SUMMARY KEYWORDS
stem, students, critical thinking, problem, solving, people, practices, faculty, science, stem education, teach, teaching, faculty member, educators, study, creative, scientists, research, makerspaces, create
SPEAKERS
Steve Pearlman
Steve Pearlman 00:01
I'm just back from keynoting, the Louisiana stem Association Summit down in Baton Rouge. And I gotta say, I couldn't have had a greater time with the people there. Everyone was so welcoming and gracious and enthusiastic. And I really need to say thank you to Clint Coleman and the board of directors for inviting me down to that wonderful experience. And I have to say, I have been to a lot of different conferences of this nature. But what I found so inspiring about this one in particular, was the amount of energy and enthusiasm in Louisiana for new initiatives and proactive ideas to make stem accessible to everybody to make it exciting and interesting for all kids, and to create a pipeline from kindergarten all the way through to careers in order to invigorate not just STEM education, but stem itself in the state, the number of initiatives and the commitment that I experienced there is really inspiring. So for whatever it's worth more power to you, Louisiana in what you're doing down there. And thank you, again for allowing me to be a part and make a contribution to that wonderful event, and to your overall initiatives with respect to stem. It's because in fact that I'm coming off of that event, and all of the enthusiasm around it that I feel so compelled to talk about STEM education right now. And the first thing I need to say about STEM very briefly, but very clearly is simply that when people are surveyed about what scientists are and what scientists look like the vast majority, depending upon the study, maybe two thirds or three quarters of people, especially children still still say that scientists look like old white guys with gray hair and lab coats. And we obviously not only need to change that, because most scientists don't wear lab coats. And science takes all kinds of forms in the world. But of course, also because we need to make sure that people understand that scientists are people of all genders, and ethnicities. And it's so important that they see that because obviously, we want children to see that no matter who they are and what they look like and where they're coming from. There are people who look like them who came from where they are, who are doing science, we cannot afford in any way to leave some children behind who otherwise might have become magnificent scientists and help us solve some of the crises we're facing in the world, or at least create a new and exciting innovation that just makes our lives a little better or a little happier, because they didn't understand that people who look like them, or people who are just like them, in certain ways are people who are scientists. And this is research that's dating all the way back into the 1950s. And though there is a trend line that is obviously moving in the right direction, compared to how people were surveyed about it in the 50s, it certainly hasn't moved enough for my taste. And I don't think the taste of anybody who's listening to this podcast. But there's something else I need to talk about that I think is even more impactful in an immediate sense toward discussion about STEM education, and something that's a wake up call to STEM Educators everywhere. And first of all, if you're not a stem educator, I think that you're going to find this podcast still compelling and filled with some information that will effect your teaching. But if you are a stem educator, I hope this is a podcast that will strike deep within you and provoke and inspire some ways that you might rethink some of your teaching and rethink the mission of your department and rethink the mission of your school with respect to stem. And so if you know other STEM Educators and you find this podcast valuable, please ask them to listen, because I think there's something very important here. And the point I want to lead off with the point that I think is so important. The point that I think we really have to consider in academia as a whole and certainly for anyone in the STEM field is that when lay people are asked about creativity and they're asked what kinds of people are creative, their answers invariably gravitate in large percentages, in fact, nearly entirely to artists, to painters, sculptors, poets, but they almost never mentioned scientists. Science is not perceived to be a creative endeavor. Scientists are not perceived to be creative people and lay people will say this while sitting in a room lighted by a light bulb that Edison created and invented out of an idea in his head. They will say this having hopefully been vaccinated needed and vaccinated because someone, somewhere was creative enough to come up with the idea that we could use mRNA to deliver vaccines, they will say this on a survey on their computer where someone had created out of nothing, the idea of a microchip, the idea of a flat screen, the idea of an internet, Al Gore, you know who I'm talking about. And there is some mitigating hope around that. And the mitigating hope. If we look, for example, at one study, Honeywell at aisle 2018, which is that if they put examples of science next to examples of art, that people when specifically looking at those examples next to each other, will recognize that science can be just as innovative, and creative and exciting as art. Are you telling me up with a time machine?
05:55
Have a DeLorean the way I see it. If you're going to build a time machine into a car, why not deal with some style.
Steve Pearlman 06:00
But that only gives us so much hope because of course, they need to be prompted into that they don't naturally associate science with creativity. And before I talk about why that is, I think we also have to recognize the opportunity costs of that because if people especially children are perceiving science to be this more conservative, non innovative, non creative venture, if they feel that it's stuffy and flat, then people with creative drives children with creative drives, who might otherwise excel in the sciences, in finding cures and inventing technologies, and so on and so forth, they might never consider how they could contribute to the world through stem, because they might feel because they are so creative, that they don't want to be involved in such a stuffy field. And that is something that costs us all dearly. Our world needs artists. And I'm certainly not suggesting that scientists are better than artists. But I am suggesting, and I think it's imperative that if we're losing people who might otherwise be turned on by the sciences, and excited about the sciences, because they don't think their creativity would be valued, and they're not considering the option of going into STEM fields, then we're doing them a disservice. And we're hurting our future moving forward. So now let's unpack why that is. Why is the perception of science that it is a non creative enterprise, when obviously, it's such an amazingly creative enterprise? To answer that, we have to look at how STEM is being taught. And the unfortunate reality through so many studies that have been done on this studies upon studies upon meta analyses show that on the whole STEM education is typically taught through rote experimentation, canned experiments, canned exercises, where all of the pieces of the process are potentially already laid out for the student, or if not all of the pieces, then at least most of the pieces of the process. And so students are effectively given a set of materials and given a series of steps. And they follow through those steps and those materials and they record their findings or what have you. But the end result of that is an experience for the student that communicates that stem practices are not creative endeavors, even though the students will understand conceptually that of course, someone invented the cell phone that's in their pocket STEM is nevertheless not thought of and not experienced by the students as something that's born with creativity and innovation. And that brings us to the driving question that we need to ask of STEM Educators? Do we want to create people who understand science? Or do we want to create scientists? Do we want to create people who can do some science? Or do we want to create scientists, if we want to create scientists, and I hope we do, and by scientists, I'm including engineers and mathematicians, if we want to create stem folk who are going to create the next wave of innovation, that then we have to rethink the practices by which we are indoctrinating them into their conception of science and STEM in the first place. And there are other consequences of this the fact that scientists are perceived to be non creative and the fact that STEM classes often depend so much on rote experimentation and rote learning and rote experiences through stem. The consequence is, although this will seem counter intuitive to many people, stem people don't necessarily translate what they do in science out into problem solving in the real world. For example, the 2018 Global Skills Gap Report found that science and engineering graduates cannot translate what they learned in school into real world problem solving. And there's other research on this. The 2012 National Research Council report found that science and engineering graduates are not better at overall problem solving. They And I'm not suggesting at all that STEM students should be better problem solvers than history students, literature, students, or business students. And that's because I think education should teach all students to be exceptional problem solvers. And we have problems that are historical, and we have problems that are social, we have problems that are cultural, we have problems with our justice system, we need problem solvers in all realms of our existence. But I'm using this to push back against the idea. And the perception that I think is very widely held, especially among people within STEM, that stem practices, in terms of academia naturally translate into having people be problem solvers and innovators. So the beginning part of this problem, therefore, is the nature of a rote experimentation of rote practices of rote experiences, students in STEM are experiencing. And that brings me to another facet of the challenge. And another facet of the challenge is that STEM Educators and even just people who think about STEM believe that STEM is naturally associated with the development of critical thinking. And it must also therefore be creating to a certain extent, people who are also creative and innovative because certainly innovation and creativity and divergent thinking are parts of what critical thinking involves. But if we look, for example, at some of the research, and there's so many studies on this that affirm basically the same message that I'm communicating to, but I'm going to read for a second from a literature review of critical thinking and engineering education by a Hearn Dominguez McNally O'Sullivan and petrosa. In 2019, in Studies in Higher Education, referencing a number of other researchers, these researchers, right, critical thinking skills may be developed through teaching interventions, for example, case studies, problem based learning, argumentative debates, et cetera, but still require further development. Interventions that develop critical thinking dispositions have been given less attention, possibly due to the complexity and addressing intrinsic characteristics, such as student motivation, personalities, etc. There is a clear need for methods that show how these dispositions can be promoted and developed more systematically in engineering students in a continuous way. In other words, what they're saying is, there are practices that can improve critical thinking and stem, but they're not given enough attention. And that's because they're perceived to create a more complex educational venture for everyone involved, as they talk about personalities and motivation. And most importantly, they eventually go on also to talk about the need for assessment. Quote, one of the biggest challenges for educators is how to evaluate the students critical thinking level is there's little consensus on how it should be measured. Designing an assignment method for critical thinking requires a careful collaboration of various specialists of domain content and psychometrics of university. Each plays a distinct role in ensuring that the evaluation method is valid, reliable and connects to key principles of undergraduate education. This is supported by Dwyer, Hogan, and Stuart, who notes that there is little clarity in the relationship between how critical thinking is taught with how it is assessed, and quote, and that is something that not only just holds true for STEM classes, it holds true for all classes. But within STEM, the particular problem I think, is the tacit understanding of STEM is something that does foster critical thinking. And as related back to my initial point, the lack of those critical thinking practices, and assessments contribute to the idea that STEM is not something that's creative. And in a few minutes, I will talk about the amazing power of involving some kinds of other practices in STEM, even down to research that's been conducted on how it can affect students brain development in short periods of time. But before I get to that, I want to give an example of where the concept of critical thinking and stem breaks down. And I'm not picking on STEM in this, as I've made it very clear on the podcast, in almost every podcast, the teaching of critical thinking breaks down in every discipline, if we do not put certain things in alignment, and the research tells us that those things are not in alignment often enough to say the least. And to talk about this going to reference an article from 2021. So this was a study that was just done really, its title is a detailed characterization of the expert problem solving process in science and engineering, guidance for teaching and assessment. It's by price Kim Burkholder, Fritz and Wyman and it's a good article and it's important research. And in fact, I think it's an article that anyone to Jing stem might be interested to read. So I'll even say the title. Again, it's a detailed characterization of the expert problem solving process in science and engineering guidance for teaching and assessment. And to make a very long story short, what the researchers did is that they conducted a series of layered and careful interviews with STEM folk asking them about how they go about problem solving. And their goal was to create some kind of understanding of how experts in their fields go about solving problems. And therefore being able to see that and use that as some kind of model to work with students on how to solve problems, or at least some kind of understanding that can influence education. And I want to reiterate again, how important this research is. And I concur with the author's when they write, the importance of problem solving as an educational outcome has long been recognized. But too often post secondary science and engineering graduates have serious difficulties when confronted with real world problems. And they're referencing Quacquarelli Simon's in 2018. This reflects two long standing educational problems with regard to problem solving, how to properly measure it, and how to effectively teach it. So they're recognizing this problem, and they're venturing off into this research in order to try to help resolve it. And by the end of their research, the researchers feel as though they've achieved some meaningful things with respect to advancing the teaching of problem solving and its assessment in education. And I'll tell you what they found in a moment, but first, they write in their conclusions that the set of decisions we have observed provides a general framework for characterizing, analyzing and teaching science and engineering problem solving. These decisions likely define much of the set of cognitive skills students need to practice and master to perform as a skilled practitioner in science and engineering. And they go on to say, measurements of individual problem solving expertise based on our decision list. And the associated discipline specific predictive frameworks will allow a detailed measure of an individual's discipline specific problem solving strengths and weaknesses relative to an established expert. And that sounds great, it sounds absolutely great, because it seems as though they figured out what the experts do and figured out a way to effectively reverse engineer that into teaching practice, which in one sense, is absolutely critical. And to a certain extent, what they did, I think, should inform how we go about teaching STEM students, not just those in science and engineering, but stem overall, but here's the problem pedagogy will resume in just a moment. But first, if you're a high school, college or graduate school educator, then I'd like to offer you a full free preview of my online level one critical thinking program for students. I actually develop this program because so many educators have asked me for a way to jumpstart their students critical thinking skills. This program, which is approximately a three hour student experience does the following. It teaches your students three essential mindsets for thinking critically, it teaches them a copyrighted neurobiological process for thinking critically about any subject in any discipline. And then it does something particularly distinct, it prompts students through a step by step process in which they actually compose a very short essay entirely driven by their own critical thinking. Students can complete this program outside of class with no impact on your class time, and you can see the final product when they're done. I think you'll find this to be an exceptional program for your students. But whether you assign it or not, I'm confident that it will be an asset to you in terms of infusing critical thinking in your own approach to teaching. So provided you're an educator, I'd be excited to grant you a free preview of this program, please just come to the critical thinking initiative.org/podcasts Sign up with a.edu email address. Or if you don't have a.edu email address, just email info at the critical thinking initiative.org with confirmation that you're an educator. Again, please just come to the critical thinking initiative.org/podcasts and sign up for a free preview of the entire program. Please make sure you either sign up with a.edu email address or email me at info at the critical thinking initiative.org with other confirmation that you're an educator and I'd be excited to grant you free access to a program preview. And for everyone who's listening. Please remember to like and share pedagogy. Find the critical thinking initiative on Facebook and LinkedIn and follow me on Twitter at at Steve J. Perlman. That's at Steve J. Perlman now back to headed Goji but here's the problem there interviews whittled The complexity of masterful problem solving and stem down to 29 different variables, those 29 variables appear within five different categories. The categories are selection and goals framing the problem, plan process for problem solving, interpret and choose solutions reflect, and then implications and communicate results. And the 29 factors that they came to. And I will not read all of them involve things like what is important in the field, goals, criteria constraints, how to narrow down the problem related problems, potential solutions, how to represent and organize information, how believable is information, and so on. And these are all things that experts in STEM consider when they are contending with a problem. In other words, these are the things going on in the minds of experts stem people when they tackle a problem. But I think the problem with this is pretty clear, right?
20:59
Is that clear, Mr. Bender, are still good.
Steve Pearlman 21:03
If we tell students, then an expert in the field is going to consider how to decompose a problem into subproblems. That's nice for them to know. But they still don't know how to do that. Now, one thing that shows us that they need certainly, and something that does not happen in STEM very much, and it does not happen in any education very much is for educators to be models. In other words, for them to see us going through our problem solving practice, and work with us in solving problems in our fields, whatever that was fields are, there are problems in history, there are problems in criminal justice, there are problems in business, and they should see us work our way through problems. And we should model the things that we think about and how we approach it. So this is unquestionably valuable in that if students perhaps had someone who is being a model for them, These might be things that we could tell students to look for. But it's not necessarily something that we can teach a student to do in the way I think that it's being represented in this article. Again, good article, go read it fascinating work, and should influence our perception of how to teach STEM, and certainly establishes a contrast between the vibrancy of what STEM experts do versus the comparatively pale experience that so many students have in STEM education. But in the final analysis, in terms of critical thinking, I don't think that this study really helps us very much, because it's not offering a way to teach students how to do these things. And even if it did, even if we had a way to teach students to do each of the 29 things listed, or at least maybe just more broadly, each of the five categories, it doesn't offer us a way to assess it. And if we're not assessing it, then how do we really know if students are doing it. And again, I do not support so many traditional forms of assessment, I do support the idea that we need authentic assessments of critical thinking. Now, we'll come back to that in a moment. But these 29 things are not that, in fact, critical thinking is the thing that functionalize is an actual analyzes so many of the things on this list, if we take number eight, the need for potential solutions, or we take number six, how to narrow down the problem, or we take number 27 looks at broader implications. All those things are driven by the students the capacity to think critically. But we're This study also is doing something very important is that at least it's making an effort to try to understand how to explicitly contend with the idea of critical thinking and problem solving and stem. And the reason I say that is that one of the newer and emerging challenges to critical thinking and STEM is something that might seem like a counterintuitive problem. And that's the emergence of so many makerspaces and ideal labs and innovation labs and X labs, and robotics labs and so forth, that are involving students in the creation of things with the idea being that if they are building a robot, they must also be thinking critically. And certainly they are in the process of reiterating a design for a robot and refining it that they must be thinking critically. And so before I sound like a total idiot, who would argue against robotics labs and X labs, he's a very strange young man. He's an idiot comes from upbringing. Parents are probably idiots do, let me make it clear that I think we need more of them. But we also have to understand a distinction. And it's a distinction I continuously point out on the podcast. And that's the one between what it is to do something that involves thinking and the teaching of critical thinking, involving students in something that involves thinking is not teaching them to be better critical thinkers. The goal is that we do hope to strengthen their minds in certain ways, of course, and these makerspaces probably do that. In fact, again, I'll point to some research about how powerful some minor interventions can be in brain development. But what these makerspaces are, are effectively what's known as immersion approaches to the teaching of critical thinking. Immersion approaches work from the idea, as I said that if we immerse students in a thinking rich environment, or in some kind of experience, where thinking is involved, that they will become better critical thinkers. And unfortunately, the research suggests otherwise immersive practices for teaching critical thinking, don't teach critical thinking. That's not to say that the students don't do any thinking. It's again, to understand the distinction between having students do something that might involve thought and teaching them how to think better. But if we return to the original problem, which is the lack of perception of STEM as being a creative endeavor, then we certainly have to laud makerspaces and X labs as changing that perception. Because it's allowing students to get in there outside of rote experimentation, and get involved in hands on ways that are creative, and innovative, and divergent, and material and exciting. But with caveats, one of which is that I believe we need to be very careful with these makerspaces. And I haven't seen any research on this yet, but I'm looking for it to come out about giving students the perception that innovation in STEM only takes place when they're building something material. And that STEM is only interesting or fun when they're actually building a robot. The second caveat is that we have to understand that many of the problems that stem needs to tackle in the world have nothing to do with building the material thing or doing something material in the maker lab sense of that. While these things are great. We don't want to narrow students conception of problem solving and thinking into only how to build a better thing, or only how to do something differently with a laser. And that's so important because we have to have students understand that so many of the world's problems are never going to be solved with a thing. And that's why we need to have them learn problem solving and critical thinking in such ways that they can translate it not only into other STEM practices where thing isn't the result, but also where they can go out into the world where a thing is never going to solve a lot of the problems they face in real life. So we need to have them also be able to think about problems in other ways. But with that said, I certainly now want to talk about the power of changing STEM education around critical thinking, and allowing students the space to be creative and critical thinkers in that process and how much power it can have. For example, I have to talk about this study. It's titled changes in brain activation induced by the training of hypothesis generation skills, and fMRI study, what they found was fascinating. They took two groups of students, one group was called hypothesis understanding students. And these are students who over the course of two months, were told a hypothesis to us by an instructor as they went on to do experiments or what have you. Whereas a second group of students called the hypothesis generating students were taught how to develop their own hypotheses, those students had to think more for themselves, they had to come up with their own hypotheses for what they were going to do. Well get this, the group that had to develop their own hypotheses showed positive changes in their brains after just two months of doing so. After just two months, their brains changed relative to the other students, because they had to do more critical thinking. So if you're a stem educator, or any educator, and you want to understand how much effect our practices can have, not just if we look abstractly at whether or not a student can think critically or solve a problem, but very materially, biologically, at their brains. This is such a great example of that. And there are so many practices and pedagogies that are available in STEM and outside of STEM to reinforce this kind of brain growth and to reinforce critical thinking. There's problem based learning and mastery learning and case studies and so forth. But they all have to have a critical thinking practice, they have to have a definition that's explicit, they have to have explicit training and critical thinking, and their critical thinking has to be explicitly assessed. If those things don't happen, then those other practices will fall short of their goals. But those pedagogies are nevertheless available, but with a cautionary tale, a very important cautionary tale. And this cautionary tale is in reference to the book, improving how universities teach science lessons from the science education initiative by Karl Wyman, very briefly, why men who was involved in STEM and so forth, recognized very clearly in talking also with people in the tech field who wanted better graduates that STEM education was not doing what it needed to do, and with a whole bunch of money The millions of dollars, he set out the science education initiative and went to transform how STEM would be taught at a couple of different universities. From what I can tell from reading the text, I think a lot of what they did was exactly on the right track in the sense that they emphasize problem based learning and other kinds of pedagogies that are more closely associated with the growth of critical thinking and better stem outcomes. Overall, there was millions of dollars for faculty incentives, course releases, faculty development training, they not only hired people on every campus to help these educators, they actually hired science education specialists to work directly with faculty members in revising courses, they got faculties together to talk about their practices, they did lots of very impactful, very important things. What they found were some interesting things, in fact, and I think these apply to all educators, they were very let down to find out that presenting faculty members with educational data about what practices might be better, and why they might work better. And all the research around that actually had very little effect on their willingness to change. And change was much more brought about by personal stories from other faculty members who tried things and were willing to pass that information along. I think that's a shame because I think if we are academics, we all have to be data driven. And we have to look to research to change our practice, and not rely on what we've done as an indicator of what we should be doing not rely on how we were taught as an exemplar of how we should teach. But the greater outcome here I don't think is very encouraging, actually, with millions of dollars invested with science, education specialists at hand, with all of those things in place, they still found significant resistance by the faculty to change. Now, not across the board, some faculty certainly did change, and it dependent upon in part, the university, the University of Colorado, and University of British Columbia, they right University of British Columbia statistics is a very small department with corresponding low level of sei support, but which they have used to good effect. And they say that 90% of the faculty have changed their teaching. And there have been a few senior faculty who made major changes in their teaching. And the result has been a general overall change and how the faculty in that department teach and talk about teaching. So we have a small department of statistics, but they made great changes on the whole and really had sort of a cultural shift within the department. That's wonderful. On the other hand, in the Colorado University chemistry, only 15% of regular instructional faculty made any changes in their teaching. And only half of those were tenure track faculty. The failure here was, again, the lack of faculty willing to participate. And that lack of willingness among faculty to participate is quite a problem. And there are some very good reasons for that. Let's be clear, faculty might be very concerned about trying new things with respect to course evaluations, even though part of this initiative was to get the university to recognize that things were changing and therefore not hold negative course evaluations against the faculty members in the process. But there are also other institutional constraints on faculty, for example, faculty who had to publish a great deal of might not have wanted to spend as much time devoted to rethinking their teaching, when getting published was much more important for their survival at the university, the advancement of their department or their own promotion. So I don't want to on categorically castigate any individual faculty member for not making a significant effort to change, do I think ultimately, they should have? Yes, of course. But must we also recognize that there can be some material challenges and institutional challenges to that? Yeah, I think we can recognize that as well, to be fair, but overall, three very interesting things were discovered through this. One, even with tremendous resources and information at their disposal and the support of the University, many faculty still did not change, despite being confronted with research based information and even information from their colleagues, that there might be better ways to approach their craft and the education of the students in their care. The second is that even where individual faculty changed, there often was not seem to be wholesale change within the department. Some of the results would show that one faculty member might change a course. But then if another faculty member taught that same course, the other faculty member might teach it in the more traditional way. So there wasn't necessarily really a departmental shift. And therefore the experience for the students, though potentially great when they got to some of the courses that had truly been revised, there were not necessarily truly deep changes for the students. The third challenge I think, with this outcome from this study is this, though faculty reported better teaching and those students often reported enjoying some of the newer practices more and getting more from it. This study did not report material outcomes in terms have critical thinking ability or other things, those things were not measured. There aren't metrics. That's not to say there weren't changes in those outcomes. But it's also not to say that there were, we simply don't know, I would love to presume that faculty who took on problem based learning and changed their teaching practices in certain ways, according to research with the science education specialists, really did improve outcomes as well, I hope that's the case. But it's also true, for example, in the case of critical thinking that we can do problem based learning, which might benefit students on a lot of levels and with respect to how much they engage material and the depth of their learning and the retention of that material. But with respect to critical thinking, there might be no growth in critical thinking from problem based learning or any other pedagogy. Unless, again, it's explicitly defined, it's explicitly taught, it's modeled, and it's assessed. And so where does all of this leave us, we have the initial problem that I think is very compelling, and really should drive us viscerally to want to change, which is the lack of perception of STEM as being creative, and innovative, and divergent, we have the fact that it's taught primarily through rote methods. And even when it's becoming more innovative, taught often by immersion methods for critical thinking. And we have the false assumption that stem naturally begets problem solving ability, when the research doesn't bear that out. Finally, again, we had the issue that even when afforded virtually every opportunity in the world, to change their practices, many faculty resisted it and didn't when doing so clearly, by research that has been done and by word from other educators would have improved their practice and serve their students. And all of this in the face of how even just a two month shift in how to have students contend with a hypothesis actually changed and improved their brains. And by the way, there is other research that that same kind of shift can happen in any field by confronting students with wicked problems and developing critical thinking and so forth. We can do that in any field, it doesn't have to happen in STEM. But I think if there's a way to sum this all up, it's like this stem, once again, just save the world, not only through the long standing now concept of vaccines, but through innovation in vaccines that enabled vaccines for COVID 19, to be so quickly produced, and so remarkably effective. That was done by people who were innovative thinkers and creative thinkers, not just the people who created the vaccines, but people who figured out how to mass produce them, how to get them out into the world, how to transport them, how to deliver them. We don't need students to just do some science in the course of their academics. We need scientists, we don't need people who just do STEM, we need stemmers I guess, and if you feel the same way, and I would say the same thing about any field, but if you feel the same way about STEM, if you concur, if you believe that we need to take the most creative people and makes them appealing to them as well and developing them amazing problem solving and critical thinking skills that go way beyond a particular experiment and into the world. Then I say even if it's just in baby steps, let's start doing things at least a little bit differently tomorrow.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
