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

• STEM funding is way up in California under Governor Jerry Brown, a point surely to be noted at the STEM Solutions meeting.
• On the other hand, career and technical education seems to be on the chopping block. Big mistake, given its key role in resurgent US manufacturing activities (see next).

The Job Market

• Manufacturing, if you haven't noticed, is back. And it's going digital in all kinds of fascinating ways.
• Wal-Mart is both a leading retailer and STEM employer.
• As nearly all these lists show, the top jobs are nearly all STEM jobs.

Arts and STEM

• See electrons spinning, move through a brain at work, hear blood density levels as music. The magic school bus? No, the AlloSphere.
• Future Tense, a cool academic/non-profit tie-up, takes a look at STEM v. STEAM debates, more interesting than most such.

Diversity

• Datanauts lead the way towards breaking through the gender barrier at NASA.
• Good infographic and capsule brief in favor of mentoring, from Julie Kantor, one of the clearest voices on the topic.
• Garrison Keillor's got it wrong. It's not the children, it's all the men who are above average. At least in their own minds, when it comes to STEM skills. Hilarious, and easy to believe.

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.