I've always wanted to help become a bridge between industry and academia. I think this is part of why departments took kindly to me while looking for an academic post. I think so, but I still don't know how the faculty hiring process works. This involves a few different approaches (I'm omitting some things but these are the biggest):
1. Funding acacdemic labs to do basic science I don't have time for
2. Hiring interns from schools
3. Giving talks at academic conferences and universities
4. Convincing my company to sponsor academic conferences and different university events and students
5. Working directly with local schools (K-12 and universities) and my company to show the youths that STEMs are fun, lucrative, necessary, and useful.
The last one involves me traveling to schools, taking part in tours, outreach with FIRST, SWE, ASME, MAES, SASE, and BMES (e.g., random acronyms) events, etc. I try my hardest to get people into STEMs. We need more of us of any race, religion, and creed. The problem with this is we can convince more people to want to join, but without the funds to pay for college and have jobs for them, my recruiting efforts are useless.
While I wasn't born in the USA, I bleed the stars and stripes. I love this country, which is part of why I recruit so heavily for STEMs. To prevent our country from falling behind we have to have innovation. And we need people with advanced knowledge to spur this on. And to have innovation, we must have the funds to provide the best possible education, paying for tuition, fees, and stipends; especially for those who can't pay on their own. We need funds to pay for more (and accountable) professors (and K-12 teachers) for the influx of students. We need the funds to create the technologies that turn into the next generation of businesses to fund many a STEMer to come. In industry, I fund a lot of academic research, but it's still a drop in the bucket compared to what the NIH/NSF/DoD give out. But to handle the influx of STEMers we need to keep innovation going on the homefront. We need more investment. This is something I've always preached.
This bring me to this website: http://www.innovationdeficit.org
When I saw this today, I saw statistics that I've always seen, but this is a very nice way to present them. There has been all kinds of talk about funding being so bleak right now from federal agencies. I have heard it in regard mainly to grant-funding. But there's so much more to the lack of funding occurring in the academic environment. There needs to be more professors to handl the influx of students (and grants for them), we need the best labs and classrooms for them. And events to get them pumped about the fields. As a country we need to start thinking about this and understanding our priorities. Or companies need to start investing in our future since these students will be the eventual STEMers these companies need. There needs to be an interaction between industry and the government. Discussions about how they can work together: the government spending in a way to protect our intellectual future, with industry willing to shoulder some of the burden.
#InnovationDeficit
5. Working directly with local schools (K-12 and universities) and my company to show the youths that STEMs are fun, lucrative, necessary, and useful.
The last one involves me traveling to schools, taking part in tours, outreach with FIRST, SWE, ASME, MAES, SASE, and BMES (e.g., random acronyms) events, etc. I try my hardest to get people into STEMs. We need more of us of any race, religion, and creed. The problem with this is we can convince more people to want to join, but without the funds to pay for college and have jobs for them, my recruiting efforts are useless.
While I wasn't born in the USA, I bleed the stars and stripes. I love this country, which is part of why I recruit so heavily for STEMs. To prevent our country from falling behind we have to have innovation. And we need people with advanced knowledge to spur this on. And to have innovation, we must have the funds to provide the best possible education, paying for tuition, fees, and stipends; especially for those who can't pay on their own. We need funds to pay for more (and accountable) professors (and K-12 teachers) for the influx of students. We need the funds to create the technologies that turn into the next generation of businesses to fund many a STEMer to come. In industry, I fund a lot of academic research, but it's still a drop in the bucket compared to what the NIH/NSF/DoD give out. But to handle the influx of STEMers we need to keep innovation going on the homefront. We need more investment. This is something I've always preached.
This bring me to this website: http://www.innovationdeficit.org
When I saw this today, I saw statistics that I've always seen, but this is a very nice way to present them. There has been all kinds of talk about funding being so bleak right now from federal agencies. I have heard it in regard mainly to grant-funding. But there's so much more to the lack of funding occurring in the academic environment. There needs to be more professors to handl the influx of students (and grants for them), we need the best labs and classrooms for them. And events to get them pumped about the fields. As a country we need to start thinking about this and understanding our priorities. Or companies need to start investing in our future since these students will be the eventual STEMers these companies need. There needs to be an interaction between industry and the government. Discussions about how they can work together: the government spending in a way to protect our intellectual future, with industry willing to shoulder some of the burden.
#InnovationDeficit
I see the same thing in faculty postings. The less money we give for government funding of faculty, the less for training and fewer kids going into academia, and more turning to the dark side of industry. And with less innovation in academia less technology will be transferred to academia. Then there will be fewer jobs in the USA and they'll have to start going overseas. Just look at openings for faculty positions: most are overseas.
ReplyDeleteI didn't see most being overseas. But then again I intentionally looked in the USA. The thing I do notice is that we don't have enough talented STEMers in industry or academia. And a lot of those training people have been sucking since they got tenure. And the only way to bring in new blood that cares is to allocate more money to their hiring.
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