Developing a National STEM Workforce Strategy A Workshop Summary (2016) / Chapter Skim
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9 Breakout Discussion Groups
9 Breakout Discussion Groups
Pages 79-90
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From page 79... ...
Discussion leaders led and guided the groups' conversations using a series of questions to draw out relevant ideas and issues. The intent of these groups was not to create a list of specific recommendations for workforce development investments, but to identify important issues and challenges related to workforce readiness, and to create a range of thoughtful options for consideration by federal agencies; research institutions; the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the Academies)
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From page 80... ...
How can K-12 schools and postsecondary institutions provide greater awareness of STEM career options and career pathways for students, and ensure their participation in STEM academic programs and careers -- especially among low-income and underrepresented minority students? How can federal agencies support career awareness efforts among schools and institutions?
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From page 81... ...
He added that NSF has begun to work together with other agencies and to move in that direction to some extent. Katherine McClelland, from the National Manufacturing Institute, said another topic of discussion in Group 1 was how to make sure students, teachers, and parents understand the career opportunities available in their region and to create mechanisms by which employers can signal what openings will be available and to identify the job skills students will need to fill those openings.
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From page 82... ...
This group, said McClelland, discussed the importance of using labor market analyses and data to identify the jobs that are available today and those that will be available over the next few years and to then provide that information to parents so that they will be motivated to encourage their children to stay in STEM courses despite challenges they might have with algebra and other classes that often discourage students from sticking with STEM pathways. Mary Alice McCarthy, from the New America Foundation, then reported that one of the big issues discussed in Group 1 was how to think about workforce as an outcome of workforce development.
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From page 83... ...
This group also discussed the importance of developing a common language so that students, parents, and employers truly understand what employability skills are, and group members noted that active listening is one skill students need to develop along with the ability to change their behavior based on what they hear from employers. Other aspects of common language the group noted were project management, entrepreneurship, leadership, conflict resolution, and communication.
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From page 84... ...
Various members of the group pointed out there is a large body of information available about STEM careers and STEM career pathways, but the question is how the STEM community can do
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From page 85... ...
He also noted work being done in the field of behavioral economics, where information is shared using mobile phones and social media to get students to fill out Free Application for Federal Student Aid forms. "Perhaps we could take that kind of approach to build career awareness over time," said Rumberger.
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From page 86... ...
Stewart noted there was strong interest within this group in building student career development into the broader impact statement associated with federal funding. "Faculty could demonstrate broader impact within the context of a grant by paying attention to the ultimate career outcomes of the students who benefit from a grant," Stewart said.
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From page 87... ...
The discussions noted, too, that multiple approaches are needed to address diversity gaps, and funding will have to be spread out across many areas, including social media campaigns and joint efforts with industry, and across all levels of education, including adult education, to make real progress. Efforts to spread the evidence about the importance of developing STEM capabilities across all segments of our society will take tremendous attention from the entire STEM community, Zanville said.
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From page 88... ...
New fields then emerge from the intersections and white spaces of existing fields, and this group said that NSF needs to continue supporting those white spaces. The discussions identified a number of emerging areas that merit continued NSF support, including adaptive manufacturing, neurotechnology, autonomous systems, and "x-analytics," or big data, and also raised the point that when NSF identifies a new area of interest, it gets the attention of provosts and deans as well as other private funding agencies that also start investing in these areas.
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From page 89... ...
At the same time, it was noted NSF has played a meaningful role in developing and propagating new content relevant to contemporary science and engineering, and it should study some of these programs with the goal of replicating those successes. As examples, Atkins pointed to the key role NSF played in nurturing integrated manufacturing, the digital library movement that led to Google, the concepts of distributed collaboration, and most recently data science.
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From page 90... ...
"This suggests we need to think about what kind of infrastructure we could put in place that would allow for the aggregation and sharing of data," said Atkins. He noted that a coalition of Big Ten schools is cooperating on a system for sharing the output of learning management systems to inform learning research, and he suggested NSF might consider taking an inventory of projects such as this and making a modest investment to nurture cooperation, interoperability, and sharing between these projects.
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