Facing the gathering storm in education
Scientists and engineers compose about 4 percent of the nation’s workforce, but that small fraction exerts a large effect on the whole.
A 2010 report by the National Academies explains why this matters: Scientists who deciphered the human genome opened new vistas of exploration in medicine and other fields. When scientists and engineers improved the capacity of integrated circuits by a factor of a million—as they have in the last four decades—a world of iPods, GPS, cell phones, CT scans and e-books was realized.
“It is not simply the scientist, engineer and entrepreneur who benefit from progress in the laboratory or design center,” the National Academies wrote. It is also the factory worker who builds these innovative advances, the advertiser who promotes them, the trucker who delivers them, the salesperson who sells them and the maintenance worker who repairs them.
Innovation in science, math and engineering are critical to America’s economic health, the National Academies contended. And while the United States has a proud history of innovation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the nation faces a “gathering storm” now approaching “Category 5,” the group concluded.
As the National Academies argued, students who are ill-taught science and math in middle school or high school will be less-prepared for the rigors of higher education—and less likely to realize their full intellectual capacity.
Hence, these ill-prepared students will make comparatively fewer groundbreaking discoveries, secure relatively fewer important patents, and ultimately help generate fewer American exports and jobs.
America’s ability to compete in the global economy has deteriorated in the last five years, and it must invest in science education and research—as its global competitors have—to keep from slipping further, the National Academies said.
If the nation is to regain economic vigor, the group added, K-12 school teachers in science and math must possess conceptual mastery that most of them simply lack; 93 percent of U.S. public-school students in fifth through eighth grades are taught physical sciences by teachers with no degree in the physical sciences.
When teachers don’t adequately understand the science they teach, their students won’t, either.
The University of Colorado is responding to this challenge. It is, in fact, one of the nation’s leading universities in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, (or STEM) education and research. The university’s integrated, campus-wide STEM initiatives are transforming the way undergraduates are taught and are boosting the number of STEM majors pursuing teaching careers.
Traditionally, the brightest students in science, math and engineering were shunted away from teaching at the K-12 level. They were told, explicitly or implicitly, that the best scientists and mathematicians should pursue careers in higher education or in the private sector.
It is not that way at CU today. Here, teaching effectively is recognized as a legitimate, scholarly activity for faculty and their students. In fact, the university’s five-year goal is to double the number of science and math teachers graduating from CU.
The university is pursuing this goal through a variety of programs and initiatives. In this issue of Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine, we introduce you to three students in one STEM program.
They are Noyce fellows: students who are majoring in science or math disciplines and who are so committed to teaching at the K-12 level that they’ve promised to do so. For each year of Noyce funding these students get, they commit to teaching two years of math or science in a high-needs school district.
These future teachers understand the national call to action, but they are pursuing careers as schoolteachers for other reasons, too. “The individual students were what inspired me,” one Noyce fellow notes.
Another emphasizes that he feels “energized,” not drained, after teaching. When he first realized this: “A light bulb clicked on for me. This is what I want to do.”
Well-trained and passionate teachers like these offer real hope to calm the gathering storm.
Todd Gleeson, professor in the department of integrative physiology, was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at CU Boulder from 2002 to 2012.