While Jackie Wang has wanted to study astrophysics since kindergarten, it was not until high school that she encountered a fellow Asian American first-generation woman in aerospace, giving her hope that minorities like herself could be successful in STEM.

Today, Wang is a part of Educational Opportunity Program STEM, or EOP, which pushes for resources to make STEM more accessible to all students. The program offers resume workshops, networking events and other opportunities.

Wang said minorities in STEM have less access to resources, making the already difficult system of decreasing computer science class enrollment opportunities and harsh curves even more daunting. Harsh curves and quotas set in STEM classes can increase classmate competition and hinder collaboration efforts, according to Wang.

“There are plenty of resources and events targeted to help minorities in STEM,” Wang said in an email. “But the difficulty is spreading this information to the student body at large and ensuring that these programs have enough platforms and visibility for their efforts to be effective.”

The Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society, or CDSS, is working in tandem with other campus organizations to address some of these issues of diversity, equity and inclusion, according to the organization’s Assistant Dean for Communications Tiffany Lohwater.

CDSS works to make computing and data science fields accessible through supporting students and intentional work in teaching methods, according to Lohwater. According to the division’s website, the percentage of underrepresented minorities that make up the Data 8 class nearly tripled from fall 2015 to fall 2021. Since 2019, more than half of the students in each Data 8 class were women.

“The Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS) benefits from resources and connections across campus and is supported by a range of sources, including research, education, and programmatic grants and philanthropy,” Lohwater said in an email.

ASUC Senator Sammy Raucher is a data science minor who is working with her office to introduce ethics requirements into more STEM majors to increase awareness of their impact on inclusivity in their future careers. Making curriculum more human-centered and social-justice based can help STEM majors understand the social implications of their fields, according to Raucher.

Another program that assists in addressing issues of inclusion in STEM fields is the Data Scholars Program, which welcomes and encourages minorities in STEM fields, including (but not limited to) low-income, first-generation, transfer, re-entry, undocumented, historically underrepresented ethnicity or gender, disabled, foster and LGBTQ students.

“To me, diversity in STEM means ensuring that anyone, no matter their background, is able to have a seat at the table, whether that’s in STEM majors or the broader STEM professional sector,” Raucher said in an email.