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150 Years of Advancing Science: A History of AAAS
Change and Continuity: 1971 to the Present
The 1969 Boston meeting saw the election of AAAS's first
woman president, Mina Rees, a mathematician from the City University of
New York. Of the 28 AAAS presidents elected since Rees, one-third
(nine) have been women. In 1989, physicist Walter Massey became the
first African American scientist to serve as the Association's president.
In the 1970s, the Association began to develop a major interest in encouraging
underrepresented groups to enter scientific careers. A Committee
on Opportunities in Science was formed and AAAS assumed a leadership
role in the scientific community in efforts to encourage participation
in science by women, people of color, and disabled persons.
Long before passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act, AAAS was the
first organization to make its meetings fully accessible. At the
1976 Boston meeting, Margaret Mead's presidential address was translated
into sign language. The Association began to require such renovations
as wider doorways, reconfigured bathrooms, and entrance ramps at hotels
where meetings were held. Barrier Free Meetings, published
by AAAS in 1976, has served as a textbook for hundreds of other organizations
that wish to provide full access to their own meetings.
 More
recent efforts have engaged community groups in providing science education
for girls and persons of color. The AAAS Black Churches initiative
has worked with over 3,500 churches to incorporate hands-on science, mathematics,
technology, and health activities into their non-religious educational
programs. Proyecto Futuro/Project Future is designed to strengthen
science, math, and technology education for Hispanic youth. Another
such effort, the Girls and Science programs, developed for the Girl
Scout Councils of North and South Dakota and Minnesota, provides training
for adult women leaders of girl-serving groups and teachers.
AAAS's most ambitious science education effort to date is Project 2061.
Launched in 1985, Project 2061 is a long-term effort to reform science,
mathematics, and technology education at the kindergarten through 12th
grade levels to ensure science literacy for all Americans. The project
is helping to shape the national agenda while working directly with state
and local education leaders as well as teachers to develop, test, and implement
new curricula. When Project 2061 began in 1985, Halley's Comet was
visible from earth. The project takes its name 2061 from the year
in which the comet will return.
The Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology (formerly
the Scientific Manpower Commission), a participating organization of AAAS,
was founded in 1953 to collect and disseminate information about human
resources for science and technology in the United States. The Commission
publishes CPST Comments eight times a year, as well as special reports
on subjects such as salaries for scientists and engineers and the job market
for new Ph.D.s.
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