Events in Science Education

This past week I visited Washington DC as part of an NSF grant.  It was all about creating more science, technology, engineering, and math majors.  Acronym: STEM.  This NSF STEP toward the STEM advocacy program is successful, and the grantees and grant administrators are highly motivated.  The meeting was excellent.  New ideas were presented; old ideas were reaffirmed; alternative ideas were presented.  It is acknowledged that more STEM majors are wanted and are needed.  For the USA, this is correct.  Make no doubt. The foundational question was how to get them?

As usual, the keynote speaker cited the well known facts that USA students do poorly, actually very poorly, on international exams in these subjects, particularly math.  So, these sad facts loomed in the background.

In short, the basics question was:  How do we get more people to pursue STEM degrees? Remarkably, there is no clear consensus on how this may be achieved.  The NSF project directors wanted us to report out on challenges, innovations, strengths, insights, improvements, and more.  The NSF participants suggested multiple solutions, mostly all clearly heart-felt, mostly all practical, and mostly all on the same page of STEM directives.  What will happen?  We do not know. The NSF wishes to improve the situation; they have wonderful people engaged to this end; they want more and more STEM majors.  Yet, my sense is that the NSF hierarchy wants demonstrable, sustained long-term results.  They're under pressure.  So are we.

On the other side of the coin comes the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) report about just this topic. See: http://php.aaas.org/programs/centers/capacity/documents/SmartGrid.pdf.  In this report, the AAAS authors reduced the entire STEM vacuum issues to recruiting new adherents to the engagement of minorities and women toward these ends.  At no point in this report, which is both scholarly and well written, was there any comment on the nature of people in STEM disciplines.  There was no comment on the mind-set of students that commit to science, that have the predilection for science, and that have the discipline to endure the early difficult of STEM course in their curriculum. This is particularly sad, because their view seems to be that if the government throws money at STEM education on any basis other than the inclination to be a scientist, the result will be success.  But maybe this is not so.

As a youth, I knew many capable friends - for any major.  Their inclination was just not to STEM.  They just did not do STEM.  They went in other directions. They were successful. 

New scientists under these programs?  Let us hope.