America must renew its investment in innovation

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama hosted win­ners of stu­dent sci­ence fairs at the White House on Mon­day, part of the lead-in to this weekend’s cel­e­bra­tion of sci­ence on the National Mall. The USA Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing Fes­ti­val, which also includes some 50 satel­lite events around the coun­try, aims to engage and excite more than 1 mil­lion peo­ple nationwide.

This focus on sci­ence and sci­ence edu­ca­tion couldn’t come at a more crit­i­cal time. America’s abil­ity to com­pete in a global econ­omy, to cre­ate good jobs and to sup­port our stan­dard of liv­ing is heav­ily depen­dent on the inno­va­tion that flows from sci­en­tific dis­cov­ery. Engag­ing stu­dents early and fos­ter­ing an inter­est in sci­ence and engi­neer­ing is essen­tial. So, too, is sup­port­ing these pur­suits through high-caliber K-12 edu­ca­tion in the STEM areas (sci­ence, tech­nol­ogy, engi­neer­ing and math­e­mat­ics) and strong fund­ing for basic sci­ence research at the under­grad­u­ate and post-graduate levels.

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Author: Deborah Altenburg