In 2012, President Obama announced that our country needed to produce 1 million STEM professionals over the next 10 years to stay technologically competitive. A number of writers responded with data purporting a surplus of STEM workers. Who was right? Yi Xue and Richard Larson say all are right in their Monthly Labor Review paper,… Read more »
In 2010, over 100 CEOs in the United States founded the nonprofit organization, Change the Equation. What equation did they want to change? The gap between the demand for STEM employees and the supply of STEM graduates. But that mission has now broadened to making all K-12 students STEM-literate. Since then, Change the Equation has… Read more »
On May 24. 2015, Pope Francis issued, “Laudato Sí,” a 184-page encyclical letter calling upon Catholics to stop global warming and save the environment. The majority of American universities have probably noticed the letter, but not given it much thought. However, that’s not the case if you work at a Catholic university or college. The… Read more »
Lack of preparation in mathematics is often a stumbling block for STEM and other undergraduates, and apparently that is true in Ireland as well. Besides offering math courses with lectures and recitations, all Irish college and universities have mathematics support centres. A 2014 study of students who use the centres found positive impacts on the… Read more »
The Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program (ANSEP) at the University of Alaska should be a model for universities across the country. The program started in 1995 with the goal of graduating more Alaska Native students with STEM degrees. But they were smart and didn’t try to use a Band-Aid to fix the huge problem… Read more »
I don’t know how I’ve missed Project Kaleidoscope until now. PKAL is a center of the Association of American Colleges and Universities that is dedicated to graduating more students from STEM disciplines. PKAL has been developing an institution-wide model for changing STEM education that is scalable and sustainable. This model is exciting to me because… Read more »
Numerous educational papers and books identify active learning in the classroom as a way to retain STEM undergraduates. Librarians need not be left out of the action, even if they aren’t in the actual or virtual classroom. A common active learning activity that professors use is to divide a class into debate teams that read… Read more »
U.S. News and World Report held its fourth STEM Solutions Conference in San Diego over the summer. Leaders from industry, education, and government discussed how to attract and retain students and workers in STEM. You can attend too belatedly because U.S. News has posted speaker videos and daily recaps in the special report, STEM Solutions…. Read more »
A common factor in STEM attrition of undergraduates is poor preparation in mathematics. That barrier to retention got a lot higher with the news that parents can pass math anxiety onto their children. The study published in Psychological Science reports that both a child’s achievement and attitude toward math are impacted. The highest negative impact… Read more »
A biting post was published on The National Science Teachers Association blog on recently. Professor of Science Education Robert Yager from the University of Iowa posted “Misconceptions about the ‘Doing’ of Science” and criticized science teachers for how slowly they are moving to effective science teaching strategies. In his list of criticisms, he mentioned lack… Read more »
