STEM, NCLB, MIDWEST & UD: What's With the Acronyms and Our Nation's Future?

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Home > STEM, NCLB, MIDWEST & UD: What's With the Acronyms and Our Nation's Future?

Opinion

STEM, NCLB, MIDWEST & UD: What's With the Acronyms and Our Nation's Future?

10/16/2006

By Alice Anderson, University of Wisconsin-Madison

In Washington, D.C., debates continue on how to encourage students to seek careers in science, math, engineering, and technology (STEM). At the same time, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) drives the election agenda. I see this as a conundrum and question where we’ll find new scientists if the process is driven through NCLB. Riddles we need answers for include:

Are we losing our edge in competitiveness in the world because we can’t interest students in STEM pathways to learning?
If so, is K-8 the right time and place to develop student interest and skills in the STEM fields? Are high school interventions too late?
Do students with disabilities enrolled in postsecondary education (estimated at 9% of the total postsecondary student population) represent an underutilized resource as we struggle to meet our STEM demands?

It’s common for students to struggle with complicated concepts in science, technology, engineering, and math, but if you are a student with a disability, the struggle is compounded. Imagine being blind, visually impaired, or color blind and trying to participate in experiments to demonstrate why leaves change color, or exercises that require reading pH level indicators, or are based on measuring the hues of long and short wavelengths. What would it be like to travel by wheelchair to collect soil samples or lake algae? Imagine being deaf and viewing uncaptioned videos that explain fluid mechanics. For many students with disabilities, these and other barriers greatly hinder them from pursuing a future in STEM academic programs or careers.

Even though students with disabilities are naturally creative and master problem-solvers as they constantly decipher how to negotiate their daily environment, they often are discouraged from entering STEM disciplines because of these barriers to study. STEM curricula are not only technically-based, they also depend on teamwork, cooperation, and communication. Students need self-advocacy skills to know how to ask for modified chemistry experiments, lab benches that are adjustable, captioned videos, and passage through other gateways to learning science. The challenge of transforming instruction includes changing mindsets, teacher and class attitudes, and promoting teamwork that encourages cooperation rather than competition.

Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), experts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and the University of Northern Iowa have formed a consortium of educators, scientists, and student service providers – the MIDWEST Alliance in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Together, the consortium is taking action to remove barriers and to boost the numbers of students with disabilities entering – and remaining – in STEM fields.