|
Higher Education
$52K gift from Triad firm boosts Forsyth Tech's heavy equipment program (Triad Business Journal)
A $52,000 gift to Forsyth Technical Community College from the foundation of Kernersville-based commercial real estate management firm The Pope Cos. has allowed the schools diesel and heavy equipment technology program to add new equipment. The gift from the Lawrence E. Pope Foundation supported the purchase of software systems, diagnostic equipment and other items that will help students work on everything from heavy trucks to farm equipment, said Alan Doub, coordinator for the program. Pope Cos. owns and manages over 3.5 million square feet of commercial and industrial property throughout the Southeast.
KEEN grant to bring innovation to engineering classes (The Brown & White)
Lehighs department of engineering was awarded the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Networking grant Nov. 16 at the Baker Institutes event Creativate, which celebrated Lehighs entrepreneurial successes. Lehigh is the 20th university to be invited to partner with the network. The grant is $200,000 and will allow Lehigh to implement entrepreneurial elements into its engineering curriculum. It is to be used on grant-funded items in the fall semester of 2016. The Kern Family Foundation officially gave Lehigh the KEEN grant in June.
National Science Foundation Awards Grant For Lee STEM Students (The Chattanoogan)
The National Science Foundation awarded Lee University a $600,000 grant that will provide scholarships and educational opportunities to Lee students majoring in science and mathematics. The award was made through the federal agency's Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (S-STEM) program. This grant will fund a new Lee program which will be called iMASS Scholars. Scholars will receive a total of $20,000 in scholarships over three years. 
Government
Katherine Johnson was a STEM trendsetter before there was STEM (Christian Science Monitor)
Katherine Johnson can recall watching the Apollo 11 crew return to Earth after becoming the first men on the moon in 1969. While most of the country had moved on to celebrating a major Space Race victory, Ms. Johnson was nervously thinking of pilot Michael Collins. "If he missed it by a degree, he doesn't get into orbit," the 97-year-old NASA scientist explains in a Makers interview. "I was going, Boy, I hope he got that right!" She laughs. "And I was sitting there hoping I am right too."
Immigration Bill Could Challenge Techs Ongoing Fight For Skilled Worker Visas (TechCrunch)
Even as immigration advocates push for increases to the H-1B visa quotas, calls for reform to the existing system are growing louder from legislators and immigration advocacy groups alike. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley and Senator Dick Durbin, a ranking Democrat, introduced a bill that would limit outsourcing of jobs by requiring companies to first attempt to hire U.S. citizens. The bill, called the H1-B and L-1 Visa Reform Act of 2015, also includes protections for fair wages for visa holders. It presents the latest tension point in Silicon Valleys ongoing push to secure more high skilled immigration visas.
John M. Eger (Director, Creative Economy Initiative at San Diego State University): STEM May Become STEAM... Officially (Huffington Post)
What happened to the future of education in America last week was hard to believe. Frankly, I did not think it would ever happen. Like most you, perhaps, things just don't seem to get done in Washington D.C. so I discounted the fact that a Congressional Caucus on STEAM, adding the arts to the call for more Scientists, Technologists, Engineers and Mathematicians was formed in 2013. The goal was modest: to "host briefings and advocate for policy changes that will encourage educators to integrate arts, broadly defined, with traditional Science, Technology, Engineering and Math curriculum. The goal is to encourage the creativity needed to drive our innovation economy forward."
Diversity in STEM
Diversifying Technology Education (TechCrunch)
We all know the tech industry has a diversity problem. The major tech companies have released their bleak workforce diversity numbers, and one year later most of them are unchanged. Obviously, this is not an easy problem to fix. A workforce of white males naturally develops unconscious bias, which then impacts everything else. It leads to a brogrammer culture, a hiring bias that discriminates against minorities, and compensation and promotion structures that make it harder to retain women in tech jobs.
A closer look at Microsofts U.S. diversity: 46% white males, 481 fewer women than 2014 (GeekWire)
Microsoft made headlines on Monday afternoon with updated workforce statistics, but a federal report the company quietly published at the same time sheds even more light on the diversity within its ranks. The data shows that 45.9 percent of the companys U.S. workers are white males, down slightly from 46.5 percent last year. It also shows that of the highest ranking 155 employees, 126 are either white or asian men. Of those top 155 execs, 18 are women. These numbers all come from Microsofts 2015 EEO-1 report, which the U.S. government requires all major employers to file. The company doesnt talk much about this data, and it points out that the classifications it uses to report diversity statistics to the federal government are different from what it uses internally.
Industry
Google To Donate Up To $1 Million Toward Education In Android Pay Charity Campaign (TechCrunch)
In an effort to kickstart its mobile payments solution, Android Pay, Google this morning announced a holiday campaign that will see the tech giant donating up to a million dollars toward special education projects in partnership with nonprofit DonorsChoose.org. This is the first time Google has ever worked with an NGO on a mobile payments campaign, the company notes. However, its not the first time Google has tried its hand at mobile giving. Several years ago, the companys own nonprofit arm, Google.org which is also now backing this new charitable effort launched an Android application called One Today.
New York
STEM Scholarships available through new state program (Albany Times-Union)
In New York State, STEM jobs are expected to grow 14 percent between 2014 and 2024, while other jobs will grow just 9 percent. Yet employers struggle to fill these positions because there are more jobs than there are workers qualified to do them, which hurts our states businesses. To solve this mismatch, New York State created an exciting new scholarship program for high-achieving high school students. Under the New York [STEM] Incentive Program, students in the top 10 percent of their graduating classes who plan to study STEM at a SUNY or CUNY school can earn full-tuition scholarships for four- or five-year programs. In return, those students must keep their grades up and work and live in the state for five consecutive years after graduation in a STEM-related field. Not only will this scholarship help inspire more students to enroll in STEM majors, it also keeps them from being saddled with crushing student loan debt upon graduation.
STEM Innovation
Wow! Jeff Bezos Blue Origin sends New Shepard rocket ship to space and gets it back safely (GeekWire)
 Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, successfully sent its New Shepard rocket ship to outer space for the first time on Monday and even more amazingly, brought every piece back down to Earth for a soft landing. Now safely tucked away at our launch site in West Texas is the rarest of beasts, a used rocket, Bezos wrote in a blog posting that spread the news and shared a video. Bezos makes a couple of cameo appearances in the video including a shot showing him taking a seat in the control room before launch, and a post-landing scene in which he pops open a champagne bottle. (Hes the guy wearing the hat and sunglasses.) |
 |
Stay Connected       
 STEMconnector®
100 CIO/CTO Leaders in STEM- Steve Fisher, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer
 "Why a diverse group of technologists? Simply put, diverse groups of technologists bring different and more ways of viewing problems, and faster and better ways of solving them. And yet, somewhere along the way, the technology industry, and the STEM field in general, has failed to adequately cultivate the interest of girls and invest meaningfully in the careers of female technologists, depriving our industry and the STEM field of untold efficiency and improvement gains. Our industry, technologies, and work teams are the poorer for the lack of gender diversity. As the CTO of eBay, I believe that hiring, developing, and advancing diverse talent in technology roles is both a business imperative and the right thing to do."
Steven Triplett (Director of STEM Client Partnerships, ACT): ACT Introduces New STEM College Readiness Benchmark
 We at ACT are excited to introduce a new indicator that will help students, parents, educators, and even districts and states better understand student readiness for STEM college coursework. It is called the ACT STEM College Readiness Benchmark. The benchmark is based on students ACT STEM score, which represents their combined performance on the ACT math and science tests. Its a new score that we began including in student ACT score reports this fall.
Thank You for Joining our TownHall on LinkEngineering.org! Watch, Re-watch, and/or Share the Video!
 Thank you to our speakers and everyone who joined us for this week's TownHall learning about the collaboration behind LinkEngineering.org and the dynamic capabilities of the new website! As always, you can watch or re-watch any of our TownHalls on our YouTube page.
STEM Food and Ag Council Launches Feed, Nourish, Thrive Campaign
 The STEM Food and Ag Council (SFAC) - a project of STEMconnector® -announced the launch of a new initiative to increase the number of people working to feed the planets growing population through STEM. The initiative, entitled Feed, Nourish, Thrive, aims to inspire the next generation of innovators in food and agricultural production. |
