testing testing one two three four one two three four five six seven eight nine  theory one i'll come to order good morning and welcome to this research and science education subcommittee hearing on undergraduate and graduate education in science technology engineering and math education this is an issue that really hits close to home for me as most of you probably know i have two degrees in engineering my wife also has a degree in math and is oftentimes telling me about her experience at math camp that n funded math camp when i was using college so this is something that from personal experience i know a good amount about something that i have really focused on since have been on this committee are global competitors have started to realize the economic advantages of investing in innovation in two thousand and ten science and engineering indicators report the national science board found that asian countries are continuing to increase their r and d investment at a much higher rate than we are in the u s it won't be long before they catch up in seoul expenditures last november thomson reuters analyzed thirty years worth of data from over ten thousand scientific journals reported that china could surpass united states as world's largest producer of scientific knowledge by two thousand and twenty they've already surpassed the rest of the world in our specially good in chemistry in materials science two fields that are vital for manufacturing in two thousand and seven in science and technology committee passed america competes act to address concerns the united states is losing its global leadership position in research development and innovation one key element of the competes act and indeed the foundation of any competitiveness agenda is ensuring that we give all of our students a chance to get a high quality stem education in two thousand and seven we focused largely on supporting education at the cape to twelve level by making sure we have highly qualified stem teachers in every school this year's reauthorization of the competes act provides us with the opportunity a comprehensive look at undergraduate and graduate stem education programs and their performance given all the talk about problems them education at the katy twelve level you may be surprised to hear that a full one third of freshman entering our nation's universities intend to major in a science or engineering discipline but some critical fields like engineering or you face an on coming grac nami of retirements there is significant attrition it's very easy for engineers to leave their programs for instance to become a social scientist that's much more difficult for students to transfer into engineering without having spent their freshman year mean prerequisites in math physics and chemistry in fact only seven percent of engineering graduates did not start out in those fields in addition to the numbers there are concerns that the drift traditional way of teaching science and engineering doesn't reflect what research tells us by how students really learn i was an engineering student once myself and can relate to some of the concerns that we have heard about what's happening in the s fields or colleges and universities also know that some of these problems are not new when i was at northwestern twenty years ago i began with many more people in my engineering classes to end up graduates than ended up graduating with  candle engineering degree we certainly did see an attrition through the years i'm particularly interested in learning what the twenty first century undergraduate science and engineering classrooms should look like and whether our professors are actually imparting the kind of skills that stem graduates need to be successful in the workforce at the graduate level i want to examine how we are preparing future fact we've become good teachers here suggestions on how we can improve the teaching of pedagogical skills and to hear whether we are giving students who pursue nonacademic career path the skills they need to be successful i'm also interested in the balance between disciplinary interdisciplinary education about the undergraduate and graduate level and finally because we're working on a step reauthorization i'm particularly interested in hearing recommendations about the role the n s f can play in instigating in supporting reform efforts in higher education including the research just last week in the state of the union address the president spoke about the need to encourage american innovation i could not agree more with this i also agree with the president of the most effective ways is for innovation is improve invest in stem education this investment will allow the scientists engineers and innovators of future to build infrastructure we need to invent new technologies and products to create good paying jobs and to keep the u s economy growing so i look very much look forward to your testimony today there are ideas that i have about from when i was in  education as you probably know i spent something like twenty two years trying to do that as a faculty member at calvin college in front of michigan in the context of reauthorizing the america competes act i look forward to hearing the insights into what we are doing well which i hope is a great deal but also hearing what has to be improved and we all know that some improvement is needed this week the fiscal year two thousand and eleven budget request was released by the administration disciplinary research funding it appears to be prioritized over educational research and support for work force development well i'm still obtaining all the details of the budget that is unsettling to me but university based programs are supporting the training of stem teachers such as a math and science partnership annoys programs receive no requested funding and well the foundation would continue on the doubling track with an overall percent increase there should be some money some additional money there to improve the situation i'm sure the witnesses before us today have some thoughts on the linkages between the research and educational missions of the n s f and their testimony i believe will be very helpful to us as we evaluate the president's budget request specific to here and i look forward to their testimony you dr will have more of an opportunity in hearings coming up to discuss the budget for the upcoming year but that certainly is a an issue that is not an easy one but we know that there has been a commitment shown to innovation and education i'm very happy did that that we have done that in the last two years if there are members who wish to submit additional opening statements your statements will be added to the record at this point at this time i'd like to now introduce our witnesses first we have dr joan rooney monday who is the acting assistant director for the directorate of education and human resources at the national science foundation mr rick stevens is the senior vice president for human resources ministration at the boeing company is also the chair of the aerospace industries associat work for steering committee dr know if ingleside is an associate professor of physics at the university of colorado boulder and will skip have someone who was at michigan state university for a number of years i think slightly responsible for having your end up there because i gave her the sales pitch about what i was trying to do and she left her passages and pastors provost for graduate education at michigan state university since nine hundred ninety seven you know when you look at her you realize she must've gotten into that position as a young genius and higher educational system in preparing students in stem education she is not only an advocate for call to graduate education at him but also for improving the relationship between traditional stem departments and department of education and i might just editorialize for a minute there i think that is extremely important and every opportunity to speak to university presidents and deans have told them the most important thing they can do undergraduate and graduate science mathematics engineering and technology education the national science foundation has two roles in stem higher education one is to provide direct support to the nation's most promising student fellowships traineeships scholarships and research assistant ships and several programs across the entire foundation our flagship program is a graduate research fellowship program founded at n s f one hundred fifty at the undergraduate level for example we have the noice the robert noyce teacher scholarship program which provides prospective teachers with support for their education a second and catalyze innovation to improve them learning at the undergraduate and graduate level the course curriculum a laboratory improvement program which is being renamed as transforming undergraduate education in stem is an example of a program that does the program vision is excellent stem education for all undergraduate students fund projects that develop implement and evaluate innovative practices in undergraduate stem learning where funding projects to determine what it takes to scale up affective practices in undergraduate settings across the country some of our programs addressed both the integrated graduate education research and traineeship program provides traineeships to stem doctoral students catalyzes graduate program innovation develop research and learning opportunities to prepare tomorrow's scientists to solve interdisciplinary research problem we are also very interested in the question of how to best prepare tomorrow's scientist to be leaders in invention innovation and entrepreneurship scientists to morrow beyond their disciplinary content preparation efforts in proposals to build skills and teamwork communication to technical and non technical audiences leadership and teaching at the graduate level proposals to our undergraduate programs or exploring how to develop twenty first century skills and capacity to engage with challenging societal problems and  are aimed at improving recruitment into the stem field this includes students from groups that have been traditionally under represented and at the graduate level students are attracted by opportunities for interdisciplinary research summer work introducing them to the culture of graduate school and of course targeted scholarships and certainly help recruitment faculty to faculty connections and cultivating relationships with minority serving institutions can make a difference in bringing a diversity  of students many of the college with the intention of pursuing a stem career to other fields in their first or second year of college and there are some practices that can seem to help stem this attrition for example chance to do research with faculty internships and summer programs also help with both recruitment and retention and as up also invest in research on learning and teaching as a part of catalyzing improvement in higher education at the undergraduate level the body of work is quite robust coming through discipline based work in physics mathematics engineering chemistry and the geoscience and as well as other areas we recently have funded the national research council to undertake a comprehensive consensus study of discipline based education research in the natural sciences to build our body of knowledge further less research available about graduate learning and education and we are trying to encourage more and we are trying to encourage more work in this area recently funded projects are examining issues of interest in graduate education such as the effect of inquiry based science teaching the role of context and learning practice as a laboratory the nation must build a stem workforce that is ready for innovation and global leadership to do this we need to continually improve the effectiveness of stem education in colleges and universities for undergraduate and graduate students alike this means creating stimulating compelling opportunities for stem learning and for research and  supporting innovative initiatives to attract and prepare tomorrow's science and engineering workforce during the critical undergraduate and graduate years thank you for the opportunity to describe  company and industry help develop the future workforce today i'd like to focus on what we done at the undergraduate graduate level in the pipeline of students who enter and stay in stem disciplines we in the aerospace industry are concerned about the united states  percent of our current technical talent will be eligible retire within the next three years in the near of your very near future our companies and our nation's aerospace programs only tens of thousands of engineers in addition to those joining the workforce these are already becoming difficult jobs to fill not because there is a labor shortage but because there is a skill shortage specially in the us defense industry because many government programs  complete basic algebra in jr high school only nine percent declare a major at the undergraduate level only four point five percent actually graduate with a stem related degree and only one point graduate with an engineering degree and not all engineering degrees to the aerospace industry on a positive note certain institutions of higher education of increase the retention rates of students who enter engineering programs to greater than eighty percent successful programs typically feature similar key ingredients in the time a student steps on campus he or she is pulled into a group of students or as part of this cohort has direct interaction professors wants to see his displayed now children whose imaginations are smart someone who reveals the possibility then to gravitate towards more related interests if you look in the pipeline that shows what we start with roughly four potential area to focus more research resources be applied the america i think one of the most important elements is that in the media about ten percent of the characters are portrayed as scientists or engineers but all of those about seventy percent are negatively portrayed negatively influences children that spend seven hours and thirty eight minutes every day engaged in media according to the kaiser family foundation when this happens we run into huge issues the opportunity turn around comes from typically an inspiring teacher however all too often we don't have enough inspiring teachers at the junior high school and high school level because some fifty eight percent of middle school teachers in math and sixty eight percent of middle school science teachers are not nor certified in the subject the influence of parents and media is also pro and graduate education industry encourage and expand scholarships and other forms of financial aid as well as retention programs for undergraduate number to encourage and incentivize the preparation of stem certified primary and secondary school teachers with the goal of ensuring the u s college universities produce enough qualified secondary teachers math and science help motivate our youth related careers by enhancing support for two and four year institutions and fourth motivate the media parents and teachers can provide a positive view i also want to emphasize the importance of ensuring that we measure the impact our investments in education right now they are doing an inventory of our company programs to assess the impact of our investments and we have that complete by the first quarter of this year we're also working this process with other industries through a coalition of distinguished members of this committee my name is no i'm a professor in the physics department at the university of colorado one of the directors of the physical education research group there and one of the directors of the integrating stem education initiative that's running across campus honored to be here today and i applaud this committee for holding these important hearings education is society's fundamental form of investment and its future this is the basic are in deep for our society and as a result we're now deciding among a variety of possible future will we depend on other countries for technological innovation for basic technological infrastructure will our children grow up to be the leading scientists and innovators that we desire with all students have access to the outlook is  pessimistic despite my being an optimist while education is a fundamental form of investment in the future a critical perhaps critical linchpin in our educational system is higher education stem education within that in addition to being the locus of where we educate our undergraduate and graduate students this is where stem disciplines are defined in practice this is the destination of our students in the pre college system this is where we educate our future teachers at all levels and current teachers return for professional development this is where we produce materials assessments standards and this is where we are conducting leading research on student learning it's also all too often and overlooked area in education there are no national discourse on education so i make three three points in my testimony one we know what to do particularly in undergraduate stem education but we don't do it broadly second the challenges in our stem educational endeavors are complex and intertwined and so too should be our solutions and third given the scale of our educational challenges key seed funding from the federal government through programs such as the n s f can unlock hundreds of billions of dollars of latent infrastructure in the university system itself to the first point through discipline based education research over the last several decades we've shifted our understanding of what it means of teaching and learning we've shifted from a teacher centered information delivery model to that of a student center inquiry oriented those sorts of programs been heralded by engineers for quite some time through the colorado learning assistance programs application of these ideas and understanding we've now doubled to tripled consistently our student performance in our introductory physics courses and yet despite knowing what  these practices are not widespread in short we're not taking the same scholarly and scientific approach to voting change in stem education that we are to stem education itself which leads us to the second point the challenges in our stem educational endeavors are complex and intertwined we should be thinking about how we can couple undergraduate and graduate programs teacher professional development programs preparation and research on student learning the colorado learning assistance program is one such example where not only do we focus on course transformation to realize these enhanced learning gains but we recruit talented undergraduates to serve as coaches for fellow undergrad and they serve as a pool from which we recruit future teachers we also focus on faculty development and education research the results lead us to improve learning gains for all students or undergraduate learning assistants look more like their graduate student peers and they do the undergraduates their undergraduate peers we see faculty developing along the way we've tripled the number of physics majors going into k twelve teaching there are plenty of other examples such as science education initiative informal science education and graduate teaching programs such as certain that are running in impacting or on campus so this is a key opportunity in the federal government to serve tremendously historically and has potential for the future for leveraging these opportunities and resources for seeding key individual action we need to ensure that faculty practices are along with our understanding of student learning and we need to support faculties engagement in the scholarship of teaching and learning and discipline based education research the national science foundation programs that were looted to before my own field has benefited from the distinguished teaching scholars program the career fellowships stem directors are engaging in education noice has also been instrumental in helping us transform our undergraduate programs meanwhile sustain federal support is essential and scaling of federal support is essential we can no longer operate just at the individual scale or just at the programatic scale we need to start thinking about departmental transformation institutional transformation and the role that professional organizations can play the american physical society american association of physics teachers association of public  grant universities have taken on the mantle of educational reform teacher recruitment and they've been instrumental in supporting our own efforts at the university of colorado through targeted federal funding on the order of billions of dollars we can engage university resources on the o conference thank you congressman pence detailers and members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to discuss the importance of graduate education to the future success and competitiveness of the united states i will focus my remarks today on three areas the first of which is the importance of graduate education to our nation in the twenty first century knowledge based economy clear a path for the country to remain competitive and secure is to produce a highly trained stem workforce equipped with advanced and flexible skill across all the employment sectors our nation's graduate programs are the major source of such a workforce the number of doctorates awarded in the united states has grown an average of two point five percent annually for the last decade and the proportion of those in stem fields has also increased however this pales in comparison to the growth in china as chairman pointed out earlier today one hundred eighty five and two thousand and five the number of science and engineering doctoral degrees awarded in china increased by seven hundred percent while the actual numbers are not known yet it is widely presume that china is on a path to overtake the united states as the largest producer of ph d s in sciences math and engineering and it is not just with china with whom we are now competing other countries and regions of the world are in destin and enhancing their graduate education systems as part of their own national economic development strategies in part by watching the success of the united states over the last fifty years today's graduate students are the future in a waiters and creators of knowledge they are also the future educators of the next generation the united states will continue to need these individuals in a variety of fields not only to remain globally competitive but also had to address the grand challenges we face in areas like energy independence climate change and other environmental issues food security in michigan the issue is  water other issues are health care and areas that we can't even imagine today a major challenge for the entire u s educational system k through twelve undergraduate and graduate is in recruiting and retaining a diverse cadre of talented students who are interested in and prepared to pursue stem education the second area is a brief example of michigan state university and what we are doing to try to help improve these issues we enroll approximately ten thousand graduate in graduate professional students including more than two thousand in the stem disciplines eight years ago we embarked on creating a professional development program for stem and other disciplines that both complements the academic curriculum and also equip students with additional essential skills such as collaboration conflict resolution responsible conduct of research communication skills all in order to be of more effective leaders regardless of the employment sector michigan state has currently five stem education active grants and our stem and faculty and students participate in these very actively best known of course as the n s f graduate research fellowship program which provides vital support to our outstanding p students and other programs such as the alliance for graduate education in the professoriate allow us to focus on developing a competitive and inclusive stem workforce these n s f programs are critically important for us to be able to promote and support continuous improvement in stem graduate education the third area is the policy recommendations that i like to make for the committee to consider and the question of course is how do we collectively and hansen improve stem graduate education one is by creating better alignment between k through twelve undergraduate and graduate education this is a system and it is a mistake to try to separate these and try to handle them differently we also need to signal career pathwa students so that they understand the multitude of career options available with a stem graduate degree we need to continue to institutionalize interdisciplinary research and training and not for itself but to solve problems and we need to increase  participation of the u s domestic population in graduate education particularly members of under represented groups and addressing each of these challenges but congress can further support the vital role of graduate education by recognizing and supporting graduate education is a key driver of our national competitiveness and innovation strategy supporting the increases to n s f graduate research fellowship program program and the noice program reauthorizing provisions in the america such as the pace fellowship program at the department of energy and the professional science masters degree initiative and enhanced in the federal support for doctoral education particularly through traineeships that may be focused on strategic national priorities i recommend that congress consider at creating a traineeship for doctoral students to prepare future leaders to address the complex interdisciplinary challenges i mentioned earlier and finally the committee should consider upcoming recommendations from the commission on the future of graduate education which is formed by the council of graduate schools and the educational testing service industry and academic leaders are exploring the connection between graduate education and competitiveness and will release the report on april twenty ninth in summary a robust graduate education system is essential for our country to continue to prosper graduate education is particularly important if we are to have the future engineers college faculty and researchers needed to respond to current and emerging national and global challenges thank you very much for the opportunity to testify and we'll be happy to answer any question that worked as  distinguished members of the committee thank you for inviting me to present a statement on the importance of preparing our future stem faculty so that american college graduates have the skills to lead a high technology globally competitive diverse workforce currently there is little teacher preparation and higher education those who can do research well received and then teach to the credit of deeply committed higher education faculty and students everywhere much learning does occur but we can do much better especially to advance the stem knowledge and skills of the nation broadly currently we waste national investments in education research i agree with dr finkelstein we have learned a tremendous amount about how to improve stem learning and retention in no small part of result of anise of funding our challenge is how to broadly implement these practices much of the answer lies  introducing this knowledge early to the future national stem faculty as we both went to berkeley dr elders i look forward to sharing opinions on our preparation for teaching furthermore we are not retaining students in stem and especially women and minorities research findings are clear classroom experiences are central to attrition from stem fields of higher education ninety percent of those who switch out of stem cite poor teaching as their primary concern as do in fact three quarters of those who stay stem again changing retention lies in the preparation of the future stem faculty leverage point for change in stem a higher education is the training in teaching and learning of graduate students at research universities they are the future stem faculty of the united states furthermore only one hundred research universities produce eighty percent of all doctoral degrees as such they produce the faculty members of our four thousand colleges and universities this is a forty to one leverage point for investment of federal funds research universities are the lever to faculty at all colleges and universities across the nation to have the ability to enhance the learning of every student fortunately the improvement of teaching rests upon answering a research question my question is simply what have my students learned this idea enables the center for the integration of research teaching and learning to place improving undergraduate education in a research context in which the stem faculty are already comfortable and skilled and thereby to foster their active engagement in advancing their own students learning their own students learning this idea works the prototype of circle as adult a program in research teaching and learning at the university of wisconsin madison since opening in fall two thousand and three over one thousand nine hundred stem graduate students post docs and faculty have advanced their students learning via the delta program to get back to dr finkelstein's point the recognized impact of this program on both future and current faculty at u w madison is demonstrated by the fact that now the delta program which was begun with n s f funding is entirely supported by the u w madison we need similar outcomes at all of the highest producing hundred universities as a first step we have created a prototype sort of network of six major research universities our dinner michigan state university which is a founder texas a and m university vanderbilt university the university of colorado at boulder and the university of wisconsin madison based on these experiences these are my three respectfully my three policy recommendations  how this committee might launch a national mission to prepare the stem faculty of the united states first fund a federal university partnership ultimately certain success at u w madison spoke for itself but at the beginning it was the n s f funding that provided the resources and equally importantly the legitimacy to change the status quo the imprimatur of n s f remains key as we recruit each new university into the network a federal investment of order one hundred million dollars over five years would establish for example programs at one hundred universities once established their integration into graduate education will be able to sustain investment in preparation of the stem faculty second modify reward structures by integrating research teaching and learning funding in one thousand nine hundred six the shaping the future report wrote research directorate this is the  research director should expand resources for educational activities that integrate education and research this council still rings true the call for broader impact at n s f has been an absolutely critical integrate research teaching and learning into the culture of universities and their faculty to adjust the reward systems of universities and to shape faculty whose members are both excellent researchers and super teachers the major impacts of the career awards of the r u programs of the howard hughes medical professorship all show that our strategic goals in higher education can be achieved through programs that are integrated with research and by this i mean stem disciplinary research funding and finally leadership i urge this committee to charge and fund the entire n s f not just the h r the entire in itself to explicitly and proactively take on federal leadership and responsibility for a new national mission of improving undergraduate stem education for preparation of our future faculty the america competes act is one of the most important pieces of recent legislation with respect to developing the stem compazine of the united states you are to be congratulated for its success and for your wise consideration of its reauthorization now is the time to build a new national program indeed a mission to prepare the nation's future faculty to be both a perp researchers and excellent teachers in these tight physical conditions the forty to one leverage point of graduate education for preparing the teacher's faculty of the teachers of our college students has never been more compelling thank you for the opportunity to share these thoughts about improving the quality of the stem irish education through advances in graduate education thank you dr matthew at this point we will begin our first round of questions and i will begin by recognizing miss johnson for five minutes sciences out of these programs have any studies been conducted to measure the individual affected and if so what is the result thank you very much mr johnson for the question as you know the director for education and human resources has has as one of its six fundamental themes the the notion of broadening participation in stem  colleges and universities program the historically black colleges and universities programs all of our programs have ongoing evaluations which are beginning to tell us about the types of strategies that are proving to be most effective  a couple of these include very strong involvement of faculty in both the recruitment and in active engagement with students as they come into program so opportunities to work in labs opportunities to have mentoring by faculty to have career advice by faculty in a personalized way that that works toward retention of promising students in our programs we can provide more detail about the kinds of evaluation findings but we're learning a lot about about what can be done and we're also learning that these strategies can apply broadly across types of institutions and can help us with the general questions of recruitment and retention as well ok have any of the programs that have the goal of broadening because the pace in the sciences we see recovery  in the twenty seven budget request to propose a comprehensive broadening participation in undergraduate stem program that will will be a new effort to build upon the excellent work that has been done in the separate programs thus far that will draw upon much of what has been learned there and that will we hope by consolidation in a sense enable the nation to to learn from the very best practices that have been available across programs and to try to leverage those for more involvement or quasi across a wide range of programs so for example a hispanic serving institutions will also be eligible at this point we're very early on in our design and planning of this program and are very keen on making sure that we understand and can synthesize what we have learned and where the where the most effective practices are happening and which of those are particular to types of institutions and which of those can be generalized across institutions so that we make all of that knowledge very clearly  available for the field we're working in close consultation with all of the communities involved as we design of the initiative moving forward could i get a report from you as to where you are in each of these programs  apologize for dashing out earlier this is one of those horrible days we have to have for committees meeting some ten years we know and one of them was marking up a bill that had to do to vote but i'm going to have to leave immediately after i ask questions to cover some other areas dr matthew you referred to this new testimony i want to follow up a bit with regards to in the system programs i'm just interested in what your rules are about to roll to what your comments are about the role of stem education goals within the research and related activities so called our division and what should remain completely that as you bring up a very good point there dr elders also very sensitive for some people who are i have i suppose the good fortune in terms of the question to be an astronomer and so i spend a lot of time on on two different i would say that much of the academic chasm has also shown up at the national science foundation and they're doing their very very best across that chasm as well they have the same challenges and so as someone who sits on the astronomy side i know how few of my colleagues are connected or knowledgeable about what goes on in the h r division and they need to be broader impact criteria which is just so critical the career awards the are you programs all of which require our young faculty to both be great researchers and super teachers those p o s faculty need the n s f to talk to each other in astronomy they need the astronomy division to know what's going on in c c l life to know what's going on in step program one of the challenges that n s f faces in this regard is that n s f has a long standing tradition of reacting to as communities rather than being proactive to its communities i once went into the astronomy department education officers office and i asked him that i knew about this a perp instrument first vestment classroom assessment would he be interested in letting us draw numbers know about his response was very firm in fact rather harsh and he said we do not state what is good we respond to the community's assessment of what is good that's been extremely effective for developing new knowledge as i said in my testimony however it is not the most effective approach if you want to implement successes across the nation and as such i think and i say this my testimony if you charge n s f to take leadership in creating the future faculty part of that needs to be to charge the n s f to be willing to be proactive as compared to reactive and actually lead in a mission oriented sense i for example deal with nasa i see the difference between nas mission oriented approach and n s f response oriented approach i'm not criticising in a sense here i mean this sincerely it has been extremely effective for developing research that is protected academic freedom but the mission of preparing our future faculty is going to require someone in the federal government to say we think this is good we think the evidence supports this we want this to happen across the nation and this is how we're going to do it that's what i mean by a mission or you and that's going to require the entire n s f to do it because as i said in my testimony if you want the research faculty to respond you need to talk these initiatives to the research funding scaling up of practices that show promise that have been effective in particular settings and that are being widely tested in lots of places and so the next big challenge there and in a sense dr matthew this is a little bit of a direction  that i think is evident in this new attention we now want to tackle the challenge of of scale up and learn about what it takes to help faculty be inclined to engage with these sorts of strategies to be willing to take a look at the wonderful assessment tools that are there that can help inform their teaching and their practice to even think about the shape of materials and the sort of translation and facilitation that might be provided with promising practices  help with their with their spread old fashioned dissemination models aren't working the scale up is a major challenge and so we see that as an important direction in the new solicitation and then as to the matter of how directive  or prescriptive n s f might be and in its education activities i actually think our solicitations in ways do identify identifying areas which we often say are areas of emphasis or you know we hope to see proposals in this area certainly at the cape twelve level we've been able to generate specific activities around assessment or around instructional materials in particular areas so so our staff are certainly always eager to work with the field to understand what the coming issues and challenging problems of tomorrow and then in ways that are appropriate to the n s f situation to sort of weave those into solicitations as we can i should also add that  internally our collaboration with the r and r is actually i think are quite strong they often happen at the program officer program officer level but we have a number of projects across the director at that are co founded with the r and r and increasing marius how are those shared with the the overall culture of higher education is there a sharing in terms of the successful efforts can anyone on the panel  sure yes i mean in many regards there's tremendous effort to get the success stories out there this is one area where the disciplinary societies play a tremendously important role they serve as establishing the culture of the disciplines themselves so in my field in physics the american physical society the american association of physics teachers is tremendous there are pan society organizations that i mentioned the association of public and lan universities are starting to sort of share those networks broadly so that's one way that we go about doing that at the next scale down you might say well that there are programs that are spreading from campus to campus and that's what's happening with this learning assistant program is now running sort of partly by word of mouth in a viral way but also purposely seeded and opposed along the way so that we're running at well over a dozen institutions around the united states based on the promotion of these professional societ another example where this is purposely built into the structure of that so that these are good ideas get out there and i would make sort of two points about this one is that  we have to have a particular model of change for how to push this out there i mean gates in a large scale research study that looks at at how particular implementations are successful or not and what we find overwhelmingly here is  that programs don't have grounded scholarly models of change in stem education in the published literature and please provide references around that but the bottom line is that we need work on how to do that that doesn't mean that things can't scale sort of along the way and the other thing that we've found is that you have to work across multiple levels of the system here it's really important that you have faculty within the department who are recognised and valued invented for doing this so i'm how can a physics department but meanwhile of course i can't do that alone i need institutional support and i have to think about the institutional structures of the programs that i'm seeded within and similarly can scale all the way to the disciplinary society and the national scale level so i think that the way we can get these things to scale is by working across multiple levels of the system and i meetings of project investigators we have a chance to talk across our institutions and share best practices and the other group would be the council of graduate schools for anything that's occurring at the graduate level that's a group of graduate deans who have a role to play in terms of disseminating information across their campuses because most of the graduate deans work with all the departments or most of the colleges on their campus so it's another another place for the information to get shared and to be supported and in terms of  the numbers that we know to be far better outcomes in other cultures other countries is there any exchange there do we know what they may be doing that we're not doing or not doing enough  daughter is there is some information that is shared back and forth across cultures largely through larger to faculty but also through graduate because the students that we recruit the international students that we are true to campus are often dialogue set up with between faculty and between administrators on exactly how preparing their students for stem education what kinds of curriculum they're actually using in their classrooms because we get to see transcripts we get to see descriptions of what those educational prophecies are is there something different there that some of it is a very strong support of math and science education all the way from grade school on through high school it is supported by the parents strongly supported by the parents as a way for those students to be able to move forward in their own economies so again it's hard here at the hearing that said what is the role is there to need to be a stronger incentive provided by private slash public sector should the federal government be inspiring these careers by a faction is it holding back the thirst for stem education we think if we're not being progressive an aggressive change the thirst is in the linkages to research funding because that's where the faculty respond to we go to these meetings and i've been to them and but i have the advantage of also being an active researcher right now in astronomy and i want to emphasize the disconnect between those two worlds dr free money is absolutely correct if there's any director of the national science foundation that knows how to disseminate it c h r but i'm assuring you that the vast majority of my colleagues in my faculty in both physics and astronomy at the university wisconsin madison do not show up at those meetings that are not connected to those worlds and i think the real transformation will happen when this panel with all due respect to that money has her but also has the assistant director of math and physical sciences or one of the others and that person can speak compellingly intelligently and connected to the need to change graduate education and so i guess what i'm really trying to say again is that the women in my opinion the most effective change agent the last decade for the things that you wish to accomplish has been the career wor because those career awards require young faculty we're still in their formative stage to hear from the n s f that we want you to be super bowl researchers and we also demand that you be excellent teachers and show us how to do it and understand that that carrot when it first started was very difficult for those graduate students because our system did not prepare them to respond to that carrot i was on the early panels and the career awards were fourteen and a half pages of research and a half page of very poor education i'm happy to say i was on the panel a year ago and not only are the pages becoming more equal in length but they're becoming more integrated and that's because the prestigious research research funding award at the n s f requires that when i was young i got a presidential young investigator work that had nothing in it about teaching that change in this decade and i would suggest that if you really from an industry perspective i agree with my colleagues on the panel here that certainly funding for grad an undergraduate education important but i do believe we have a fundamental issue in this nation and that is most people don't view engineering and technology careers are the ones to go pursue and that starts with the media it deals with parents and it deals with a sense about who wants to be a nerd and is kind of putting it on the table all one has to do is watch the t v show the big bang theory and there are four characters on there i don't know any child in america who wants to be one of those four individuals yet they represent the perception about what engineering technology is about so i believe like the college we have to work on this notion about what goes on in your education but i think we have to change the perception about the real jobs that are available who create space shuttles space stations green technologies opportunities for the future i don't think our society values that those technologies degrees as it should like other nations do today as an engineer i appreciate yes i'm happy to briefly comment on that i think that's heard about twelve engineering education i think that's critically important and a key lever for that for engaging in allowing for that is having disciplinary faculty within engineering and physics and even astronomy start taking up the mantle and saying my job is to recruit and prepare the next generation of teachers these are going to be our best and brightest students and we're going to shift so that they departmental cultures themselves transform and they see the value of putting out the next generation of teachers who transmit that value enthusiasm and excitement to their students this is why many programs such as the noice fellows program are tremendously valued and important it also helps improve our faculty at the university and i think that's an underutilized letter even  r printed money thank you just a just a brief comment on this point i think another kind of avenue to imagine using in recruiting people and engaging them in interest is the increased increased focus and commitment by young people to to the importance of issues around energy sustainability other interdisciplinary issues that are attractive and appealing to the nation's youth may be a way to draw them in and then a step is working with a variety of mechanisms for trying to  back when it comes to me i might fall on some of those but right now i recognize mr inglis for five minutes thank you mr chairman and mr stevens in my happy to see you you know i'm from south carolina and so you can imagine how happy i am to see you we are very excited about making dream liners in charleston and so to get the opportunity to talk to the vice president of the human resources of boeing and to say thank you for coming to south carolina is a wonderful opportunity for me so and it's it's a huge thing for our state obviously in the jobs  statewide not just in charleston i represent the upper part of the state but i know of folks who are putting up the steel and the hangers that are from the upstate we got to drill company that hopefully going to drill the carolina is what else can i say what south carolina malema lays from south carolina so it out very excited and obviously we're just getting about the tremendous opportunity for our future national security as well as the environment so very excited about all that and also i agree with you completely unlike your just saying about the presentation in stem education we really do need to show people that it's exciting and classes and from an articulate able to tell them what we're doing and they were so excited about it and when i got back i had some opportunity to do some big presentations to some high schools and to my favorite slides were these very good looking scientist but one of them was this blonde knockout i mean she was just amazing and then the other one was this handsome fellow who graduated from and so i put those slides up on the screen i said that's what scientists look like if i want to be a scientist and so it was very exciting every people in the class were saying yeah i see you  things in there cool people i mean they were obviously bad pictures of the way they were engaged with each other very fine and gauge you know enjoying life and also doing interesting things and so what are so it's very important i think to present science that way it's also i think very important for us to present it is a key to our national future and i'm taking all the time to make statements here right as a question but i dave bodie is that clinton university's international center of automotive research he says that when he was travelling across the country on a family vacation sputnik was launched his mother turned around him in the backseat and said son it is your patriotic duty to become a scientist and to help us win the race of them and he did it he participated in all that and he took it as a patriotic duty when i go around saying to people it's your patriotic duty to figure out how to break this addiction to oil and how to repair our lives and if you do that you can improve the national security united states and your friends won't be boots on the ground in some very dangerous places in the middle east and we'll be able to say to those folks we just don't need to like we used to what a guy that really believes in stem education and helping missed a great contribution he made to us you may want to pick up on any of those lines of statements and commercials  dr finkelstein might have something wants to bring to south carolina if you do i'll give you a commercial congressman i want to appreciate the comments and certainly other dream one of south carolina is very important to us but on the comments about  smoking issue on mental illness and we're now using them to influence directors writers and actors and how they engineers and scientists in a very positive and productive way we talk about the good looking scientist in the antarctica there's an organization called instrumental in pushing this but we've sort of danced around the edges of that i think programs that couple university systems and the public i think bringing industry together with the university systems in the public i think it is tremendously valuable valuable because it provides  opportunity access and inclusion to children who have been historically taught no you can't do that or shouldn't do that or don't even know how to ask the question that way we also know that it improves our undergraduate and graduate students from participating in those sorts of programs so  point is we leverage value throughout this entire system the other thread that you talked about was this notion of a grand challenge the space race i think that's where we're at in stem education i think stem education should be a grand challenge in and of itself i don't know if that's a sales thing we can talk about you know what the opportunity is for that but certainly i know some of the impetus behind the rising above the gathering storm or outcomes of that was to provide a grand challenge really around this question of energy and using education as a key tool to address the challenges of our energy  reality is we're somewhere else on the curve of diminishing marginal returns so that the early space program created enormous pretended days for all of us in plastics and everything all kinds of things so we are somewhere else on that curve of diminishing our children's because we we've been there and done that but i gotta believe there's a lot more to be discovered as we as we continue in exploration and compares the various university engineering programs that produce the company's highest performing workers i'm interested in if you could highlight the common characteristics of these apartments and institutions this is not something when i was a student that i thought a whole lot about but it was after i left that i better understood different schools do things differently so i'm wondering this is what are college universities around the u s we'll take a look at our employee performance based upon the schools they want to and we looked at employee performance over a ten year period what we found is engineering schools do a great job getting across the technical disciplines we found very little got them a gauge with industry earlier in their career went along as well also found those who were forced to work in teams as opposed to independent projects also did very well and sold those soft skills in those engagements and real projects early on their curriculum were the ones that did best for us so the boeing company thank you when i was doing dr matthew i was just going to add very quickly the good fortune is that the we've found that the best way for students to learn is also in teams and actively working with each other so there's a beautiful confluence here if we can change the way we do things is there the question of why we bring people in  or they come into thinking that they're going to be an engineer or scientist the whole question then of retention i think is a is an important question but i know and i'm the other side you also have they have the question of the preparation before before they get there who is really ready to move on and for some people it may not be that what they want to do in the side it's not with what they want to do but i resonates with me i want to move back to the question of what we can do to encourage better teaching i look at it now even though i got a masters of engineering then i went on graduate school in social science i might be a political science i look at it and i say i got to graduate school and was essentially told  individuals personally felt that it was part of their mission to be a good teacher of the faculty but that was more personal than incentive structure i like a lot of what i heard about setting up days of changing some of the incentives but they seem very small by how much you can can we do and dr matthew i think leadership is critical but how do we really change that i just see this is such a huge problem in there is a trade off everyone only has so much time and if you are going to be rewarded if what makes you a top person your field is where you publish and how much you published how do we reward teaching how do we really should how do we change that i'm just  pessimistic about about doing that and how do we really get this turned to me it seems and take a long time to get a turn is there anything else that you know is there reason for for optimism reason i should be more optimistic about this point want to throw that out there to document why i think should be very optimistic because if you aren't we're not going  anywhere but more about that more concretely i mean you have to appreciate and i'm sure you do that the current system evolved over forty years and we're now in a place where the external reward systems at research universities are primarily based on research funding at the university level and so it's not i don't think it's going to take forty years but it's going to take a little time in order to change that reward system and fundamentally i think the heart of it i apologize for repeating myself i think the heart of it is linking the reward system currently which is research funding with the requirement to have broader impact on the requirement and especially for the young faculty the recognition that if they're going to succeed in their research they're going to have to be able to do teaching well and the reason i can say that works is because i think one of the main reasons that was actually institutionalized it was cons and the main reason that they actually are supporting  is not so much the fact that we're preparing the current future faculty although that's a wonderful thing it's because research programs in our campus are being funded at a higher rate now because they can associate with our programs to show that they have the capacity and the ability to satisfy the requirements that you put on the nation with the broader impact requirement especially happens again with career wards you end up with a situation where a professor comes from  should name any given school but they come from a psychology like you were describing suddenly in order to achieve the most prestigious word of the national science foundation they need to be able to speak intelligently about education and about teaching well how do they do that well they do that by collaborating with us and as they do they get career awards and they get research rewards and that process happens for n s f centers on our campus and i'm sure in yours with the proper gram happens on the individual investigator level who now have to actually have a broader impact component to their research proposal and we find ourselves a draw when our resources and the ability to change the reward system is profiled because of your decision to link broader impact and teaching to the research funding model i truly believe that ten years from now we will have a future faculty which will be the current faculty who not only are skilled in doing this because of our programs but actually won't even think twice it's the way it's done we have a vote going on right now and so we have about two more minutes i'd say so dr finkelstein thank you  very briefly then i mean one thing is i think excellence is a habit of mind and so those same research scholars who are committed to excellence in journal publication in foundational science research are at universities because they want to engage in education and reaching future people we have to provide them the resources for doing so there's a reason they are university rather than say national labs i think there's an opportunity there and we've got to provide that we can model opportunities for faculty i think we can and there are many sorts of models and resources by which we can support our faculty for engaging in this we can have education researchers and reformers housed within departments that help these faculty do that that's the nature of our research group we do foundational research and education but we also help other faculty transform what they do we enable them the culture in our physics department right now is that of educational excellence we're committed to that and that's something that we do in addition to our scholarly excellence it's also because we have as mr ellerton pointed out dr lisa pointed out we have strong partnerships between our school of education where they have expertise and excellence in undergraduate level of education and our disciplinary departments we think we can support faculty for engaging in doing this and valuing that n s f and having sort of a national dialogue and in premature behind these sorts of activities through career words and others is also extremely helpful was in graduate school was an assistant professor and it's going to take time and a lot of effort to turn this around but i think all of you for your testimony today the record remain open for two