by Kenneth F. Galloway
In his State of the Union Address, President Bush called for a sharpening of America’s competitiveness and highlighted the need to pick up the pace of innovation in order to thrive on the playing field of global commerce.
The President touched on it, but recent books (e.g., The World is Flat) and national reports (e.g., “Rising above the Gathering Storm”) have been more explicit on the challenge: The world is catching up with the U.S. in engineering, science, and information technology – areas that directly impact economic competitiveness. In the past decades, we have watched as our nation’s manufacturing base has eroded and many operations, along with thousands of jobs, have migrated to foreign countries with cheaper labor. We have tolerated this, encouraging workers to retrain for the new information economy and to obtain more education to keep up with the changes.
As the dean of engineering at Vanderbilt, I am a great believer in education – particularly education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). But now we are seeing significant international competition at some of the highest levels, with international firms hiring engineers from other countries at lower salaries than they must pay U.S. engineers. Is getting a strong education and specialized technical training enough for the next generation to secure their future?
Indeed, that would be a significant start! A disturbing fact is that the number of U.S. students capable of and interested in pursuing careers in engineering, science and technology is flat or dropping. These are the students that will invent the new products, create future innovations, and make us competitive in the global economy. Meanwhile, in many other nations, the STEM numbers are growing. There is no question that bringing our K-12 students up to speed in math and science is a vitally important component of any strategy to enhance our economic competitiveness in the world.
But I believe we have to do more. The best way to keep jobs here in the U.S. is to show that we can get the job done better – we must do as Mayor Purcell (or Larry the Cable Guy) says – “Git-R-Done!” While it is essential that we attract more STEM students and better prepare them, they can’t do the job alone. As Sen. Lamar Alexander has stressed, we also need to make significant investments in science and engineering research. These investments must be both in money and in national willpower.
To successfully tackle these issues, we must leverage both our technical expertise and our characteristically American ability to sweep aside conventional thinking and traditional, limited mindsets. As a nation we are all about frontiers. This new phase of world development is a new frontier. We must approach this mission of keeping our economy healthy and thriving as the challenge of a new frontier and as an adventure rather than some dire emergency. We will need a spirit of adventure to deal not only with foreign competition but the increasingly unwieldy complexity in our world.
At Vanderbilt, we have grappled for some time with the problem of managing the knowledge explosion in all of the science and engineering disciplines. We have recognized that in order to solve the technological challenges that confront us – whether they be in energy, the environment, medicine, national security, or industrial production – we must build cross-disciplinary teams. We have truly come a long way in learning how to break down traditional barriers between academic disciplines so that we can attack these problems and create better solutions. It is vitally important that our government understand that innovative breakthroughs come largely from science and engineering research, and that this research is well worth the investment of federal dollars.
We have also come far in developing ways to teach students to effectively and creatively tackle big problems. We use research about how people learn to develop a very different approach in teaching our students. And, we are working now to make these teaching strategies available to K-12 teachers, so that students’ natural curiosity and interest about technology and science will be encouraged.
We need participation in the adventure of innovation from a new generation of scientists and engineers that includes the strength that comes from diversity. We want to ensure that a STEM education is both attractive to and within reach of many more of our students.
Americans are an inventive, resourceful people. We roll up our sleeves when it’s clear there is a need. But we can also be complacent and not respond to danger until it is very nearly too late. My fervent hope is that the President’s comments will encourage the Congress and the American people to address this multi-faceted challenge and to embrace the adventure of innovation and the new frontier of global competitiveness.
Kenneth F. Galloway is dean of the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering.
Media contact: Vivian Cooper, (615) 343-6314
vivi.cooper@vanderbilt.edu