An Industry Perspective on STEM Education for the Future: Workshop

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This workshop aims to synthesize an industry perspective about the structure and content of STEM education that will be needed by the nation's STEM workforce in the future. The project responds to the accelerating disruptive changes to work behaviors and business models, which are expected to affect the nature of work, the skills needed on the job, and the composition of the nation's workforce. The project will explore challenges to meeting current and future industry demands and will seek to identify shortcomings in the effectiveness of current STEM degrees in supporting development of competencies and skills. The goal of the project is to inform the national discussion about STEM education for the future, and to motivate needed changes in the structure and content of STEM education nationally. The project will focus on the future work environment and work rules, the types of expertise needed on the job, and preferred formats of development. It will examine industry-driven certification systems, including standards, benchmarks, and badging, as well as industry practices of skills validation. The project will also examine talent pipelines used by industry today and the trends for the future, such as internships, apprenticeships, onboarding, continuing professional development and life-long learning, industry leaves for study, and leveraging senior workers' knowledge and experience. This project will examine student development in terms of both technical skills and soft skills that are needed regardless of discipline. It will also examine how academic institutions view the value and credit-worthiness of industry preparation such as certification and badging versus academic courses. This project will engage industry experts and research faculty with deep industry experience to provide industry perspectives on workforce re-skilling and educational trends. Activities will include conducting a broad survey of industry, a convening of industry thought leaders to identify topics in need of exploration, one-on-one interviews with a subset of participants to validate the survey results and subsequent analysis, and compilation of results into a formal published report. This project is supported by the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program (IUSE): Education and Human Resources (EHR). The IUSE Program supports projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all undergraduate students.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.