Bayer Corp. will host a STEM Education Diversity Forum in December, the second such forum the company has held in the last three years. (STEM = science, technology, engineering and mathematics).
The purpose of the forum is to encourage and help business executives from the various STEM industries - biotechnology, information technology, engineering and beyond - to get involved and support STEM education programs in order to build a strong and diverse national STEM pipeline, the feeder for our future workforce.
The forum, part of Bayer's award-winning Making Science Make Sense initiative, will be held on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2008, at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco. Bayer is holding the forum as a public service; there is no charge to attend.
Titled "Bridging the Diversity Gap: Introducing STEM Industries to K-12 Best Practice Programs," the forum is an outgrowth of a recent survey commissioned by Bayer Corp. The survey found wide agreement among the Fortune 1000 STEM CEOs polled that they and their companies have a responsibility to support pre-college, STEM-education programs that are developing the next generation of innovators, particularly those who have traditionally been underrepresented in STEM.
Thus, the forum will showcase for these executives an array of best practice elementary and secondary education programs that are helping all students - especially girls, African-Americans, American Indians and Hispanics - achieve in STEM subjects.
In addition, the forum will offer executives practical advice about creating their own business-education partnerships. They will be urged to support these and/or other exemplary programs that are closing achievement gaps by helping them to scale-up or replicate them in their local communities.
According to the latest Bayer Facts of Science Education survey which polled CEOs and other C-suite executives heading America's Fortune 1000 STEM companies, more than half of the executives said their companies are currently experiencing a shortage of American-trained STEM talent, and two-thirds report that their international rivals, having greater access to STEM talent, are gaining a competitive advantage over them.
For more information, visit www.BayerUS.com.