STEM

STEM, or science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, education has been a major component to 21st-century learning in K12, but some say the acronym needs to be more inclusive. Several groups created by educators have emerged to support the push for the addition of an “A” to STEM, for STEAM, to represent the disciplines of art.

Mary T. Barra, General Motors’ senior vice president of global product development and an active supporter of STEM, will be the first woman to receive the 2013 Industry Leadership Award from the SAE Foundation, a global charity supporting STEM learning.

High school students aren't sticking with STEM. Even though the number of jobs in science and engineering is expected to surge in the years to come, close to 60 percent of the nation's students who begin high school interested in science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM, change their minds by graduation.

Due to a lack of adequate school funding, teachers nationwide spend an average of $350 of their own money each year to pay for basic classroom materials, totaling $1.3 billion annually. Fuel Your School is dedicated to helping end that practice, at least for science.

Since arriving in the legislature, I have been working to expand the use of online technology in public schools. Thanks especially to the able leadership of two successive chairs of the Education Committee, Rep. Marty Walz and Rep. Alice Peisch, I can now report an important step forward.

My high school engineering classroom feels like the downtown loft of a high-tech start-up. In one corner, students pour over a “smart” air-conditioner device they’re designing. Others crowd around a laptop to trade impressions of a new prosthetic arm on a YouTube video. This is what STEM education should look like.

With guidance and expertise from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Mahtomedi (Minn.) School District (about 20 miles east of Minneapolis) is operating one of the nation's first public school fabrication laboratories, or Fab Labs, joining over 140 operating in universities and businesses worldwide, and hundreds more in the planning stages.