Today, we had the honor of joining President Obama as he announced a national science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education initiative, called the “Educate to Innovate” campaign. This is the first time a president has made this level of commitment to math and science education. At Intel, math and science education has been a focus of more than $1 billion of investment and the catalyst to train more than 6 million teachers.

We are very excited to be working with the Administration’s Office of Science and Technology on this effort and, in support of the President’s campaign, Intel has committed more than $200 million over the next 10 years for teacher training. Former Intel Chairman and CEO Craig Barrett will serve as a co-chair of the President’s new program.

The private and public leaders involved in “Educate to Innovate” have set a goal to find and replicate successful science, math and technology programs all across America. The President talked about training teachers and hosting winners of science competitions that are the result of hands-on learning, which he did earlier this year by inviting winners of Intel Science Talent Search to the White House. These are areas where Intel can make difference.

The president also said that winners in science competitions should be honored like winners of NCAA championships. It was only fitting that the students from Oakton High School in Vienna, VA demonstrated an impressive robot that they invented to shoot hoops.

Through years of experience and thousands of hours in classrooms world-wide, Intel has identified two concrete areas that fall in line with President’s goals:

• Help prepare all students to take Algebra I by 8th grade. Intel will work with states, local education agencies and universities to train 100,000 American teachers in both Intel Math, a new, proven, results-driven math curriculum to increase knowledge and passion for the subject, as well as in Intel Teach, an ongoing program that trains teachers to use technology in the classroom, to help build the critical thinking and problem solving skills.
• Allow every student an opportunity to learn science by doing science. Intel will develop new models for student research programs in rural, inner-city, low-income and high-minority classrooms across the U.S. that encourage hands-on science and math learning. Student achievements will be recognized in Intel’s science competitions – the Intel Science Talent Search and the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, the most prestigious science competitions in the world.

The President said today that an announcement like this “doesn’t get a lot of focus.” He pointed out that “they’re not what’s debated on cable.” This is exceptionally unfortunate, as we wholeheartedly agree with his opinion that “this is probably going to make more of a difference in determining how well we do as a country than just about anything else that we do here.”

Intel believes that our young people are the key to solving our global challenges. Please share your thoughts with us and help us build a broad commitment to improve math and science education across the country.

Tags: education, education to innovate, inspire, Intel, Math and Science, Obama, STEM

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 3:25 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.