San Francisco Students Participate in STEM Career Awareness Day
A
consortium of businesses, schools and
governments in the San Francisco Bay Area held the second annual STEM
Career
Awareness Day March 15. The goal was to encourage high school students
to
pursue college degrees and, eventually, careers in science, technology,
engineering and math (STEM).
More
than 100 students from three San Francisco Unified School District high schools participated in the event that started out the day
at the
Rutter Center on the Mission Bay campus of the University
of California at San
Francisco (UCSF). They then visited a number of businesses in
the San Francisco
area where they received tours and had discussions with scientists and
engineers.
Among
the companies that participated were:
- Bayer;
- FibroGen;
- OtherLab;
- Splunk;
- Discovery
Digital;
- The
EcoCenter at Heron's Head Park;
- PG&E;
- TechShop;
- Adobe;
- Illumina; and
- PUC
Southeast Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Bayer,
which is the Bay Area's third largest
biotech employer, was the primary sponsor of the event that was
organized as
part of UCSF's Science and Health Education Partnership with the school
district.
The
program is in response to a 2014 report from
the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics that found, while STEM unemployment
is low
— 3.1 percent compared to an overall national unemployment rate of 7.4
percent
— more than 9 million more STEM jobs will be created by 2022.
"We
know that the best investment we can make for
our city's future is an investment in our young people," said San
Francisco Mayor
Ed Lee, "and that's why we are laser-focused on making sure our public
schools
are the best in the nation. This helps to inspire our students to
pursue the
science and technology careers of the 21st century economy."
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.