Aileen Tapia

RWS 1302

Opinion Piece

4/30/15

Are STEM Fields really the stem of our country?

Current statistics show that China and India are graduating more engineers than the
United States. Thus, we only criticize the fact that we are not graduating enough engineers but
what are educational institutions doing to change this? Only 1% of educational institutions are
actually doing something to change this trend around the United States. (Sheeky, 2013). As a
community, we need to start doing something to continue inspiring and encouraging students
who want to pursue this fields, to follow the right path and give the extra support they need to
fulfill their dreams.
The importance of this topic in everyones lives is the fact that everywhere we look,
there is engineering, chemistry, physics, mathematics, or technology. It completely surrounds
us! If we want to continue living the great life that we currently live on, we need to encourage
our community to pursue this degrees. However, they are only going to stay within those fields
if we are able to truly engage them into those fields. The best and greatest solution is ProjectBased learning where students are learning the concepts they are required to; however, they
are able to apply those concepts into a real-world problems. By performing a project that is reenforcing what they already learned, they are developing several other essential soft-skills.
From personal experience, the only way students will realize the importance of the
topics around them, is until they explore, learn in-depth, and perform projects in which they
can further their learning. The biggest support group students can have are from family,
friends, and professors. Encouraging students is YOUR input into students that need to in order
to aid them to achieve their goals. A big problem is that through this hands-on experience,
students themselves, may or may not realize how important it is, until they first go through
their first learning experience. The pictures below show my first personal experience through
this kind of exposure.

Aileen Tapia
RWS 1302

Opinion Piece

4/30/15

Also, there is a real world-wide bias that only male are supposed to major in the
Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics fields. However, women are as capable, as
smart, as innovative, as competent to succeed in this fields as men. Therefore, we also need to
encourage, or at least not discourage, young girls our community to start thinking about
pursuing this challenging yet important fields. A mentor and very close friend once told me, If I
can do it, you can do it (Personal Communication, K. Corral 2015). Often times, our young
generation need proof of what kind of people have done and excelled at these careers.
Therefore, this generation we are living on, we need to prove not only that we are able to
succeed in STEM fields, and we are going to be able to do this through Project Based Learning.
Most Students are more active, sensitive and visual over reflective, intuitive, and verbal
(Kolmos, 2008). There is proof of how our students learn, so now we need to ask to engage our
students in STEM fields.
In conclusion, the biggest importance of students being engaged in Project-Based
Learning is because we need to continue a pipeline of students in STEM fields, because guess
what? THEY, our youth are the actual stem of our country, there are the ones that are going to
be after us, so we need to act to better educate our youth of tomorrow.

Aileen Tapia
RWS 1302

Opinion Piece

4/30/15

References
Kolmos, A., & Holgaard, J. E. (2008). Learning Styles of Science and Engineering Students in Problem and
Project Based Education. In Book of Abstracts. Sense Publishers.
Personal Interview: Karla Corral.
Sheehy, K. (2013, June 24). Tips for Transitioning to Project-Based Learning. Retrieved March 24, 2015,
from http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/high-school-notes/2013/06/24/tips-for-transitioning-toproject-based-learning