STEM fields vs. gender studies comic - image

[Jon]

STEM fields vs. gender studies comic. I just read about a new twist, in which STEM is being modified to STEAM. What's the extra "A" for?

Art. (I'm not joking, search for: stem vs. steam.)



Previously:

When you still can't find that short to ground - comic
Sharpening a pencil on a lathe - GIF and comic
Machinists vs. everyone Simpson's comic - image

[rgsparber]

STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math

STEAM is Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math

The arts have a major impact on the design of products so why not include it?

Since I work with college students, I may be reading this cartoon differently than others. The women look at the STEM booth and see a guy so figure it is not for them. They look at the gender studies booth and see a woman so figure that would be a better place to go.

When we want to attract both young men and women to our engineering classes, both sexes staff our booth at the same time.

I can tell you, first hand, that a team made up of both men and women is far more effective than one that is only men or only women.

Rick

[Toolmaker51]

STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math

STEAM is Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math
<snipped>......women look at the STEM booth and see a guy so figure it is not for them. They look at the gender studies booth and see a woman so figure that would be a better place to go.

When we want to attract both young men and women to our engineering classes, both sexes staff our booth at the same time.

Rick

A sideways example is the long push used by the military to generate female applicants. It's taken decades!

That is exactly what happens. Many of both genders respond to stereotyping whether they realize, acknowledge, or try to ignore it. As an entire community, too few of the last two generations can rarely identify "Rosie the Riveter", name or even describe any particular female aeronautic engineer, or half-dozen avenues just one facet of STEM opens for them.
And many think total elapsed time is a measuring stick for what courses pan out to a career. It's like all the STEM bombardment is erased when the for-profit institutions offer crap like 1-year MBA's.

[neilbourjaily@gmail.com]

Let's see, Netter's Anatomy. That's art based on science. Any of the illustrations used to elucidate technical subjects are art. And, no, photos just don't cut it. I see more of anatomy, engine design, botanicals, etc through illustration than any photo. My wife documents every painting she creates: humidity, temperature, barometer, base paints, material, blends, and more than I even know of. She wants to be able to reproduce as she see fit. Know the rules, then break rules, A true artist is a true scientist.

[bruce.desertrat]

What Rick and Toolmaker51 said x1000. I work at at a health sciences college (at that other one in AZ! :-P) and what happens when people see 'people like themselves' in a program, it becomes much more conducive for them to come into the field (and excel...we're one of the top rated programs in the country, with highly competitive admissions. Our faculty and student body are nearly equally split M/F, and I suspect this is one of the reasons we're one of the top rated programs).

This is hurdle that many other disciplines haven't yet seemed to master which is simply dumb, imo...why drive away 50% of the talent?

And as far as 'Art' being involved, just what do people think industrial and UI design is, other than applied Art? Steve Jobs famously obsessed over the smallest details of the user interfaces of Apple devices and software, and it shows (to this day..as I'm acutely aware having to work with both sides of the Big Computer Divide all day :-)

[NeiljohnUK]

Whom ever drew that got it right on so many levels, the 'short' dress with over broad shoulders is especially pertinent with the growing number of 'male' identifying as 'female' athletes winning 'wimins' events.
Working in the University STEM sector I have worked with a number of very capable and talented female students, similarly when working for IBM (idiot bloody management) with a number of just as capable female engineers. If you look at Australia they now have a significant shortfall in the arts, humanities and social (pseudo) science courses and thats spreading throughout the 'Western' Universities, as more and more students, of all genders, reject courses that have little worthwhile output.
Gender, AKA grievance, studies have proven to be very divisive, as the beyond socialist left wingers want them to be, the s-too-dense that get sucked into that maelstrom of hate becoming clones (note the hair colour) of the intolerance spewing hatred generators that 'teach' them, that those courses mainly attract those that are morally, if not mentally, deficient wanting an easy ride and degree is unsurprising, any vestige of academic rigour is sadly lacking in most of those courses too.

[rgsparber]

...And as far as 'Art' being involved, just what do people think industrial and UI design is, other than applied Art? Steve Jobs famously obsessed over the smallest details of the user interfaces of Apple devices and software, and it shows (to this day..as I'm acutely aware having to work with both sides of the Big Computer Divide all day :-)

Back in the day, we called this Human Factors but UI design is more descriptive. I always felt this was the most difficult and thankless branch of engineering. If you did it perfectly, nobody notices. Screw up and it is plainly obvious.

Here is an example of superb UI design: my coffee mug. It has a screw on top with a hole in it near the rim. If I am right handed, I hold the mug's handle with my right hand. Then I place the top on with the hole facing me and turn it clockwise one turn. The hole ends up right in front where I want it.

If I am left handed, I hold the mug's handle in my left hand and perform the same action with the top. Again, the hole ends up right in front where I want it. What else would you expect?

Looking at the inside of the mug I see a simple 360 degrees of thread. Nothing unusual. But the top has a double entry thread that permits it to go on at two different places. So if I held the handle with my right hand and put the top on facing away from me, it would end up facing away from me when screwed in.

To me, that is an elegant design. I'm sure that most people that use the cup don't give it a second thought regardless of if they are right or left handed. That is the true test of a good UI design.

Rick

[rgsparber]

Whom ever drew that got it right on so many levels, the 'short' dress with over broad shoulders is especially pertinent with the growing number of 'male' identifying as 'female' athletes winning 'wimins' events.
Working in the University STEM sector I have worked with a number of very capable and talented female students, similarly when working for IBM (idiot bloody management) with a number of just as capable female engineers. If you look at Australia they now have a significant shortfall in the arts, humanities and social (pseudo) science courses and thats spreading throughout the 'Western' Universities, as more and more students, of all genders, reject courses that have little worthwhile output.
Gender, AKA grievance, studies have proven to be very divisive, as the beyond socialist left wingers want them to be, the s-too-dense that get sucked into that maelstrom of hate becoming clones (note the hair colour) of the intolerance spewing hatred generators that 'teach' them, that those courses mainly attract those that are morally, if not mentally, deficient wanting an easy ride and degree is unsurprising, any vestige of academic rigour is sadly lacking in most of those courses too.

You were doing really great until you veered off into "beyond socialist left wingers" and never came back.

As to what the cartoon is saying, I may actually have a little insight. My Dad, Howard Sparber, was a cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Syndicate. He would draw cartoons like this on occasion. When I asked him what he was trying to say, he would always put it back on me - "what is it saying to you?" His goal was always to stimulate discussion, not send a single message. Maybe this cartoonist is doing the same thing.

Rick

[mklotz]

Good product design is not art as the folks arguing for the 'A' in STEAM conceive it. A satisfactory user interface (usability) is as much an engineering concern as is maintainability, longevity or repairability.

The sort of art they're on about is the free-wheeling, what ever I want to do sort of stuff. Think of paintings by Jackson Pollock on drugs. (Well, maybe drugs wouldn't be required in his case.) Leave it to them and cars would still have pedestrian piercing hood ornaments and bullet nose steering wheel hubs "because the esthetic demanded it". Bridges would come pre-graffiti-ed and Frank Gehry would be designing warehouses.

I'm a firm believer in the idea that art should have a real and important role in our lives, but I don't want the practitioners thereof to have anything to do with the part of the world that has to work. This is one place I'll gladly defend strict segregation. Let them organize their own educational movement. Instead of STEAM, perhaps they could form a SAPS (Sociology, Art, Psychology, Sports) movement.

[NeiljohnUK]

You were doing really great until you veered off into "beyond socialist left wingers" and never came back.

As to what the cartoon is saying, I may actually have a little insight. My Dad, Howard Sparber, was a cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Syndicate. He would draw cartoons like this on occasion. When I asked him what he was trying to say, he would always put it back on me - "what is it saying to you?" His goal was always to stimulate discussion, not send a single message. Maybe this cartoonist is doing the same thing.

Rick

Quite possibly Rick, the rest are the observations of a life long centrist, raised in a communist conservative household, who has seen the corrosive effects of quotas and equality of outcome advocacy and were in part in response to other comments, from the UK side of the pond perspective.

We all see with eye's biased by our own life experience, thats whats makes life interesting, as long as you can accept others have different viewpoints and can discuss them politely, something lacking in a lot of often younger activist people, thats a good thing.

Cheers Neil