Perspectives: STEM Education Initiatives

Dr. Linda Katehi (IL A ’77), Chancellor at the University of California, Davis, wrote this week in The Huffington Post about new ideas in how the United States teaches STEM disciplines.

Her focus in on the National Research Council’s report developing new standards for teaching science to K-12 students. The new report “calls for teachers to use engineering as the principal medium to teach science.” Read the full article

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The Chronicle of Higher Education published a commentary piece by two policy researchers on their perceived challenges related to science and engineering in America.

Citing an “overstating and misidentifying” of the problem, the authors call for efforts to “improve education broadly, look inward for education models, and focus on core lessons about improving the lowest-performing group of students.” Click here to read more, including claims that there “is actually no compelling evidence that, over all, the educational pipeline is failing to meet demand.”

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KRWG media reported on the Young Women in Computing program being held this summer at New Mexico State University. According to the article, females are a minority in the computer science field.

The camp is for middle and high school girls, which teaches them “about different areas of computer science and gives them hands-on experience with animation, robotics, and Web programming.”

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