[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 75 (Tuesday, May 7, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H3462-H3463]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     STEM OPPORTUNITIES ACT OF 2019

  (Ms. JOHNSON of Texas asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute.)
  Ms. JOHNSON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing the STEM 
Opportunities Act of 2019 with the ranking member of the Committee on 
Science, Space, and Technology, Mr. Frank Lucas.
  The goal of our legislation is to develop and implement evidence-
based policies to promote the progress of

[[Page H3463]]

women and minorities and other groups underrepresented in STEM studies 
and research careers.
  The result is a bipartisan bill that attempts to systematically 
address the full suite of issues facing both female and minority STEM 
researchers, from work/life balance policies, to campus climate, to 
better data collection, to recruitment and retention practices.
  Our economic future relies on what we do now to nurture the STEM 
talent that will be necessary to meet the demands of an increasingly 
technological and knowledge-based economy.
  I want to thank Ranking Member Lucas for joining me in introducing 
this bill, and I urge the rest of my colleagues to please join us. I 
include my full remarks on this legislation for the Record.
  Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing the STEM Opportunities Act of 
2019. A very similar bill passed the House as part of the America 
Competes Act of 2010, but unfortunately did not make it into the 
enacted law. As a result, every Congress since then, I have worked hard 
to keep the legislation updated and to convince my colleagues of the 
urgency of the challenges this bill addresses. Today I am reintroducing 
this bill with Ranking Member of the Science Committee, Frank Lucas. 
The goal of our legislation is to develop and implement evidence-based 
policies to promote the progress of women, minorities, and other groups 
underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics 
(STEM) studies and research careers.
  The need for full engagement in STEM by women and underrepresented 
groups goes beyond enabling individuals to fulfill their dreams of 
becoming a scientist. Our economic future relies on what we do now to 
nurture the STEM talent that will be necessary to meet the demands of 
an increasingly technological and knowledge-based economy. The Bureau 
of Labor Statistics reports that STEM employment is the fastest growing 
sector, with computer science and engineering jobs among the fastest 
growing STEM occupations.
  If things continue as they are now, however, I fear we will be ill 
equipped to fill these jobs. We are nineteen years into the 21st 
century and the demographics of the STEM workforce do not reflect the 
diversity of the nation. In 2017, women earned only 20 percent of 
bachelor's degrees in engineering and 19 percent in computer science. 
Black and Hispanic students are similarly underrepresented in these 
fields at the undergraduate level, and the problem is even more 
pronounced in STEM faculty. Women hold only 26 percent of all tenured 
and tenure-track positions, while Black and Hispanic faculty combined 
hold a dismal 6.8 percent of these positions. We need to leverage all 
of our human capital if we are to achieve the necessary capacity to 
innovate and to discover.
  The STEM Opportunities Act is focused on identifying and lowering 
barriers for those who have already chosen a STEM path. First, so that 
we better understand the nature and scope of the challenges, the STEM 
Opportunities Act requires more comprehensive demographic data 
collection on the recipients of federal research awards and on STEM 
faculty at U.S. universities. These data would be available to 
researchers to study the participation and trajectories of women and 
underrepresented minorities in STEM so that policy makers can design 
more effective policies and practices to reduce barriers.
  Next, this bill requires the development of consistent federal 
policies, such as no-cost award extensions, for recipients of federal 
research awards who have caregiving responsibilities, including care 
for a newborn or newly adopted child and care for a sick family member. 
The bill also requires consistent federal guidance to grant reviewers 
and program officers on best practices to minimize the effects of 
implicit bias in the review of federal research grants. It requires 
OSTP to develop guidance for universities and Federal laboratories to 
aid them in identifying any cultural and institutional barriers 
limiting the recruitment, retention, and achievement of women, 
minorities, rural students, and other underrepresented groups in 
academic and government STEM research careers and in developing and 
implementing current best practices for reducing such barriers. 
Finally, the legislation authorizes NSF to award grants to universities 
to implement or expand research-based practices targeted specifically 
at increasing the recruitment and retention of minority students and 
faculty.
  Mr. Speaker, in developing this legislation, we solicited extensive 
input from governmental and non-governmental stakeholders to ensure 
that the guidance and requirements reflect today's needs and 
opportunities without unduly burdening our research universities. The 
result is a bipartisan bill that attempts to systematically address the 
full suite of issues facing both female and minority STEM researchers, 
from work-life balance policies, to campus climate, to better data 
collection, to recruitment and retention practices. This bill proposes 
concrete and evidence-based solutions to the indisputable reality that 
our nation continues to fall well short of engaging our entire talent 
pool in STEM careers. That disparity in our STEM workforce will 
continue to have real and increasing consequences for our economic and 
national security if we do not begin to implement scalable solutions 
soon.
  I want to thank Ranking Member Lucas for joining me in introducing 
this bill and for contributing his good ideas to make the bill even 
better. I urge the rest of our colleagues to join us and to help us 
move this legislation forward into law.

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