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Round-Up: STEM Solutions Out West, Digital Manufacturing, and Water Balloons

Eric Iversen

 

Look West, All STEM-minded Folks

The US News STEM Solutions National Leadership Conference meeting this week in San Diego is one of the biggest annual events in the STEM world. Speakers include above-the-STEM-fold headliners - Craig Barrett, Maria Klawe, Shirley Malcom - and the crowd is a rich mix of big and small industry, educators, and policy types. We have a booth there ourselves, number 712 on the exhibition floor. Look for more updates after the meeting with news and views.

The round-up this week highlights the return of manufacturing to the US jobs market. Arts and STEM continues to take fascinating twists and turns, California is in the spotlight, and some interesting diversity programs deserve notice. Finally, just for fun, proof once and for all that kids are born engineers; smart parents are even making money from this fact.

The Golden Bear Republic

The Job Market

Arts and STEM

Diversity

Just for Fun

In this season of water balloons, kids inspire what should be a hit item - Bunch o' Balloons, which fills up 100 water balloons in 60 seconds. Must been seen to be believed, among other kid-inspired inventions.


Eric Iversen is VP for Learning and Communications at Start Engineering. He has written and spoken widely on engineering education in the K-12 arena. You can write to him about this topic, especially when he gets stuff wrong, at eiversen@start-engineering.com

You can also follow along on Twitter @StartEngNow.

And don’t forget to take a look at our popular K-12 engineering outreach books, Start Engineering, and Dream, Invent, Create.