Shirley M. Malcom currently serves as a Senior Advisor and Director of SEA Change at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Malcom returned to teaching for a year as assistant professor of biology at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and then moved to Washington, D.C., to work as a research associate at AAAS.

The program provided federal funding to Historically Black Colleges and Universities for improved equipment and facilities as well as higher salaries for the faculty.

[6] While working as a research associate at AAAS, where she surveyed science education programs designed for minority students, a conference was held which Malcom helped to organize.

In response in 2004, AAAS issued a report titled Standing Our Ground: A Guidebook for STEM Educators in the Post-Michigan Era, written by Shirley Malcom, which clarifies legally plausible options for preserving diversity in engineering and science programs.