High School Students Giving Up on STEM

The U.S. NEWS published an article yesterday that reports high school students are giving up on STEM careers. Though interest has been increasing in the past decade (1 in 4 students report an interest in a STEM major or career) and they begin high school with the interest in engineering and other sciences, it is argued that not enough is being done to maintain an interest in STEM.

A suggestion to remedy the situation is to improve student achievement by implementing new k-12 education standards in science in math and to fill them with an interest in STEM before high school. Some states have begun specialized STEM high schools, but it is also suggested that schools must partner with other educators and businesses in the STEM fields. Otherwise, the increasing jobs in the field will continue to go unfilled.

And that's exactly what Engineering for Kids is trying to do: create an interest early and maintain it through the future.

Being reading the U.S. NEWS article below or click HERE.

Many High Schoolers Giving Up on STEM

By MICHAEL MORELLA

High school students aren't sticking with STEM. Even though the number of jobs in science and engineering is expected to surge in the years to come, close to 60 percent of the nation's students who begin high school interested in science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM, change their minds by graduation, according to a report released Wednesday from STEMconnector and college planning service My College Options.

Overall student interest has been gradually climbing for about a decade, with about 1 in 4 of all high schoolers excited about pursuing a STEM major or career. But keeping many of those students attracted to such subjects is proving a challenge. "Tying education to the workforce needs is critical to the future of the nation," said STEMconnector CEO Edie Fraser at a town hall event Wednesday announcing the release of the report. Science and engineering careers are expected to grow more than 20 percent by 2018, twice the rate of the overall U.S. labor force.

Engineering For Kids featured on MarieClaire.com

The article showcased Engineering for Kids' founder Dori Robert's background and concept inception story.  The article included research about females working in different industries to show the impact female engineers can make in the future.  In addition, the story included franchising information and how many locations are planned in 2013.

Where Our Future Female Engineers Are
By Kate Schweitzer

Who runs the world? If you were to ask, say, Beyoncé, it's an emphatic "GIRLS!" And she's right. Women have made incredible strides in the workplace in the past 50 years, and the fairer sex has even broken down the barriers of many historically male-dominated fields, like law and business. For instance, this was a record-breaking year for the Fortune 500, with 18 female CEOs now running the nation's largest corporations, up from 12 in 2011. The same growing trend exists in medicine, where now nearly half of all first-year medical students are women.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the rise in female scientists and engineers. Of recent college graduates earning an engineering degree, only 17 percent were female, which happened to be a 15-year low. The field is yet to be run by girls, but one women is trying to do something about it.

Dori Roberts is the founder of Engineering for Kids, a Virginia-based franchise that offers after-school programs, summer camps, and field trips to help children — with a special focus on girls — develop math and science skills. We spoke to Roberts, 38, about starting her own business and finding new ways to bring the engineering field to the kids' table.



Click here to read the entire article.