The movement to incorporate additional science, technology, engineering and mathematics courses has served as a catalyst for educating West Virginia’s new work force. With the addition of the arts, turning STEM into STEAM, educational institutions are working to highlight and encourage the implementation of these fields.
By Carolyn Long
It’s no secret that science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields are a major part of West Virginia’s current and future economic environment. That news broke years ago. What’s important now is how the state’s educators are preparing students to seize those vast STEM career opportunities on the horizon.
In April 2014, Governor Earl Ray Tomblin signed an executive order establishing the West Virginia Council on STEM. Last November, the council released a report showing that 25,000 STEM positions will be opening up in the state between now and 2018.
That’s a lot of jobs to fill in less than three years, and that short turnaround means West Virginia’s higher education institutions have their work cut out for them.
Growth is going to be driven in a big way by STEM-heavy industries like energy development, manufacturing and health care. West Virginia’s colleges and universities are answering the call for STEM professionals, and more and more two- and four-year graduates and technical trainees are entering the state’s work force.
Even so, the next few years are going to be very competitive for West Virginia’s STEM students. It’s no longer enough to simply have a background in STEM to be effective in these industries. The Mountain State needs professionals in these new roles who are capable in their chosen disciplines, able to effectively communicate in the workplace and flexible enough to see the bigger picture of their work.
The Rise of STEAM
There is a national push for STEM education, and within that push, STEAM programming—science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics—has gained popularity in K-12 and higher education. Educators using a STEAM approach layer liberal arts studies into STEM curricula, the idea being that studying the arts stimulates creativity. In turn, that creativity enhances the students’ ability to solve STEM challenges in innovative ways, effectively making them big-picture employees.
Some STEM proponents argue that adding an A to the equation is simply a catchall meant to make everyone feel special. That’s not the case. In reality, one would be hard-pressed to find sciences and the arts truly living independently of one another.
Engineers don’t design bridges and build the nation’s skyscrapers in an artless vacuum. Chemists aren’t creating new products in a place where imagination is barred from the laboratory. Just try to imagine a world where creativity doesn’t drive the design and use of new technology.
Encouraging STEM Studies
Catchy acronyms are great for raising awareness, but there are many ways educators can work the arts into their curriculum without launching a full-scale STEAM program. West Virginia University Institute of Technology (WVU Tech) is a STEM-focused campus of West Virginia University, and it has been advocating artistic expression and exploration among STEM students for years.
Its students are encouraged to participate in on- and off-campus events where they’re exposed to history, theater, art, dance, music and comedy. Many of WVU Tech’s STEM students write for the student newspaper and literary magazine, and the school recently launched a professional writing and editing minor designed to give students the training they need to effectively communicate the importance of their work. This approach gives students an edge in the market, and it’s one of the reasons WVU Tech’s graduates report the highest college return on investment in the state.
Improving Communication
Dr. David Skorton, president of Cornell University, a cardiologist and a biomedical researcher, wrote in Scientific American that an inability to communicate the importance or relevance of one’s work keeps scientists from connecting to the nonscientific community. “As a result,” he wrote, “our ability to generate knowledge and solve problems is suffering.”
An understanding of liberal arts goes a long way to ensuring STEM professionals communicate effectively in the work force and within the community they ultimately serve. Strong STEM programming offers graduates the robust problem-solving skills they need to work effectively in STEM environments. Blending communications, design and other artistic elements into this programming gives them the flexibility and whole-mindedness to look to other areas of study for potential solutions.
This principle works in both directions. Where exposure to the arts might help an engineer find a unique and creative way to solve a design problem, that same engineer might better see how his or her work influences art and architecture. Imagine the joy a chemist feels when he is able to communicate how his work is changing the makeup industry. Think of the biologist who can raise money for endangered songbirds because she understands how to connect to a wider audience through the beauty of music or the astronomer who can inspire youngsters to look to the heavens because he can use art to help them visualize planets, stars and whole galaxies.
Speaking of the cosmos, the late Carl Sagan, who brought the joys of science and exploration to so many young minds in the course of his life’s work, said, “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it, we go nowhere.”
As the state’s higher education institutions begin to fill those 25,000 new STEM jobs with capable and talented young West Virginians, it’s important that schools foster in students an appreciation for not just a single discipline but an appreciation for the imagination a holistic education brings. That’s how West Virginia’s STEM graduates will become regionally and globally competitive.
