Defense innovation requires focus on STEM education.

• Author: Pellegrini, Alan
• Position: INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

Maintaining the talent pipeline is critical for the Defense Department and the defense industry. A STEM--science, technology, engineering and mathematics--development office was created within the office of the assistant secretary of defense for research and engineering.

A number of programs within this office focus on student STEM initiatives --K-12 through post-graduate researchers. These student programs work to develop the nation's STEM pipeline through partnerships with other government agencies, industry and academia.

A recent success story was the formation of an "adopt-a-school" program. Launched in February, the first beneficiary school was Barcroft Elementary School in Arlington, Virginia. The "adopt-a-school" program focuses on providing mentors and volunteers to the school to support enriched reading and hands-on experimentation. This program is part of the first step in boosting students' self-confidence, stimulating ideas and fueling the desire to learn.

Successful initiatives such as the "adopt-a-school" program are important because they have a lasting impact on the workforce pipeline by contributing to the long-term delivery of talent when these students enter their careers. Without this talent, the strong workforce currently underpinning national security efforts would not be able to stay ahead of the curve and meet the demands of evolving global threats.

With challenging mission requirements surrounding defense operations, the responsibility to develop solutions to combat these threats is largely placed on the STEM workforce of both the department and its industrial base. Combating global threats often requires new technology, making the key to success innovation. So, how can student STEM programs support innovation now, not just in the future?

The answer is to empower students and their ideas by putting real-world challenges in front of them and not limiting creativity.

Using the idea of open-opportunity, the Thales Arduino Challenge was created as a STEM initiative for college students.

This program is unlike other initiatives because it does not establish general learning goals. Rather, the program supports innovative, student-led teams and their projects in a truly free-form way. It embraces creativity and the concepts of technology-transfer by only asking students to do one thing --develop an innovative or interesting capability which addresses key markets: aerospace, defense, security, space or transportation.

This...