Diversity in Environmental Engineering—Successes and Challenges

Abstract

The article comments on issue pertaining to gender and ethnic diversity in the U.S. Despite efforts by the government, the academe, and the businesses, still, the country faces a major challenge due to lack of gender and ethnic diversity in the engineering profession. Since 1995, The proportion of women and minority freshman in engineering has declined. In a research conducted by the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors, it was found out that the environmental engineering student body has better gender diversity than the field of engineering as a whole. Nevertheless, ethnic diversity in this discipline has remained similar to engineering as a whole and is significantly lower than the ethnic diversity of the U.S. population.