Partnerships, Volunteerism, Philanthropy: Companies With STEM Talent Support Education

Amphitheater Middle School engineering and robotics teacher Scott Weiler hung a 6-foot poster of the Orion spacecraft at the back of his Tucson, Arizona, classroom in 2011. That summer and for the three following, he worked at Paragon Space Development Corporation, learning about life support systems and building the equipment for the Orion, which launched Dec. 5, 2014. The week leading up to the launch, Weiler shared the importance of the mission with his students, taught them the mechanics behind rockets and explained how he and his co-workers had developed the systems. 

At the beginning of every school year, he has talked about the spacecraft featured on the poster, letting students know that they could eventually undertake this type of engineering. This year, the American Society of Civil Engineers, Southern Arizona Branch, recognized Weiler as its 2015 Southern Arizona Educator of the Year.

In May, Weiler will complete a master’s degree in STEM Education through the University of Arizona’s Teachers in Industry program, which began in 2009 and offers work opportunities in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math) in addition to coursework on teaching and STEM content. According to Teachers in Industry Director Julia Olsen, Raytheon Company approached the University of Arizona College of Education to develop a new approach that would ensure “industry work experiences would transfer back to teachers’ classrooms, helping both to retain early career teachers and help them improve their teaching practice and ultimately influence student learning.”

With industry perspective, Weiler realized he could open the eyes of his students to educational and career opportunities. He says that being part of a low-income school community, his students take away more from his engineering and robotics class than students in other districts might because they are “determined and really struggling to want something more.”

“Students don’t have a concept of what’s outside this neighborhood. If they can’t see it, they can’t aspire towards it, they can’t dream it, they can’t want to do something more,” he observes.

That’s why in August 2012, he founded Girl Power in Science and Engineering, a club for girls at his middle school. He arranges mentorship luncheons with executives from companies such as Universal Avionics Systems Corporation and coordinates field trips. Recently, club members visited the University of Arizona to meet with its chapter of the Society of Women Engineers.

Raytheon lists Teachers in Industry on MathMovesU, its website with information for educators, parents, policymakers and elementary through college-age students. Appealing to a wide audience “ensures that not only do we provide students the necessary resources and knowledge to continue their interest in math and science, but that they’re prepared when they go on to the next level, elementary school to middle school, middle school to high school and high school to college because by having that continuous support, that is how we develop the next generation of scientists, engineers, mathematicians and other technologists,” says Hahna Kane Latonick, senior cyber engineer at Raytheon.

Developing that next generation has become an urgent concern. According to the U.S. News/Raytheon STEM Index, while the number of STEM jobs is on the rise in the United States, the education-to-employment pipeline isn't producing enough talent to meet the country's future employment needs.

High school student interest in STEM fields reached a low point in 2004, dropping nearly 19 percent from the 2000 base-year calculations. Interest levels climbed steadily until 2009, but then began to drop again, in spite of the academic and government efforts to encourage students to study science; in 2013, they were just slightly below where they were in 2000.The lack of progress among female and minority students is especially troubling in the long term. 

Like Raytheon, IBM Corporation and Bechtel Corporation – an engineering, project management and construction company – are enhancing education in STEM subjects through partnerships, volunteerism and philanthropy.

“Every engineering company wants to make sure that they have a healthy pipeline, but, I think, increasingly, it’s not just about creating that healthy pipeline for companies. It’s really become a matter of American competitiveness,” says Charlene Wheeless, head of Bechtel’s global corporate affairs.

While it is high school and college graduates who ultimately fill that pipeline, outreach programming increasingly focuses on younger students.

“Initially there was a lot of focus on college, and then, in time, it became focusing more on high school, and it’s moved farther back now into middle school, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we start hearing more and more about programs that are starting in the elementary school-age kids,” Wheeless says.

Bechtel is part of the leadership council and a founding member of DiscoverE. This outreach initiative, designed more than 25 years ago to harness the volunteer efforts of engineering and technology companies and groups, aims to maintain and expand the engineering profession. The IBM International Foundation and Raytheon are sponsors of DiscoverE.

Hosting nationwide engineering events by mobilizing local volunteers, DiscoverE educates youth and creates awareness of engineering, sometimes targeting a particular participant age range or girls specifically. Every February, it runs Engineers Week with various events, one of which is designated Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day (also known as Girl Day).

This year, female engineers at Raytheon volunteered at 16 Girl Day events across the country and, with the Boys & Girls Clubs, organized hands-on activities to generate interest in engineering and build girls’ confidence, Latonick explains. At her event in Fort Meade, Maryland, Latonick helped participants build glow sticks with electrical circuits. Before starting the activity, she asked if anyone knew an engineer or understood what engineering entails, and hardly anyone raised a hand in reply. Latonick says she observed how excited the girls became once they could show off their glow sticks and she watched their “curiosity blossom.” With that exposure, the girls were able to answer the question posed at the beginning of the session and she said some walked away saying they wanted to become engineers.

As part of Engineers Week, Bechtel and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) ran a booth at Discover Engineering Family Day, hosted by the National Building Museum in Washington, District of Columbia. The annual event is designed for kids ages 6 through 12 and their families. It introduces them to professional engineers who demonstrate engineering principles with hands-on activities.

On February 28, engineers from ASCE and Bechtel explained liquefaction, which occurs when an event such as an earthquake shakes water-saturated soil, leaving it unable to support the weight of a building. To learn the concept, participants rapidly tapped a cup filled with sand and water and watched as the water mixed with the sand to liquefy. A Matchbox car on top of the wet sand started to sink.

By understanding the science behind various life situations, students gain an appreciation for engineering and may become more invested in their math and science classroom lessons.

“[Kids] get to experience engineering at its best, most creative and fun,” notes Jane Howell Lombardi, director of communications at ASCE, in speaking of Family Day. “That kind of excitement … helps when they go back and they learn about the scientific principles that might underline some of the engineering they did or when they have to perform math to get the outcome they’re trying to do with whatever they’re designing. We would think about it in terms of ‘engineering is to the language of math and science as what creative writing is to English language.’”

Capturing curiosity in students when they are young is important, but so is keeping that spark alive as they grow up. When outreach begins in elementary school, Latonick notes, there are several years between that initial exposure and when a young adult becomes an engineer.

“The trend that we see, as they go through their childhood and as we continue our outreach, is the reshaping of their perspective of what it means to be a scientist or an engineer, and seeing their attitudes change toward math and science,” she continues. Referring to programming for female students, Latonick adds that observing girls’ mindsets change and their confidence grow is confirmation that the outreach efforts make an impact.

According to Wheeless, studies indicate that once students reach middle school, their interest in STEM tends to wane. She says this is particularly acute for girls and that it is important to work with students in the school system, such as through an organization like FIRST, a not-for-profit, largely volunteer-driven organization where teachers and professional STEM mentors jointly advise teams of students ages 6 to 18 for its competitions.  

Dean Kamen, an inventor and entrepreneur, founded FIRST in 1989 to generate excitement among youth for science and technology – the organization's name means "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology​."

“He didn’t view it so much as an education problem, he viewed it as a culture problem and that we don’t live in a culture that celebrates and encourages kids to go into science and technology. We don’t make it fun. We do a lot to make it not fun, and, as a result, kids’ interest in science and technology drops as opposed to grows with time,” says Donald Bossi, president of FIRST. Kamen “put the curiosity and the passion and the interest first … and then sort of let the learning follow,” simulating sporting events with Lego and robotics competitions, Bossi notes.

FIRST, in conjunction with Brandeis University, recently completed the second year of its projected five-year longitudinal study. A comparison among students in grades 4-12 who joined a FIRST program two  years ago and those who have taken math and science courses but have not participated in a FIRST program reveals that ​  FIRST participants were more likely to indicate interest in pursuing STEM in college or careers than students who hadn't participated in FIRST, he explains. 

Initially, FIRST programs were geared toward high school participants, but in 1998, with the support of The Lego Group, FIRST expanded its competitions to upper-elementary and middle school populations to pique interest in STEM at even younger ages. According to Bossi, by the time students reach high school, it is sometimes too late to engage them, because they have already determined that math and science are not their fortes or pursuing those subjects is not cool.

For the past three years, Danielle Miller, an honors astronomy teacher at University High School in Orlando, Florida, has coached an all-girls FIRST Robotics team, and has relied on the technical expertise of industry mentors.

“I think it gives students real life experiences where, ‘OK, here’s a problem, we have to build something that will actually work, solve this problem and it has to perform under pressure,’” Miller says.  “It really shows them skills that they are going to use in the future that most kids don’t see every day in the classroom necessarily.”

The Next Generation Science Standards, which are aimed at K-12 students, emphasize critical thinking and problem-solving skills and, like the Common Core State Standards for math and English, are intended to ensure that American students are college- and career-ready once they graduate from high school.

“I think students really need to be problem solvers and investigators, and they need to be able to work hands-on and through a process of investigation and discovery, and apply their learning and demonstrate it rather than having someone showing them or telling them or demonstrating for them,” says Grace Suh, senior program manager for IBM corporate citizenship and corporate affairs.

Teachers TryScience is a website developed by IBM in collaboration with the New York Hall of Science and teachengineering.org. It offers educators lesson plans with pedagogical strategies for how to approach instruction for specific STEM activities. Some IBM volunteers rely on Teachers TryScience lessons when they mentor youth, Suh says. 

While mentors can be educators, they can also be professional role models. Just as the young girls in Weiler’s Arizona middle school learn from successful women in STEM, high school and early college female students gain insight from them as well. IBM hosts Bluemix Girls’ Nights, evening gatherings across the country, where high school and early college students have the opportunity to meet with female engineers at a time when they may be thinking about career options. At these events, young women have the opportunity to seek advice and to learn how to apply technology to real problems, says Diane Melley, vice president of IBM global citizenship initiatives.

“We really think with the way the economy is headed, that no matter what industry you enter, the fastest growing fields across all industries really require science, technology, engineering and math at the core,” she notes.