FEATURE A D V A N C E D M A T E R I A L S & P R O C E S S E S | J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 2 2 5 2 2 GROWING DIVERSITY IN THE HEAT TREAT INDUSTRY Brilliance can come from anywhere. We as an industry are missing valuable opportunities for technological breakthroughs and material innovation. We see high turnover, struggle with retention, employees who lack a sense of belonging and community in the workplace, and all of this is stifling creativity. Increasing diversity, building equity, and including people from a greater variety of backgrounds and life experiences will make our industry more dynamic, innovative, and successful. You’ve heard of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion). ASM International and its affiliate societies focus considerable effort in this direction. Diversity relates to people, backgrounds, perspectives, education, ability, and interests. Diversity in genders, race, ethnicity, nationality, age? Yes, I mean all of this. Before the pandemic, in 2017, 25% of first year college students in STEM were women, but over 32% of those women switched out of STEM programs prior to graduation[1]. In the workforce in 2017, only 13% of engineers were women. This is a sad starting point, and while we still do not know the full impact of COVID-19 on women in STEM, we do know it is significant[2,3]. Women in STEMwere more negatively impacted by the pandemic than any of us expected. In fact, the impact of COVID-19 on women and black, indigenous, and people of color is so profound that the National Academies and National Science Foundation have each focused considerable effort on addressing longterm repercussions of the pandemic on women in STEM[4-6]. Data on equity specifically in heat treating are quite limited, but the ways we celebrate some of our rising stars serves as a litmus test. Heat Treat Today runs an annual “40 under 40” award list, and the 2021 lineup was 15% women[7]. This puts us on track with pre-pandemic women in engineering demographics as a whole, which is good, but 15% is still far too low. How can we do better? Plant the seeds. Start by reaching out to younger audiences. Team up with local schools, Girl Scout troops, or the ASM Education Foundation; encourage your business to host a student tour of the factory or go visit your child’s classroom. It doesn’t take much to get sixth graders interested in heat treating. I regularly show up at my children’s schools with a package of piano wire, a blow torch, safety glasses, some needle nose pliers, and a bucket of water. Plant those seeds of interest in metastable phase transformations and processing-property relationships that are fundamental to heat treating. GUEST DITORIAL Grow. Next, focus on mentorship and encouragement. Provide students with research opportunities, internships with built-in mentoring, and travel grants for conferences. ASM and HTS do a lot on this front, and we always need support to do even more. Ask your company to sponsor an award at a conference, donate $500 for a student travel grant, or sponsor a senior design project. At the career level, encouragement looks a little different. Cast a broad net when hiring a new team member. Reach out to historically black colleges and universities and Hispanic-serving institutions, work with ASM at conferences to attract new talent, and write job descriptions to ensure a wide pool of applicants. A commonly repeated statistic from Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean In,” is that women tend to only apply for jobs when they meet 100% of the qualifications, but men tend to apply for jobs when they meet at least 60% of the qualifications. Admittedly, the accuracy of this statistic is debated, but research by LinkedIn and others have corroborated the trend[8,9]: equally qualified women apply for fewer jobs than their male counterparts. Knowing this, we can rewrite job descriptions to attract more women applicants. Move “required” qualifications into a “nice to have” category, use inclusive language and less masculine wording, and mention comFrame
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