enrollments by 1992...and the number of men will not be enough to meet the future demands for scientists and engineers," the article asserted.

This general decline logically indicates that even fewer women and minorities will enter the scientific community in the coming years. To combat this problem, some experts feel that affirmative action for women and minorities is essential for the health of the nation and not just the most ethical choice. Responsibility rests on American school systems to encourage more students to enter and remain in science at all levels of education.

All students must be more aware of the problems facing students in the sciences. They are individuals with dreams and aspirations similar to our own. So the next time a fellow student tells you their concentration, show interest, whether they are in the social sciences, humanities, mathematics or sciences. Who knows, you may learn something from them--or even become friends with a "geek."

Andrea Shlipak '88 is a resident of Leverett House.