Marketing Engineering and Applied Science Careers (MKTC) Subcommittee
Meeting Notes #3 - May 18, 2006
Chair Di Saunders
Agenda for the meeting of May 18, 2006- #3
9:00 - |
Discussion with Dick Knight , Chair, Friends of Saturday Academy; Chair, OPAS Alignment & Coordination: Curricular & Co-curricular Subcommittee. |
| - 11:00 | Next meeting topics and date |
Notes: posted July 18, 2006 - download the pdf
OPAS Marketing Engineering and Applied Science Careers (MKTC) Committee
Meeting #3 Notes - May 18, 2006
Attendees: Endi Hartigan (OUS), Di Saunders (OUS), Dick Knight (PSU/Saturday Academy – OPAS ACCC), Jo Oshiro (OUS), Joyce Cresswell (Saturday Academy), Celeste Baine (EESC, Dan Arnold (IEEE), Erin Malecha (PSU)
Di: As a committee, we are moving away from our original vision of a product, because of our conversations with other subcommittees to inform us about the best use of our time and energy. Today, we continue those conversations with Dick Knight of the OPAS Alignment and Coordination: Curricular and Co-curricular subcommittee. Dick is a 32 year veteran of the High Technology industrial sector; his last position was as Chief Operating Officer of Sarif, a liquid crystal technology company. Now retired, he is an educational activist: active in MESA, Chair of the Friends of Saturday Academy, and instrumental in making ISEF a significant presence in Oregon.
Dick’s presentation (pdf) covers the ACCC members, mission, current foci of interest, the marketing implications, and the image problem engineering has, especially among female and minority students.
- Definitions:
- Curricular - takes place in a formal classroom;
- Co-curricular complements that in a non-formal, enrichment type of situation. (Jo notes these activities are sometimes called “Out of School Time” or OST in a substantial portion of the literature. – July 2006) Some common characteristics of these programs:
- Small groups
- Focussed activities
- Hands-on
- Longer blocks of time
- Often, self-selecting kids
- Don Domes (Hillsboro HS) & Steve Day (Beaverton School District) are working on eliminating the line between curricular and cocurricular. Some of the ACCC committee members visited the Hillsboro facility, where Don has created a successful program, many of whose alumni are in engineering in college or professionally and have reported back that they are well-prepared. Recently, Don has been having success using a new model for teaching ELL students who were not doing well in any classes. His curriculum has evolved out of a traditional “shop” class. “There is magic around what you teach, what you use for a gateway class, how you teach it, how you make it accessible.”
- Hands-on activities, rather than lecture and demonstration, best engage the natural curiosity and drive of the student – ACCC wants OPAS to champion the use of hands-on, increased engagement methodologies, whether within ACCC or not. Considerable change is required :
- Standards – Most recent standards are very fact or content based. Teachers feel constrained that they can’t dig in to the concepts.
- Steve Day & Bill Becker (both on the OPAS Steering Committee) are on the State Standards Assessment and Content Panel for Science, which is charged with reworking the standards for K-10 education.
- Should OPAS as a body embrace and endorse a shift in the direction of concept/skill in standards? As a political endorsement, so to speak.
- In other meetings, additional barriers to implementing hands-on, project-based, and inquiry-based curricula have been noted:
- Class size, both in number of student and physical facilities
- Expense, both because of technology that obsolesces rapidly and consumables for hands-on projects
- Professional development and ongoing teacher support
- ACCC Focus Area 1 – Fostering conversation among co-curricular providers:
- Probably in the form of a workshop-type event – there is a K12 mafia out there who really care about education but they don’t know all the resources and the players. Marketing/PR needs:
- communications support around event planning.
- PR for BEC Techno-Supersite - get it “out of the secret document file.” BEC is a seed, not a sturdy oak tree. – that’s why ACCC thinking about workshop/event. Witness Dan’s question about what is BEC?
- ACCC Focus Area 2: Is it possible for OPAS to take a position on “Strategic Alternatives: High School Curricula aka the Paradigms for Curricular Change” under discussion in the Steering Committee – can we use our focus to cut through the noise? We need to cast a wider net, and not be seen as a special pleading. To make effective recommendations at the policy level, we need political lobbying, PR, and consensus building.
- The Education world has two major challenges:
- getting to the right decision at a high level,
- then diffuse implementation across the state.
- Technical Enhancement model shows two daughter triangles
- Front end – a gateway into technical subject matter via hands-on and applied work, similar to the best co-curricular programs
- Back end – increasing depth and complexity of subject matter, relevance of application continues to guide students to choose their careers in engineering and applied science.
- Society as a whole is also part of this issue – US celebrates the quickest, fastest, strongest … Japan celebrates persistence: different educational models result in different products and industry practices. Now, in fact, the US is trying not to emphasize speed so much and getting better results.
- OPAS Initiative OPAS Vision 2020 document discussion:
- Does not make your heart race faster.
- Dick’s questions for the Marketing Committee:
- how can this mission be made relevant to the key constituencies that are supposed to benefit from this or buy in to it? WIIFM – What’s in it for me?
- To a student/parent: my life would be better, this is cool stuff
- My community would be better off if this happens
- Less expensive, well-prepared labor pool for hiring – great for potential employers? Is it enough for potential employees? Is this urgent in a state where high tech employment is still 16% below its peak over 5 years ago? Are the jobs real? Are the benefits real? It’s important to enrich OPAS understanding to what the jobs are going to be. Dick: we need additional data to paint a clear picture - three pie charts
- how big technology employment opportunities are today for certain degrees
- if we continue on the current path, what would Oregon employment sectors look like?
- If we have a healthy economic development model, what would they look like?
- Dan – more data is needed; his opinion is that engineering is overlooked as an entry point to many other careers outside of engineering – e.g., marketing, sales, logistics management, accounting, law.
- Di/Endi – do we have a person from Workforce Board or Employment?
- Remove the implication that we are doing this not for K12, but to them.
- How will the OPAS measurable outcomes be set? How will they benefit the students at institutions?
- We talk about embracing engineering and talking about it to students, but have had no discussion about what that means – what would you actually change to “embrace engineering”? What is the role of programs of technology-related courses that are not math and science? (Remember -- engineering is not math and science; math and science are not engineering). Schools have lately been de-emphasizing these technology courses (as with art, band, and other “non-core” courses) as not at the top of the pareto chart – that is, it is not seen as part of the solution to the most urgent problem.
- The word “Engineering” could be a killer. It may take more savvy marketing to get them into the class.
- Dick thinks things flame out between Middle School and High School. Co-curricular participation drops off at this point; High Schools don’t handle the transition well. He would focus on grades 7,8,9,10.
- Dick: In the late HS phase, we need more PR, and give more students exposure to experience in engineering. How can we more effectively engage to put students in an environment in those last two years to make engineering as a career choice? In the world of college prep academics, we are like a farmer who spends all year growing wheat, then when it’s ripe, he goes fishing.
- Math is the secret handshake for engineering. You only have to get through it to get in the club; you do not have to be really good at it.
- Recap of the “pipeline” metaphor.
- does a disservice to women
- Does not reflect women’s career paths as well as it does men’s. Women often choose later, after other career considerations.
- Inherent inconsistency: tight curriculum with no late entry points vs. the best graduate engineering programs accept students who have never taken an undergraduate course in engineering – just major in physics and do well.
- Jo & Dick: HR departments as well as education has narrowed for “non-standard” entry – fewer technicians have a path to become engineers.
- Why are we increasing articulation? We need to understand - are we shooting at an old target?
Additional Resources:
- Book: Women in Science, Career Processes and Outcomes, Yu Xie and Kimberlee A. Shauman ISBN 0-674-01034-5
- Book: Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing; Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher. ISBN 0-262-63269-1. (Profiled in the OPAS Summit Materials.)
- Article: Chronicle of Higher Education 5/5/2006: “A Hothouse for Female Scientists: Small Colleges, Big Results”, Robin Wilson. “Some of the nations’s small liberal arts colleges send on more women, proportionally, for Ph.D’s in the sciences than do elite research universities.”
- Article: Chronicle of Higher Education 5/5/2006: “A Hothouse for Female Scientists: At Carleton, working closely with professors leads women to careers in science”, Robin Wilson. Case study of anecdotal and some statistical data.
Wrapup:
Di: Some of what Dick has been talking about is lining up with a consensus of not creating a product such as a print campaign, website, course or event. Marketing’s charge, as a discipline and for this committee in particular, is to communicate with various audiences. We will try to schedule another guest for the next meeting, probably the chairs of Student Success: Access, Motivation, Retention (SAMR) and Alignment and Coordination: System-Wide (ACSW). Standards, Courses, and Curricula (SCC) is just getting started, so they will be scheduled later.