When Felesia Stukes joined the faculty at Johnson C. Smith University in 2017, she was the first Black computer science faculty member in the institution's 150-year history. Today, she is working hard to lay a foundation for her students to become future colleagues.

As STEM educators try to get more students from traditionally underrepresented populations to pursue STEM fields, they are emphasizing innovative approaches that explore intersections with the arts, humanities, business, and sports. Many are also leveraging science and STEM to address issues and inequities in their own communities.
 

Photo: Marvin Germain

Through no fault of their own, millennials have become the generation playing financial catch-up. They started their careers around the time of the Great Recession and struggled to rebound—and then the pandemic came. 

Their story is one of perseverance and, for many, of progress against these head winds. But the setbacks exaggerated trends already underway in the rest of the American workforce: A widening of the already-yawning gap between the haves and have-nots played out along gender, educational, and racial and ethnic lines.