Nice thoughtful and short essay on the value of studying (and doing) science to the scientist student.

You become a different person with scientific training, and we do science because we value that kind of person. Science is not only bridge-building (usefulness and technology driven) and knowledge-building (adding to the pile of facts we know about reality) it is also people, character, and citizen-building.

Surf over to “So, what’s science good for?”on the Rationally Speaking blog and judge for yourself.

Today, Rebecca Skloot’s famously good book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, is available in paperback. If you have any interest in science in American culture, you should read this.

Through this book, Skloot tells the story of to origin of HeLa cells, a line of cells that transformed the medical research industry. She traces them from their origin, their (by today’s standards) unethical harvesting, and their world-wide proliferation.

She tells the story from the perspective of the family of the woman from whom the cells were harvested (Henrietta Lacks). As she tells the story, we watch the scientific and business communities adapt to the opportunities and challenges presented by scientific advancement. And we see how our awareness of ethical issues lags well behind our scientific understanding.

If you are interested in science (or STEM), ethics, American culture, diversity, or good writing, this book it worth the read and the thoughtful reflection that it inspires.

This morning, Insider Higher Ed reported on a meeting at MIT at which a panel discussed how recent breakthroughs in the life sciences point to a new way to think about academic organization. The called this model 'convergence', suggesting the movement from several directions (or disciplines) toward a common limit point (or achievement). Of course, this is just another way to package interdisciplinary interaction at a team-level.

It's natural to walk away from this discussion all excited about training scientists in this new approach from the start of their undergraduate career. Been there. Thought that. And I always return to the fact that excellence in interdisciplinary achievement will always be built on deep discipline-specific knowledge.

Some questions from the packed audience of academics, researchers, Capitol Hill and White House staffers, and MIT alumni centered on whether universities should start training "convergent scientists" who are versed in hybrid fields. But Keith Yamamoto, professor and executive vice dean of the University of California at San Francisco's School of Medicine, cautioned against it. Highly specialized knowledge will only grow in importance, he said. What is needed more, he argued, was a wider acceptance -- as reflected in how scientists are trained and what gets published -- of the importance of teamwork. Effective teamwork among specialists of disparate disciplines who look to new areas of knowledge would spur progress. "We need to excite people about what's going on in the boundaries," said Yamamoto.

So it's not 'interdisciplinary' scientists that we need to train, we need to inculcate in our students curiosity about what's going on at the boundary of disciplines, where only interdisciplinary teams can make progress.

It looks like Congress has renewed the America COMPETES Act. The House passed (228 to 130) the Senate's version that was passed last week.

"After all, we wouldn't teach kids how to play football by lecturing to them about football for years and years before allowing them to play. And if education is about the 'lighting of a flame not the filling of a pail' -- we should be putting the tools of discovery, invention and fabrication at the finger tips of every child -- inside and outside of the classroom." ( Thomas Kalil of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy)

From an interview with Dale Dougherty of O'Reilly Media, in which Mr. Kahill talks about President Obama's support for hands-on science, mathematics, and engineering educational experiences like those provided by Truman State University. I say, let's take what we do to another level. Who's with me?

This weekend, while I was playing hookey from Church, I stumbled upon this program on Fareed Zakaria's GPS, on CNN. It was a program titled "Restoring the American Dream" and it talks about what America needs to do get back on track to be the world's greatest economic powerhouse.

http://rss.cnn.com/~r/services/podcasting/fareedzakaria/rss/~3/-EpSlZG9tW8/gp...
I liked this program so much I made the students in my Senior Seminar (for mathematics majors) sit through it. I hope it gave them a sense for the ideas in Zakaria's The Post-American World and Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat. it also suggested that Seth Godin's Linchpin could be useful for those who are about to graduate from college.

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There's a nice article in the New York Times, online edition, today that touches on several STEM talent expansion issues (New Programs Aim to Lure Young Into Digital Jobs, by Steve Lohr). At the heart of this story, though not explored much, America's economic need for people who can leverage computational tools and methods is juxtaposed against the way computer science is portrayed to today's students. The article uses a couple tiny case studies of people whose careers use computers in a central way but who came at computing through non-standard directions. (This means that they weren't computer science majors, first; their primary passion lay outside the CS major.)

As a STEM educator (who is not a computer scientist), the article hurt a bit to read. On the one hand, it made me want to start wading into this area by helping developing the type of classes for junior high and high school students that are described in the article. On the other hand, I know that I should defer in this regard to my colleagues in computer science. Shouldn't I? Or are they the people who are responsible for drying up the supply of American talent in computer science? Sure, they might point the finger at lawyers and financiers whose high-salary careers seem to be attracting students away from computer science, but what has been their response?

Reading this article makes me more certain that we should no leave science and technology education up to the scientists and technologists. We should not sit back and hope that our local computer science department takes the time and effort required to create and offer a course that presents computation to young people in a holistic way that's integrated with topics from the 'real world' (as opposed to ins-and-outs of some programming language or other). We're perfectly justified in leaving them behind if they think their way is the Right Way to train future computer scientists.

I'll get off this train of thought now, as I'm risking taking this post away from what I'd originally intended it to be: a shout out and thumbs-up about a nice article on STEM talent expansion efforts.

This post is inspired by the overblown and overhyped forecasts of American major media (and government) meteorologists. their recommendations regarding severe weather and dangerous travel have always seemed hyperbolic to me. Then, when I read the Discovery.com blog post here, I felt one of my buttons pushed, and I had to express this exasperation somewhere. Here's the quote from the post that set me off:

I certainly hope that no one will be killed or injured from this, but I also know that there will always be people who don’t heed the warnings. If only more people understood that science works, and that geologists and volcanologists know their stuff. They devote their lives to this field, and their study of the Earth and its paroxysms may save the lives of others.

When I read this, I certainly empathized with the author and could project sympathy and concern for the residents of Legzapi, Philipines whose lives were threatened by the volcano, Mayon. However, the text is a nice example of a rhetorical flourish aimed at the non-scientific populace that, in the long term, contributes to the widening of the divide between those who appreciate the contributions of science to society and those who are frustrated by the empty day-to-day promises made by science to America.

This idea that "there will always be people who don’t heed the warnings" of scientists who "know their stuff" about predicting natural disasters concerns me. Surely, the geologists and volcanologists who are monitoring Mayon are making their recommendations regarding evaluation and so forth with the best possible intentions. But let's look to meterologists in the United States as examples of scientists who "know their stuff" and who make recommendations to the general populace through local and national media. Are they scientists who make their recommendations on the basis of cutting-edge technology and data-based decision making? Do they make measured and reasonable recommendations on the nightly and 24/7 channels?

If we could do a better job of making science relevant and beneficial to the day-to-day American, maybe we could encourage more young people to pursue educational and career paths toward science and mathematics. And this is what America needs -- the new economic and philosophical patriotism is a devotion to the study and implementation of skill and talent in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). But we won't be able to turn the hearts of America in this direction without helping them to understand its benefits and how it can positively impact peoples' day-to-day living.

This short post (a rant, really), can't do this issue justice. It's just SOOO big. But the article that inspired this reveals a slice of what's wrong with the American perception of STEM and how it serves (or fails to communicate truthfully and effectively) society and its needs.