U.S. News honored Anousheh Ansari, the Chair and CEO of Prodea Systems; Norm Augustine, the retired chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin; Shirley Ann Jackson, the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; and William Swanson, the chairman of Raytheon Company.
“They have a deep and unwavering commitment to advancing STEM education and career engagement, lifetimes in essence, dedicated to developing a blueprint for the future in STEM,” said Ray Almgren, the vice president of marketing at National Instruments, who announced the award winners.
While the honorees experiences and accomplishments varied greatly across the science and technology fields, all of those honored for their achievements Friday shared a common goal of expanding STEM access to students early on in their educational careers in order to ensure the U.S. can be armed with the workforce it needs to maintain a competitive edge in the global marketplace.
Following the award ceremony, the honorees joined U.S. News Editor and Chief Content Officer Brian Kelly on stage to discuss the ways educators, volunteers and business leaders could better steer students in the direction of STEM careers.
“The fact that we really do live in a data-driven, web-enabled, super-computer-powered and hyperconnected world creates enormous opportunities,” Jackson said. “If we can have a conversation that engenders a national conversation about this, about how we invite and excite and prepare our young people and how we open the aperture wider for talent from around the world, then I think we can begin to make progress.”
The award winners said that STEM education could be strengthened by raising the federal education standards, better educating teachers and ensuring students have access to up-to-date technologies. Yet, in order to ensure students develop an interest in the field, professional engineers, scientists and mathematicians must also play a role in developing the next generation of leaders.
“I challenge those in industry to get off the sidelines and engage and put some of your efforts to move this needle,” Swanson said.
Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, who has worked extensively to expand STEM access to minorities, also attended the luncheon. Johnson said so often students are just missing early opportunities to be influenced by science because the resources are just not there. Johnson has devoted much of her time to helping open doors to technology for young people. Johnson founded the Congressional Black Caucus Science and Technology Brain Trust more than 20 years ago and says she is spending more and more of her time reaching out to encourage students to pursue STEM careers.
“It is so essential that we maintain leadership, innovation and research in this country. To do that, we must have the talent and right now we are not making progress. We are doing an inch when we should be doing a mile,” Johnson says. “With this kind of leadership on the public stage, we [can] bring the public along.”
The lunch also included dozens of students who attend science and math schools in the Washington, D.C., area.
“It is a whole new experience for our kids to actually come out and see there is actually more out there,” says Hakim Johnson, a math and science teacher at Howard Middle School.
“There are so many people who have so many accolades. It is important for them to be able to see that. You could never get all these great minds to come to the school.”
