BANGOR, Maine — The shortage of experts in science, technology, engineering and mathematics is very real in Maine as it is across the United States, a fact which has led to calls for action everywhere from the White House to the Maine governor’s mansion.
This has led to the proliferation of so-called STEM programs in Maine and across the country.
Anita Bernhardt, a science and technology specialist for the Maine Department of Education, said the average age of an engineer in the United States is 47. In Maine, she predicts job openings in technology and engineering careers will increase by nearly 50 percent by 2018 because of retirements in those fields and new jobs created. According to figures from the Department of Labor, which indicate there are some 20,000 STEM-related jobs in Maine, that could mean there will be an additional 10,000 jobs in the future.
“We’ve been hearing about this consistently over the past 10 years,” said Bernhardt. “Our country will have trouble trying to fill jobs in STEM in the near future. That begs the question, ‘What do we do about it?’”
STEM is not a particular program of a specific design, but it has become a bit of a household word among educators. Part of the reason for that has been a building chorus that the United States is falling behind other countries when it comes to students pursuing careers in science, technology and mathematics. According to Bernhardt, the problem is most pronounced in government agencies and and industries that handle defense contracts, many of which she said require U.S. citizenship for employees.
Andrew Anderson, dean and professor of technology for the University of Southern Maine, said a building chorus at every level of education is raising awareness about the need for STEM professionals.
“It’s a subject that is now being talked about at all levels,” said Anderson. “From that standpoint we’re making a good effort to raise awareness. When I look at the opportunities out there for students in STEM, I wonder why they are not knocking down our doors.”
Despite that, Anderson said enrollment in USM’s STEM-related programs is “steadily going up,” but the school is still nowhere near capacity.
STEM-related careers have been identified as major growth sectors in Maine, particularly in heath care and precision manufacturing, according to Adam Fisher, spokesman for the Maine Department of Labor. There are currently about 20,000 Mainers working in STEM-related jobs, which Fisher said pay an average of 60 percent higher than other jobs that require the same level of college training.
“There are a lot of retirements coming,” said Fisher. “That’s an issue across all industries here. Maine has one of the oldest, if not the oldest, work forces in the country.”
Anderson said the shortage of students interested in STEM is exacerbated — especially in New England — by the fact that high school enrollments are decreasing overall and many students are more interested in other career paths.
“There’s some preliminary data out there that shows that by middle school, many students are not interested in STEM as a career,” he said. “They think it’s too hard.”
Though Maine schools are at various stages of implementing STEM programs, initiatives have charged ahead in some geographic areas.
In Portland, a nonprofit group that seeks to create a charter school called the Baxter Academy for Technology and Science inked a real estate deal last month for a headquarters for the school, which intends to enroll its first students next fall. In Bangor, the school department received conceptual approval from the school committee in late November to create an intensive and specialized course of study for students interested in STEM-related fields.
Bangor schools Superintendent Betsy Webb said the initiative in Bangor was triggered by a recognition that the state not only needs to improve its efforts on the education front, it also needs to take steps to interest students in STEM-related careers in the first place.
“The timing is right,” said Webb. “We have listened closely to the state’s call to action from the governor to the commissioner of education to higher education institutions.”
In 2010, President Barack Obama’s Office of Science and Technology Policy recommended in an extensive report that immediate measures be taken to improve STEM technology. Those measures included recruiting and training 100,000 new STEM teachers and developing incentives for them to succeed, and creating 1,000 new STEM-focused schools over the next 10 years.
According to Bernhardt, Maine is at an advantage when it comes to improving STEM education.
“The fact that Maine is a small state is a real advantage to us,” she said. “In order to make this work you have to reach out and make connections. Maine is a small community, which means we have the potential to really have a common vision to move forward and work together in a coherent way.”
Work to that end already is under way in several locations. Southern Maine Community College recently founded The Reach Center, which is a partnership between the college, the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance and the Maine School of Science and Mathematics in Limestone. The goal, which was bolstered recently with a $3.2 million anonymous gift, is to make The Reach Center a resource for schools statewide that are trying to create new STEM programs.
Officials at Bangor High School, which is not as far along as The Reach Center, said they envision a program that focuses in both directions on the educational ladder for success. According to Bangor High School Principal Paul Butler, the district is working with the University of Maine on several fronts, including formation of a program that will allow students to enter college with enough credits to be sophomores. Conversely, high school students involved in the Bangor High School STEM Academy will be tutors and mentors for children in the younger grades with the hope of planting the STEM seed as early as possible.
“This program will be open to all students but it’s going to be a heavy curriculum academically,” said Butler. “For a student to march through this, he or she will be really challenging himself over four years.”
Among the academy’s requirements will be that students take physics — which is usually reserved for the junior or senior year, and often only for highly motivated students — during their freshman year.
At York High School, the STEM program isn’t as clearly delineated as Bangor’s is, according to York Principal Robert Stevens, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t undertaking many of the same initiatives. About 10 years ago, according to Stevens, administrators and staff vowed to make preparing kids for higher education across all vocations a priority. The result is a higher education sending rate that varies between 85 and 93 percent, said Stevens.
Instead of instituting a requirement that all students take four years of science and math, Stevens said teachers simply opted to try simple encouragement. The result has been an increase at York High School from one physics class with 20 students to six full physics classes plus an advanced-placement course. Stevens said about 99 percent of York students take physics before they graduate.
“There’s nothing sexy about what we’re doing; we’re just kind of feeling our way,” said Stevens. “Unfortunately, we really haven’t been able to look at the engineering side of things very much. We just haven’t had the economic resources to bring a program like that forward.”
STEM education is taking hold at the lower levels, as well. At the kindergarten-through-grade-eight Durham Community School, older students have access to various STEM-related classes, including one called STEM, according to Principal Will Pidden.
“All of our seventh- and eighth-graders have that class as part of their years,” said Pidden, who said subjects taught include robotics, computer programming and various other disciplines. The theme, he said, is incorporating hands-on science and math projects as opposed to focusing on classroom lectures.
“Imagine learning about measurement but never measuring anything,” said Pidden. “These are skills that all students need regardless of what career path they’re taking. As colleges look for kids’ expertise and experiences in these skills, high schools will start offering more. We don’t STEM education to stop at the eighth grade.”
Bernhardt, at the Department of Education, said the difference between the York and Bangor programs is illustrative of the many approaches being taken in Maine schools. If there is a common theme, it is that the most successful programs partner with the business community.
“Very many kids in our state know that STEM subjects are important but they think it’s not for them,” she said. “We know that kids who participate in real research are more likely to pursue STEM career pathways.”
According to Butler, Bangor High School has a strong tradition of students doing original research, ranging from one student’s contribution to a hot sauce ranking system a decade ago to a current student’s work on water science. In four of the past five years, a Bangor student has been chosen as Maine’s winner of the U.S. Stockholm Water Prize. In 2011, the winner was 16-year-old graduating senior Leila Musavi, whose project involved finding pathogens such as cholera and E. coli in water. Musavi is now studying medicine at Columbia University.
Gov. Paul LePage and Education Commissioner Steven Bowen have repeatedly said that one of the keys to educational success is grabbing the interest of students when they’re young. Bowen is in the midst of developing an educational strategy document for the state and has said that individualized learning will be at its center.
Bernhardt said she sees that as a positive.
“Resources are slender right now,” she said. “One of the most important things we can do is to help raise awareness.”
By middle school they think STEM is too hard?
It’s so much easier to pursue a liberal arts degree and beat a drum while occupying a public park screeching about economic injustice.
Many science and Business majors have higher unemployment rates than Liberal Arts Majors. Based on the rationale that difficulty of major is equivalent to unemployment rate, it would be safe to assume that psych degrees are the easiest, and Medical and teaching degrees are the hardest. After all they enjoy lower unemployment than any of the Engineering Majors. You would have to be pretty foolish to pursue an engineering degree in this economy, with their 38% higher unemployment rate than Elementary Teachers. Or could it be that unemployment has no relation to the true value of a degree nor the difficulty of obtaining it.
What about women’s studies?
Teaching degrees are the hardest?? When you can’t pass math or science you transfer into college of education. If you get a job teaching (vs. Aide) you complain you don’t get paid enough.
No Maine Maritime Engineering Grads are going hungry or protesting anything except high income tax rates.
You’re so full of it. Part of the reason sciences are lagging is because the right wing denigrates education, as you so clearly illustrate. The few wingers who encourage education discourage any science if it clashes with something written in the Bible. Creationists (who are a big part of the Tea Party) have their own theme parks that show humans and dinosaurs interacting. So much for science.
So for your side to even comment on the failures of education is pompous. Youall have done everything you can to lead this country back to the days when everybody got their science lessons from a book put together 2000 yrs ago, and the few wealthy ones went on to seminaries to finish their education.
I would have to say that statement is “full of it”. A statement like “the right wing” denigrates education is simply silly and just a bit pompous.
There is something to Roberts’ statement in that courses of study like “Women’s Studies” really add very little to the working economy when compared to a course of study like that given at MMA. Maine would be better served letting Harvard or Brown giving majors in things like that. We could better use the money on other more productive courses.
Disagreed. The right/conservative wing does tend to champion antiintelectionalism, anti-science, anti-education in general.
Are you playing straight man?
antiintelectionalism????
Straight man? Certainly not crooked. Call it what you will, but all too many right wingers tend to denounce any sort of intellectual activity. I was trying to more softly summarize Acountian’s more strident post.
Reread his post. The last sentence summarizes well. Don’t pick on him and concentrate on the rest of your post with which I would have to agree.
The recent uptick in scitech unemplyment is atypical over the decades and ltr77 should show data for the 1st sentence (local, regbional, national?). No bets on business majors and their empolyment. The “rationale” experessed in the 2nd sentence is false. The engineers vs. elementary treacher data is bound to change very soon due to miserly budgeting and funding for education at all levels. The last sentence is definitely true.
Poor attempt at humor. Since there’s a time lag of at least ten years between middle school and college grads “occupying” plus the variance in unemployment rates, geographical and otherwise, career choices in middle school do not take into acoount moving target like emplyoment/unemployment.
This is good news, but the better news is the growth of football programs in Maine high schools previously without them. As former Gov. Baldacci would put it, that’s what Maine is really about.
Yeah, we really need more sports and less education. (not)
The parents will scream at school board meetings if a sport is going to be cut or “defunded,” but will say next to nothing if teaching cuts are to be made. When was the last time you saw parents run a bake sale to fund a teaching position?
It should be the way it was years ago. If you wanted to play sports, you had to be passing every subject. Now they go to school just to play sports and if you are good at it they will make sure you pass so you will make it through all 4 years.
Actually, most schools simply follow the state guidelines (passing 4 credits on the report card to be eligible to play. In this day and age, passing 4 courses is beyond easy. Of course when a kid is ineligible because of grades, some parents call to whine (“surely something can be done”). As somebody who works in education, I would love to see a system where the student had to pass every subject. However, you realize the people who would protest that would be the parents crying at school board meetings. Again, they will come out for sports but cut a teaching position, and they won’t say a word.
Who cares about politics . Its time we take a stand for what we know is right.
Well, with the various provisions of the Patriot Act and the recent Defense bill allowing indefinite jailing of American citizens it doesn’t seem to me that an increase in math and science is that necessary.
Your point? Relevance?
Both the point is that the Patriot Act, use of torture (enhanced interrogation techniques), and the recent Defense bill all reduce civil liberties. The relevance is that the study of history, government, and history is far more necessary at this time than concentrating on science and math.
If this is supported by the Obama administration, then it has to be suspect as not a good program in which we should be involved.
Wow. And other posters say that conservatives are not anit-education. Such absolutism, polarization, and politicisation demonstrates definciencies in personality and education. About as bad as me saying any idea of LePage & Co. are worse than suspect and not a good program. However, I might be more correct in many cases.
I must say to DR. Webb Bangor has one of the higher drop out rates in the state on Maine . Seems she is in denial about. It is true it has one or the highest test scores Too. I would much rather see 90% of kids getting a diploma than 90% of the graduates getting into college . No ones does a follow up on how many graduate from college? Look at the failure rates On state lic. exams as high 70% for graduates of the community college system. I was a slow learner in the Bangor school system . Seems to break down on social statues Funny I passed mt State license exam on my first try without getting a degree form EMCC . Not everyone is as smart as other people . Who learned more about thier tade the kid who failed the state exam or the kid who did not go to college and passed??????? Lets put some focus on life long learning Teach Kids How the real world really works…. Some people can motivate themselves to learn without higher education . Seems like education is more about making the elite look more elite and spending money than it is about teaching .
Granted, not everyone is college material and different educational methods should be made for differing learning capabilities. Hopefully, the emphasis on STEM education will produce a better educated public, not just more STEM professionals.
In a perfect world I agree with you . What bothers me is the dropout rate at Bangor High school seems to be inversely proportional to the high test scores. No one seems to want to address that issue . Am I the Bad guy for bringing it up? I’m thinking Bangor could have the highest test scores in the state if we just Just a little more apathetic towards the disadvantaged kids . Its not about spending more money its about letting teacher who care care seems they are allowed to just not too much. I dropped out of high school my senior yr . Was a game played punch the guy in the arm lol. I told the kid if he punch me again i would I punch him in the mouth. I did . Was suspended and I quit. A caring teacher came to my house and talked me into going back to school. I do not think I would have made it in Bangor high today.
We hope.
Any kid smart enough to learn could learn things on thier own if they were taught How and were interested in learning. We need to put more focus on high school dropouts education the disadvantaged kids . Not look at them as a number (oh well another kids dropped out are test scores will be higher) attitude . We need politics out of education . A large percentage of people on welfare or in jail are high school dropouts. A kids chances of getting a higher education is Much more related to thier social statutes than how intelligent they are. A 100 IQ kid from an elite family will go much father than a 115 IQ kid from a disadvantaged one. it is my personal opinion if test scores only dropped a little bit with the way the economy has change teachers are already doing a great job. I would like to Know the parents educational level income of the kids in the stem program as a percentage of students in the program to see if this isn’t another program that sounds good but in biased towards the middle to upper class??????????????? I suspect they will never give you that answer.
Interesting article. In addition to producing more STEM professionals, hopefully enhancements in STEM will produce a better educated public in all walks of life, citizens, voters, parents.
That includes journalists. The print version of this article used a different picture, one of BHS chemistry teacher Cary James holding a molecular model. The caption said said it was of carbon monoxide. The entire model can’t be seen but no way is it carbon monoxide. Good news based quick quiz for when chemistry students go back to school tomorrow, “Find a science error in yesterday’s newspaper”.
Over the past twenty years we have continued to de-emphasize the STEM fields in our educational community and the result is (and I ask this everytime I get in front of a class room of elementary and middle schoolers) that they don’t KNOW what an engineer or computer programmer is or does. If they can’t picture it, they can’t become it.
I’ve worked directly and indirectly with over 100 Maine schools over the past 12 years and 7000 children. Giving them a taste for both engineering and programming and the fact is, that so many of our youth crave the opportunity to experience true problem solving and inquiry based education and thousands of Maine students are simply waiting for that opportunity.