Business Coalition Gets Results on STEM

In June of 2009, fifteen business and technology associations in Massachusetts joined to form the STEM Business Leaders’ Coalition and released a groundbreaking report, “Tapping Massachusetts’ Potential:  The Massachusetts’ Employers’ STEM Agenda.”  At the urging of EMC Corporation, the group, convened by the Massachusetts Business Roundtable and including MBAE, joined to issue a statewide call-to-action to express the business community’s sense of urgency for action, warning that the state’s social and economic competitiveness and prosperity require increased focus and investment STEM teaching and learning.  The report set goals, and issued recommendations to achieve them, on how to inspire, recruit and train a pool and pipeline of STEM talent.  It called for a “forward thinking, integrated strategy to build the talent infrastructure necessary” to meet the workforce requirements of a 21^st century, globally competitive economy.

The call-to-action from the business community caught the attention of public leaders.  After release of the report, the Patrick-Murray Administration quickly created the Governor’s STEM Advisory Council, chaired by the Lt. Governor.  The Council’s first task was to create the state’s first Statewide STEM Plan, which was released last month before nearly 700 people at the 7^th Annual STEM Summit in Sturbridge, Massachusetts.  At that event, the Lt. Governor acknowledged the business community’s impact as the catalyst for this effort:

“This report [the Statewide STEM Plan] came from a call to action.  A year ago June, at the Museum of Science in Boston, the Massachusetts Employers STEM Agenda convened by the Massachusetts Business Roundtable issued a report that identified a major gap, and a need for better coordination, leadership and resources for STEM.

I heard you.

The Governor heard you.

Our Secretaries of Education, Labor and Workforce, Economic Development, and their teams heard me telling them we had to move on this.  And less than a year ago Governor Patrick issued an executive order creating the STEM Advisory Council and appointed me as the chairman.

The Commonwealth’s first ever 5-year strategic plan for STEM was based on the recommendations of the six subcommittees of the Governor’s STEM Advisory Council, and the work of state agencies in collaboration with the council.   This plan goes further than we have gone before by setting goals with key benchmarks and a timeframe to meet them, and by creating a system of governance to oversee the plan’s implementation.”

The call-to-action was heard, STEM is at the top of the state’s public policy agenda, a Statewide STEM Plan and strategy has been developed, and an infrastructure is being formed to implement it.  So now what?  What should be the role of the business community in general, and the STEM Business Leaders’ Coalition specifically, moving forward?

With the original purpose of the STEM Business Leaders’ Coalition successfully achieved, the group reconvened to determine the business community’s next step.  From that conversation, four actions emerged as next steps:

1. Keep pressure on top political leaders.
2. Articulate that a top down management structure would be the most effective in tying the goals of the statewide plan to the activities in the regional networks.
3. Develop a set of key messages/priorities that the business community would use in its engagement at every level of the Plan’s implementation process, from our engagement on the Council down to the networks.  These would define our expectations as a business community and measures of success.
4. Help to guide, and perhaps populate, the regional networks and make it easier for business engagement.

A recent poll of the members of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable identified STEM as one of three top priorities.  The issues identified in the TMP report persist, and business leaders in states across the country and nationally are motivated and organizing in ways not seen in decades.  In the TMP report, the 15 business and technology organizations pledged to work with all stakeholders to move the STEM agenda forward to ensure that the students emerging from the state’s education system can not only execute well, but create the next wave of innovation.  We remain firmly committed to that pledge.