News Release

Penn State Harrisburg hosting ‘STEM’ conference for educators

June 25, 2008

Schoolteachers and administrators will be introduced to the importance of the educational integration of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics at a Governor’s Institute July 28 through August 1 at Penn State Harrisburg and the Hershey Lodge.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education, Penn State Harrisburg and its Continuing Education unit, and the Capital Area Intermediate Unit have partnered to present The Governor’s Institute for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM GI) for school teachers and administrators. The middle and high school institute will be on the Penn State Harrisburg campus while the focus for the elementary grades will be at the Hershey Lodge.

Pennsylvania is one of six states to receive a grant from the National Governor’s Association, which is funding Gov. Ed Rendell’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Initiative. Developed by the state’s Department of Education, the institute aims to develop a consistent and comprehensive message for what STEM means in Pennsylvania schools. It will merge STEM content areas into comprehensive teaching and learning through problem-solving situations.

“STEM literacy bridges the four areas,” the Department of Education stresses. “Consequently, a STEM classroom shifts students away from learning information from these disciplines as discrete content areas and refocuses student learning around design and problem-solving in learning situations that weave together the disciplines through topics such as robotics, biotechnology, and materials processing. Thus, for example, a STEM classroom might pose a problem and then require students to do original research inspired by a class-wide inquiry project where they must use science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to gather and analyze data, design and build prototypes or models, test and evaluate and improve upon a proposed situation, and then communicate their findings.”

Scholarships for the team-approach Institute will be provided to each accepted team, consisting of lodging, breakfast and lunch, Act 48 hours, and materials.

Registration is available online at www.papde.ws.  For information, contact William F. Bertrand, Technology Education Adviser with the Department of Education at 717-783-6848 or e-mail wbertrand@state.pa.us.