STEM – Industry Role

RttT conference

December 11, 2009

Baltimore MD

Charles Fadel
Global Lead, Education

Charles Fadel © 2007 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 1
 90 % of us have just
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 It is crossing your
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 It is an
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 Dopamine
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 GOOD MORNING !

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 This Panel

§ Why is Industry so engaged in STEM ?

§ What is Industry’s role ?
§ What is STEM to Society and our personal lives ?
§

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 4 Tiers of STEM Competency

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Top Tier: STEM Professions Have a Positive
Impact on Innovation Economies
“Countries with the highest concentrations of engineers grow faster, [those
with] lawyers grow slower”
National Bureau of Economic Research, K. Murphy, A. Shleifer et al

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 STEM for the other 95%
Support Functions:
•Marketing, Sales, etc (in support of High-Tech, Finance, etc)
•Trade professions (Certifications, HVAC, car mechanics, etc)
{poll}

Influential Professions:
•Journalists (misleading representations)
•Financiers (probabilities should be mandatory on Wall Street !)
•Lawyers (a lot of billable time spent on low-probability outcomes)
•Politicians (non-linearities associated with global warming)
•Doctors (probabilities and statistics)
{poll}

Everyone:
•Understanding risk: Personal finance; Health (cancer; airbag; vaccination;
cellphones; flying…); etc
•Understanding Life: log curve, exp-curve, n-curve, S-curve, Bell-curve, etc
{poll}

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 Social Factors need to be addressed
§ Fear of Math & Science – teacher- and parent-dependent
§ Scorn of “geek” – society-dependent
•The social factors are the largest {poll}

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 Push back creeping obscurantism
Math or Numerology ? Cosmology or Mythology ? Evolution or Creationism ? etc.
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 The Panelists
§ Kim Adams [Lockheed]: workforce shortages
§ Cheryl Carrier [Ford]: relevance and community engagement
§ Rich Rosen: [Battelle]’s experiences and practices
§ Cathleen Barton [Intel]: Now is the time for Systemic change
§
• Then panel and audience Q&A

Thank you !
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