波音副总裁Richard Stephens在众院研究与科学教育委员会 ...

Three key actions are necessary to ensure that we have enough scientists and engineers to
meet future needs: 1) Successfully graduate all (or at least a lot more of) those who enter
colleges and universities; 2) Ensure colleges and universities produce enough qualified
secondary teachers for science, math and technology; and 3) Motivate our youth to
pursue STEM-related careers that provide great pay, deliver on the promise of
challenging and fun work, and create the future.
About that third point, let’s face it: If you ask children what they want to be when they
grow up, how often do you hear “I want to be an engineer”? First of all, many of them
think engineers run trains. And those who do know what engineers are think they are like
the nerds on the TV show, “The Big Bang Theory.” We can fund all the public service
announcements we want, but the sad truth is: If kids just don’t see scientists and
engineers as something they can and want to be (and if parents reinforce that perception),
they simply won’t go down that path.
Let me discuss what I think we can do to implement the three actions.

First: Successfully graduate all (or at least a lot more of) those who enter colleges
and universities
At Boeing, we cultivate close relationships with 150 colleges and universities in the U.S.
and around the world. We see the best students and hire the best talent possible. Two
years ago, Boeing initiated a unique project to correlate work performance scores of
engineers to the higher-education institutions from which our top-performing employees
graduated. We have assigned a Boeing executive to partner with each institution to help
us understand (1) general characteristics of programs that produce high-performing
STEM workers and (2) how we can work together to further improve their students’
readiness to enter the STEM workforce.
Although we hire graduates from many other institutions, we focus our active recruiting
on our company portfolio of these high-potential institutions—many of which have
increased their retention rates of students who enter engineering programs from 50
percent to greater than 80 percent. All of their successful programs feature the same key
ingredients: From the time a student steps on campus, he or she is pulled into a group of
students; as part of this cohort has direct interaction with a professor who wants to see
this team succeed; and performs hands-on work, starting as a freshman.
Let me give you some good examples of these successes:
• At Columbia University, engineering students must do a hands-on communityservice
project; they must design and implement something of value to the
community—a wireless network, for example.
• At the University of Southern California, engineering students attend core classes
with the same group of 50 peer students and are assigned to an energetic professor
who can relate to them and help them get through their critical first year.
• Many institutions today—including New Mexico State University, Northwestern
University, the University of Southern California, and the University of
Washington—offer bridge programs to freshmen minority or disadvantaged
students. These programs help the students make a smooth transition to collegelevel
academics, establish stable study and homework groups, attend academic
workshops, take remedial or prerequisite classes that may not have been offered at
their high schools, learn about STEM professions, gain work-study experiences,
identify learning resources, and engage with the academic community. All of
these activities significantly help with retention. Unfortunately, some of these
programs have lost private funding from companies that are not faring well during
the economic downturn.
• Most aerospace companies offer both internships (in which students—typically
college juniors but sometimes sophomores—work at a company for 12 to 14
weeks during the summer months) or cooperative education programs (in which
students typically work three industrial periods prior to their graduation). These
programs enable students to demonstrate their skills, stretch their capabilities
beyond their current level, increase their knowledge of their chosen fields, and
experience what it’s like to work in a company. Companies, in turn, are able to

temporarily “hire” and evaluate talented students and later retain those with the
right skills as full-time employees.
The U.S. has long been recognized as having many of the best colleges and universities
in the world. By focusing on improving students’ engagement in their freshman year with
hands-on experiences and caring faculty, we can further improve even the best systems.
The second action: Ensure U.S. colleges and universities produce enough qualified
secondary teachers for science, math, and technology
Our college and university system also prepares our teachers for primary and secondary
education. But, by nearly every count, there are not enough qualified teachers to teach
math and science in secondary schools. Many who teach STEM classes lack degrees in
the fields they teach. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 58 percent of
middle-school math teachers and 68 percent of middle-school science teachers are not
proficient or certified in these subjects.
Math and science are hierarchical learning processes—meaning you have to learn them in
stages, one step at a time, before you can move on successfully to the next step. When
teachers anywhere along the way are neither proficient nor inspiring, too many of our
young people miss foundational instruction, fall hopelessly behind and lose interest in
science and math before they really have a chance to find out if they could be good at
these subjects. What’s more, the cost of remedial education (that is, trying to improve the
skills of behind-the-curve students enough for them to grasp college-level STEM
subjects) is very high compared to getting it right the first time.
Most colleges and universities that produce the lion’s share of teachers have both
education and engineering schools. The best higher-education institutions are finally
beginning to focus on working together to ensure that teachers who graduate from college
are in fact also wonderful scientists and engineers. “Rising Above the Gathering Storm,”
with its focus on 10,000 teachers and 10 million minds, did a great job laying out the
actions needed to improve teacher quality and effectiveness at the primary and secondary
school levels.
And finally, the third—and maybe most critical—action: Motivate our youth to
pursue STEM-related careers
I know today’s hearing focuses primarily on the undergraduate and graduate levels of
STEM education. But if we cannot get enough students interested in going into the
undergraduate STEM curriculums, we will fail in meeting the needs of business,
government, and our economy. The underlying cause of the STEM-worker shortage starts
way before college. What you learn first sticks with you; that is certainly true for how
you think of math, engineering and science—and whether you’re inclined to learn these
subjects. Just as children whose parents read to them at a young age tend to do better as
they progress through school and into adulthood, children whose imaginations are
sparked by someone who reveals the possibilities of math or science tend to gravitate

toward STEM-related interests. How can we expect that to happen more when so many
parents are intimidated by math and science?
Unless and until we can show our young people that STEM specialties are important and
fun—and pay well—the United States will continue to bleed human potential:
• According to the Department of Education: Of nearly 4 million children who start
pre-school in the United States each year, only about 25 percent of them go on to
complete basic Algebra in junior high, only about 20 percent are still interested in
STEM subjects by the 8th grade, only 16 percent are still interested in STEM
subjects by the 12th grade, only 9 percent declare a STEM major at the
undergraduate level, only 4.5 percent actually graduate with a STEM-related
degree, and only 1.7 percent graduate with an engineering degree. These figures
are disproportionately worse for minority and female students. And, by the way—
a topic for another day—1.2 million (or more than one-fourth) of those nearly 4
million children drop out of school altogether before they complete the 12th grade,
though a majority of these eventually return to obtain diplomas or equivalents
such as the GED. These trends are consistent year over year. [See Attachment A]
• Meanwhile, U.S. students ages 15 to 17 rank 19th in the world in STEM criticalthinking
skills, as measured by the Programme for International Student
Assessment test. The number of engineering degrees awarded in this country is
down 20 percent from 1985; that year, the percentage of undergraduates earning
degrees in engineering fields peaked at 7.83 percent. It has declined most years
since then. The United States graduates approximately 70,000 engineers each
year, with only 44,000 eligible for aerospace careers, according to the AIA.
To reverse these abysmal trends, we first have to get more American children interested
in math and science; then we have to keep them interested. And it must start with their
perception of technology careers.
Where do children get their view of science and technology? A Kaiser Family
Foundation study released January 20, 2010, indicates that young people ages 8 to 18 are
directly engaged with the media (TV, movies and computers), mobile devices, and video
games an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes a day—in other words, more time than they
typically spend in school. And there’s a correlation between media use and grades: While
the study did not seek to establish a cause-and-effect relationship, it reports that about
half of heavy media users (the 21 percent of young people who consume more than 16
hours of media a day) reported getting lower grades (mostly Cs or lower), while only
about a quarter of light users (the 17 percent of young people who consume less than 3
hours of media a day) reported getting lower grades.
Who has young people’s attention? It’s clear that media in all its various new forms has a
huge impact on the perspectives, attitudes and behavior of our youth. Take a look at the
video “2 million minutes,” and you’ll see what we are up against when it comes to

educating our children compared to other nations who want to be leaders in the
marketplace.
In movies and on TV, 10 percent of characters are scientists and engineers.
Unfortunately, of those, more than 70 percent kill others, are killed or are overcome by
lay people. In the real world, however, scientists and engineers are the very people who
create solutions for all that humans do in connecting people—whether by air, rail, car, or
sea. They are the people who ensure that we have water, electricity, and gas. They are the
people who create the devices that deliver the media that everyone clamors for. They are
also the people who create artificial hearts and vaccines for H1N1. Scientists and
engineers create the future. And they are real people. But if our media sends the wrong
message, young people get the wrong view and don’t want to be like most of the
scientists and engineers they see on TV and in the movies.
In part to counter these misleading images, the Aerospace Industries Association has
begun taking steps toward bringing together academia, government, industry, and media
to strengthen the future workforce. Our Workforce Steering Committee, for example, is
in the process of tackling one of the biggest barriers—the perception of the STEM
disciplines. AIA and Boeing are collaborating with the Entertainment Industries Council
(EIC), whose mission is to support accurate depictions of how engineers and scientists
are portrayed in mainstream media. For the past 27 years, the EIC has played a critical
role in shaping people’s perspectives about smoking, seat belts (you remember the crashdummy
commercials) and mental illness, just to name a few. Boeing is providing
scientific and technological expertise through a number of our engineers who are directly
engaged with EIC to ensure that writers, directors and actors know what engineers and
scientists do in real-world situations. These outstanding engineers have volunteered to
help advance positive images of engineers and help develop creative storylines. Positive
media influence will generate a huge impact on parents and children—and on those who
would be our future teachers, scientists, and engineers.
Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I thank you for your attention to this
important subject and appreciate your sense of urgency about it. If we in the United
States hope to retain our nation’s leadership in science, technology and innovation, we
must immediately address the looming STEM skills gap.
At the recommendation of the Aerospace Industries Association and its members, please
consider these actions to strengthen undergraduate and graduate education:
• First, encourage and expand scholarships and other forms of financial aid as well
as retention programs for undergraduate STEM students.
• Second, encourage and incentivize the preparation of STEM-certified primary and
secondary-school teachers.
• Third, help motivate our youth to pursue STEM-related careers by enhancing
support for two- and four-year institutions that provide students with hands-on
experience that is directly transferable to the workplace.
• And fourth, motivate the media, parents, and teachers to provide a positive view
of STEM careers.

I want also to emphasize the importance of measuring the impact of our investments in
STEM education. Right now the AIA is doing an inventory of our company programs to
assess the impact of our investments by the first quarter of 2010. We are also working to
coordinate this process with other industries through a STEM Coalition of Coalitions. We
encourage the federal government to also considering measuring the impact of its
investment in STEM education programs and scaling up those that show positive
outcomes. The Business Higher Education Forum has developed a model that can help
identify where we can strategically invest to make a difference to improve the STEM
pipeline.
We must cultivate and diligently attract talented young people who will become the
scientists, engineers, and technical professionals that keep the United States economically
competitive, our aerospace industry innovative and our national security strong.
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ehlers and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity
to testify before this important panel.
[END]

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