| Summary: |
On August 18, 2011, the President issued Executive Order 13583,
“Establishing a Coordinated Government-Wide Initiative to Promote
Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce.†The Department of
Defense (DoD), in response, soon released an organizational diversity
and inclusion strategic plan addressing workforce diversity, workplace
inclusion, and force sustainability. In turn, leaders from DoD’s Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD[R&E])
and the Office of Diversity Management and Equal Opportunity
(ODMEO) sought to further support the President’s order in ways
specific to DoD’s science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
(STEM) workforce, and convened a two-day conference, the Summit,
on November 1, 2012. Senior executives working on personnel issues
within DoD, federal agencies, the private sector, and academia gave
presentations and participated in discussions. These presentations
focused on issues related to the DoD STEM workforce and its diversity,
particularly racial/ethnic and gender diversity.
This report supports the efforts of the DoD Diversity STEM
Summit by responding to the proceedings in a way that may provide
a foundation for further research, analysis, and action. The report
describes current diversity policies and demographic trends and provides
a template for comparing STEM-diversity outreach programs to
support ASD(R&E) and ODMEO’s interest in bringing populations
currently underrepresented in STEM into DoD’s STEM workforce
mix. The report also offers a number of initial recommendations for
DoD leaders to consider as they move forward with their efforts to
increase the diversity of the STEM workforce.
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