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Introduction

What do you imagine the world will be like in 2040? What technology will we have come to take for granted? What will be the most pressing threats to the health of Earth and the health of humanity? What kinds of things will scientists be researching? And what tools will they be using in their research? What will the scientists and engineers of the future look like? How will they learn the skills, practices, and concepts they need to contribute to innovation? Will undergraduate education have changed to better prepare students for their lives and careers? Will students of all races, ethnicities, cultures, perspectives, and backgrounds feel welcome in the classrooms and other learning environments of 2040? Will undergraduate education prepare all students to use scientific thinking and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skills in their lives and careers, regardless of whether they become STEM professionals?

In November 2020, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a multiday virtual symposium on imaging the future of undergraduate STEM education. Speakers and participants grappled with the issues underlying the questions above. They pondered the future and the past, they shared their goals, priorities, and dreams for improving undergraduate STEM education, and they were encouraged to think outside the box and offer opinions based on their own experiences with higher education. Expert speakers presented information about today’s students and approaches to undergraduate STEM education, as well as the history of transformation in higher education. Thoughtful discussions explored ideas for the future, how student-centered learning experiences could be created, and what issues to consider to facilitate a successful transformation.

Institutions are under pressure because of resource constraints, new demands for accountability, and the need to adapt to new research on learning and instruction. STEM fields themselves are developing at a rapid pace, boosted by technological advances such as “big data” and the new possibilities for automation. Institutions are also increasingly focused on the importance of equity and inclusion and the different ways of serving undergraduate learners who are more diverse than ever in regard to their personal characteristics, background, preparation, interests, and goals. Nationwide, not all segments of the U.S. population—women, people of color, people of low socioeconomic status, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ individuals, and others—are reaping the benefits of high-quality STEM education, and they remain underrepresented among those students completing undergraduate STEM baccalaureate programs. Students from those groups disproportionately either switch to non-STEM majors during their education or drop out of college, and they are thus even less well represented in STEM jobs and graduate-level STEM programs. Over the next several decades, though, job openings requiring STEM skills are expected to grow more than twice as fast as non-STEM occupations and to pay better than non-STEM jobs (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020; Smithsonian Institution, 2021). Employers seek graduates with transferable skills, such as creativity and adaptability, as well as skills in teamwork, communication, conflict resolution, and problem solving. To thrive in the coming decades, workers will need to be prepared to adapt and switch gears. People in jobs not traditionally thought of as STEM jobs will increasingly need STEM skills to be effective. STEM skills will be required to navigate not only the expected wider array of jobs and careers in the working world, but also to enable wider participation in democracy, and as people make decisions in their daily lives.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced U.S. colleges and universities to dramatically alter the way they educated the nation’s undergraduates and highlighted many underlying issues of undergraduate education that had already been simmering. It required the rethinking of approaches to undergraduate learning and prompted some to question their own assumptions. It spurred others to focus more deeply on new approaches to undergraduate STEM education. In this context, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), held a public symposium on the future of undergraduate STEM education. The symposium was designed to visualize a post-pandemic world and explore possibilities for undergraduate STEM education in 2040 and beyond in the context of the convergence of STEM disciplines and the changes in the demographic makeup, goals, and educational pathways of undergraduate STEM students. The charge to the committee was to organize an event that addressed the following questions:

• How can undergraduate STEM education respond to the rapidly changing context for higher education—calls for convergence, demographic and societal changes, changes in workforce demands, and advances in technology—in ways that anticipate future demands and provide quality education for all students?
• What changes are needed to undergraduate STEM education in light of the increasing convergence across STEM disciplines? What are critical convergent topics and approaches that we urgently need to incorporate into undergraduate STEM education?
• What are the models, both administrative and financial, that support a convergent learning experience that engages multiple disciplines and overarching concerns such as privacy, security, and the ethical behavior of people and systems?
• Is there a relationship between the content, delivery mechanism, and use of technology in the classroom/learning environment and the success of first-generation and low-income STEM students of all backgrounds? Is the relationship different for different groups? What would it mean to design changes based on an equity and social justice mindset from the start?
• How should the STEM education system respond to the changes taking place in the learning pathways of individuals at different points of their lives, including enrolling at different physical and online institutions, and/or stacking credentials and experiences from multiple sources? How can we consider learning in contexts other than formal settings for different cultures, ages, or levels of instruction?

STRUCTURE OF THE SYMPOSIUM AND THE PROCEEDINGS

The symposium planning committee, whose role was confined to planning and organizing the agenda and event, included educators and administrators from a range of disciplines and types of institutions who had demonstrated innovative approaches to thinking about undergraduate STEM education. They convened multiple times to grapple with the questions in their charge and plan an event that would stimulate participants to imagine undergraduate STEM education in 2040. As they worked to identify, invite, and provide guidance to the speakers, the committee had to make multiple decisions about how to interpret their charge. It was not feasible to answer some of the thought-provoking questions posed to them at this time, so the committee organized an array of activities to engage experts and stakeholders with diverse perspectives in discussing the underlying issues and related ideas. The committee chose to define convergence inclusively and to consider interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and other

approaches to integrating real-world challenges and issues into student learning experiences. They provided multiple opportunities for participants to engage in the symposium topics before and during the live, webcast symposium.

Before the symposium, a wide-ranging call went out to educators to participate in an idea competition by submitting a statement or video addressing some aspect of the symposium’s focus on what undergraduate STEM education should look like in 2040 and beyond to meet the needs of students, science, and society and what we should do now to prepare. Winning submissions were on the National Academies website, and many were discussed at the symposium.¹ In addition, the committee commissioned two papers to be presented at the symposium that were posted on the project website in advance. Moderated discussion boards allowed participants to discuss themes emerging from the idea competition and the papers in preparation for the symposium and continue to discuss topics arising during the symposium itself. The 3-day symposium included presentations and discussion of the two papers, panel discussions, and break-out sessions to generate ideas and develop individual stories to represent visions for the future (the agenda appears in Appendix B).

This proceedings, which was prepared by the workshop rapporteurs, summarizes the presentations and ideas that were articulated during the symposium. A key purpose of the symposium was to provide participants with multiple opportunities to explore and share ideas from varied perspectives. To make it easier for the reader to follow the discussion threads, this report clusters the account of the proceedings into categories corresponding to themes that predominated throughout the symposium. Chapter 2 discusses the purposes of STEM education and goals for the future. Chapter 3 presents the commissioned paper on “Transformation in the U.S. Higher Education System: Implications for Racial Equity” by Lindsey Malcom-Piqueux. Chapter 4 presents research on today’s diverse undergraduate students, while Chapter 5 discusses ways to create equitable opportunities for future undergraduate students. Chapter 6 discusses changes in technology, Chapter 7 presents the commissioned paper “Current Innovations in STEM Education and Equity Needs for the Future” by Katerina Bagiati and Sanjay Sarma, as well as other innovative strategies and approaches for improving undergraduate STEM education. Lastly, Chapter 8 summarizes the broad reflections and final thoughts that were put forward at the symposium.

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¹ See https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/idea-competition-for-Symposium-on-imagining-the-future-of-undergraduate-stem-education.

OBJECTIVES FOR THE SYMPOSIUM

Symposium participants were asked to visualize what society and science will look like in 2040, the future date at which many babies born during the pandemic will be engaged in undergraduate education, noted National Academy of Sciences’ President Marcia McNutt in her welcoming remarks. She suggested that remarkable shifts in the delivery of undergraduate pedagogy can be expected in the next 20 years and asked participants to consider what changes could create a more inclusive environment in which women, people of color, and people from groups that are currently underrepresented in the STEM disciplines will have full access to the opportunities a STEM degree creates. McNutt also pointed to the consequences of failing to adapt, noting that “we need STEM education to be available everywhere and available to everyone. We must rethink many of our traditional approaches.” She noted that STEM education has evolved to include more inquiry-based learning that emphasizes fewer lectures and more hands-on time in the classroom, and that these types of learning experiences need to become accessible to a wider variety of students. Engaging students in making sense of the world around them by asking questions, gathering data, analyzing evidence, and learning to communicate their ideas, results, and conclusions teaches them both about STEM and how STEM works, she emphasized. She concluded, “I do not know a single kid who is not curious, and yet, so many of our STEM classes almost beat the curiosity out of them.”

Others also offered thoughts about the goals for the symposium and the importance of STEM and STEM education: Sethuraman Panchanathan, director of NSF; F. Fleming Crim, chief operating officer for NSF; Karen Marrongelle, head of NSF’s Directorate for Education and Human Resources; and planning committee co-chairs Annette Parker, president of South Central College, and Barbara Schaal, the Mary Dell Chilton distinguished professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

NSF sees undergraduate STEM education as key to its vision: advancing the frontiers of research, ensuring accessibility and inclusivity, and securing global leadership in STEM, Crim explained. “Ensuring accessibility and inclusivity is the base on which the other two pillars rest,” he added. Marrongelle commented on the unprecedented speed with which changes to the STEM research and education landscape are occurring. She noted that these changes are enabled by advances in computer and engineering technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics and that they are also enabled by a deeper understanding of societal and environmental change, along with very important advances in the learning sciences. She also pointed out the changing conceptions of both work and the workplace enabled by intelligent and autonomous systems. She described a vision for

the future that is “powered by evidence-based instruction and technology to maximize STEM learning and mitigate barriers, including cost, distance, opportunity, socioeconomic background, and prior STEM preparation.” She also explained how this vision must be aligned with the ways students learn across different contexts and life stages and how it needs to be personalized, project-based, and learner-centered to aid students in tackling real-life STEM problems, including those in their communities. She argued that building this vision for the future means that we need to systemically implement curricular innovations and effective practices in STEM education. She further commented that “at the core of our thinking, we must figure out how to move into a future STEM that is more equitable, diverse, and inclusive.”

Schaal observed that a strong STEM education could help citizens navigate through the cacophony of voices in the public sphere and develop informed opinions about issues such as the relative wisdom of eating or avoiding genetically modified foods, vaccinating children (or not), and the reality (or unreality) of climate change. STEM should be part of a general education, she commented, for “the vast diversity of our citizens, not just one component of our citizenry.” Parker asked the symposium participants to imagine a future where undergraduate STEM education serves students well, saying, “We want you to explore strategies for imagining new approaches, including restructuring curriculum, majors, departments, credentials, and institutions, and we want you to think about all the potential scientists who have been excluded from STEM.”