Excelling in STEM education will require “redefined and re-imagined” colleges of education, said USF Provost and Executive Vice President Ralph Wilcox at the Dec. 8 Board of Trustees meeting.
Increased STEM—short for science, technology, engineering and math—attainment starts in the “problematic” K-12 pipeline, he said. Florida students currently score 18 points lower on the SAT than the national average.
“We need to do a much better job of educating [and] communicating opportunities, and encouraging more and more young people to follow the path to STEM success,” he said.
USF is adapting to these challenges through research; engagement with the public schools, businesses and organizations; and through the creation of a new Master of Science in Middle Grades STEM education program at USFSP, which is slated for implementation in the fall of 2012.
The program, which will be unique in the state university system, is designed to produce math and science teachers of the fifth through ninth “middle grades.” The program plans to equip future teachers with the tools necessary to educate and inspire students toward excellence in STEM degree programs and ultimately provide the technical and scientific workers state leaders see as the future of the Florida economy.
The USFSP College of Education is primarily focused on elementary education, but this new degree builds on its success in implementing the digitally enhanced mathematics education teaching certificate program, which brings technology into the classroom as an aid to mathematics education in the middle grades.
Improving the quality of university applicants can also be achieved by working closer with the public school systems and community colleges, recruiting students and professors from outside the state and by implementing STEM summer academies for junior and senior high school students, Wilcox said.
The university was also recently awarded two major grants: the Helios Education Foundation awarded USF $430,000 for a middle school STEM residency program, and $1.2 million from the National Science Foundation to study what makes high school students interested in science and mathematics, and what might drive them away.
“Not only does [STEM] drive our high-demand, high-skilled, highly-paid workforce,” but leads to innovation and research, Wilcox said. The university has a role in the “creation of new knowledge, new technology, that will in turn create new jobs, not just in preparing students to fill jobs,” he added.
In addition to addressing the problems in K-12 education, Wilcox said the university needs to “expand the array of [science and math] programs, particularly in our regional institutions and campuses.”
USFSP currently offers five bachelor’s STEM degrees and one master’s.
Wilcox said that the challenge of implementing additional STEM programs is investment, which he said Gov. Rick Scott’s latest budget fails to address. “As we all recognize, delivery of … high-quality, competitive STEM programs is a very expensive proposition.”
One recommendation from the Board of Governors and state legislators to encourage STEM enrollment is to lower the price of tuition for these fields, Wilcox said. The problem with that scenario, he added, is that these programs would be “doomed to failure” without significant additional support from the state.
The USF system awarded 11,272 degrees in the 2010-11 academic year, with 20 percent of those degrees in STEM fields. In 2009-10, USF awarded 19 percent of the state’s STEM degrees, “a distant second” from the University of Florida, Wilcox said.
USF ranked third with 21 percent of graduate STEM degrees awarded, behind UF and the University of Central Florida. “There is room for improvement,” he said.
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