A New Book
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From Manufacturing &
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SECTION TWO: Edited Transcript From The Public Session Of The Federal Government Sponsored "Competitiveness Summit" Held Dec. 6, 2005, In Washington, D.C.
Craig Mundle, Senior Vice President and CEO of Advanced Strategies and Policy, Microsoft: In the area of computing I think it is clearly the case that only a few companies in the world are still funding basic research in computing and software. Microsoft is one, IBM is one, some of the Japanese companies are still doing a little bit. But to some extent the university programs have shifted dramatically toward training people to be users of computers, but there's not that much real fundamental research going on in computation itself.
I did a study a couple of years ago with some friends at the Department of Defense, which historically had a big role in computation. We looked at the research budget of Microsoft being just software R&D and the research budget of the entire DOD, and Microsoft outspent the DOD three-to-one in pure research in software. These shifts are really problematic relative to getting the kind of basic research done that historically came out of government-funded programs.
Mark Wrighton, Chancellor of Washington Univ., St. Louis: In order to realize the great benefit that everyone anticipates from the investment at NIH, I think we're going to have to really beef up what we're doing in the physical sciences and engineering. I'll just illustrate with a couple of examples. Secretary Sampson indicated we need to do something about health care costs and the like. I think most people over 50 are advised today to have a colonoscopy. Anticipating such is unpleasant, experiencing it is not much better. It takes a day. There is now an opportunity to have a virtual colonoscopy by swallowing an advanced imaging device. Of course, if we could do this for every person advised to have a colonoscopy, you'd save a day of work, it would be pleasant, I think we would have better health outcomes, but dealing with this on a cost-effective basis, managing the massive amount of information is going to be a challenge. So imaging in that sense is very important. Another great example that is emerging in terms of application today is imaging the beating heart. This is going to obviate the need for invasive, dangerous procedures that assess cardiac illness. Here again, advances in science and technology will make it possible to do this in a very cost-effective way, and I think improve health outcomes, lower cost, and encourage more people to participate in prevention programs, and everyone understands that early detection assures a better outcome.
Mary Sue Coleman, President, Univ. of Michigan: I'd just like to pick up on something that was said earlier about high-risk research. We are so risk-averse now in many of the ways that we fund science that the scientists almost have to know exactly what their outcome is going to be before they can convince a peer-review panel that they should be funded. Just today in the Science Times of the New York Times, there's a big article about the Gates Foundation grand challenge grants -- $400 million were given out for wild ideas -- to good scientists trying to do things that are very difficult. We've almost gotten away from that in the federal government. If we could do something about that, I think we could make some huge breakthroughs.
Moderator Dana Mead: Let me change the scope slightly...and that is how do we expand the pool of talent in the United States in the next few years...
Della Williams, President and CEO of Williams-Pyro Inc.: We have had a very vast experience with trying to find research people. In 1999 there were virtually no U.S. engineers available to us. We're a very small company located in Ft. Worth, Texas so we went to the university, it was UT-A in Arlington, and we asked them if they had some students there that we could work with. These were all foreign students: Korea, India, some from China, some from Mexico, and we recruited those people. The problem that we have, though, is it's been five years and we still do not have green cards for them. It has cost my company untold dollars, to the tun of -- and I know that this doesn't sound like much to you guys, but it's a lot to us -- we have spent $94,751.95 and we still don't have anything. This is a huge issue for us. We really need to address the problem associated with getting those green cards and encouraging those people to stay here in America. We've invested a lot in them.
Rep. Don Manzullo (R-Ill.) I think we've created a situation where the tiger's going around the tree. You can't be in a position to complain about the lack of engineers and scientists when many companies have sent those jobs overseas. It's just that simple. Young men and women in this country at the advice of their fathers who are engineers are not going into engineering because they don't [believe] those jobs will stay in this country. And then we hear from Della that, well, because the engineers aren't here, then you got to get them to come in from overseas. So I think this has been created much by U.S. industry that has tried to meet the quarterly estimates by sending R&D overseas, and that's where the engineers are going and these jobs are not available here so the guys and gals going to college simply stay away from it.
Moderator Dana Mead: Thank you Congressman. There are powerful forces that pull on these jobs offsite, but in fact we have plenty of jobs for scientists and engineers in the U.S. and I think if you look at the numbers, I could be slightly off here, but every year we graduate fewer [people] than we have jobs in the U.S. We have traditionally relied upon foreign students and graduates of our schools and universities to fill those jobs. And what is now happening, I'll ask the president of Purdue here, Martin Jischke, if in fact, aren't we seeing an increase in those foreign students who get degrees in our country going back to their countries now, which is creating even a larger gap in the United States for engineers and scientists?
Martin Jischke, President, Purdue University: You're absolutely right. There are several forces at work that are ultimately going to undermine our capacity to do this R&D and to educate these students. At Purdue roughly a third of our entire faculty were born in another part of the world, and half of the faculty in engineering and science are from other parts of the world. What we're finding now is that the future supply of that talent is becoming more and more difficult to recruit. The number of students who are applying to our universities from abroad has dropped dramatically for the first time in about 30 years. The last two years our applications at the graduate level from abroad are down roughly 30 percent each year. Second, we are in a global competition for this talent. Other countries of the world, and I think specifically of Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada as a matter of national policy are now very, very aggressively recruiting this talent. So one of the challenges we face is will we have the capacity in our universities to do the R&D that you're rightfully arguing ought to be increased so that we can become more innovative. And second will we have the professors to teach the students to grow the numbers of engineers and scientists? I think it's a very, very big challenge.
Moderator Dana Mead: Another good example, Congressman, is in nuclear engineering. At MIT three years ago we only had 20 undergraduates in nuclear engineering. This year we have 80 undergraduates in nuclear engineering. The students are way in front of us. Why? Because they realize that this may be an important part of the energy solution, albeit a small one. But yet we're going to need a lot of engineers. The whole energy area, which ought to be in my view a major focus of our research, is going to require incredible devotion of scientists, engineers, and basic research.
Kellie Johnson, President, Ace Clearwater Inc.: Ace Clearwater is a small contract manufacturer that services the aerospace, commercial aerospace, defense and space enterprises. We have approximately 180 employees. In this past year we have about 10 unfilled job positions because there is a lack of qualified applicants. We'd like to think of ourselves as the M in R&D. Since we service the aerospace industry and it's gone through its own adjustments over the last couple of decades, our customers have downsized and they've lost a lot of their technical talent. So now instead of having just a shop of really great craftspeople, our customers are coming to us and asking them to help co-design their products. As a result we've had to make large investments in our engineering capabilities. We're lacking the ability to make things with our hands, and what we're generating out of the school system, although they may be educated in math and sciences, they don't have the real-world applications. We're losing a tremendous amount of opportunity because we're forced to train a lot of people on the job, and we're missing opportunities as a result of that. There needs to be better collaboration between private industry and the school system. For example, on a grass-roots level we're bringing second and third graders to our shop so that we can get them excited about making things. We have high-school interns, at least half a dozen every year, who work for our company, and we're currently working with engineering grad students from USC on their senior projects. But there needs to be more collaboration between industry and education so that the educational system understands what the skills are that we're looking for. We need to focus on our vocational training so that our employees can take advantage of the technologies that exist today.
Tom Vise, Vice President of Business Development for Northrop Grumman: If you want to expand the talent pool in this country, young folks need exciting things to work on. So number two on your list is related to number one. There [are] a couple of examples here that talked about the Apollo Program. I think we all have to realize and recognize that the Apollo Program was due to surprise in 1957. Today the president has put out another vision, once again focused on human explorations of back to the moon and beyond the moon to Mars. I think that's an exciting thing for us to be after. It would generate the kind of excitement in our schools today. We think about the mission to Mars is likely to be led by somebody who's alive on the planet today. The real question is, is that an American? If you were to go around to middle schools in the Apollo time and asked an eighth grader, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" Nine out of ten times probably an astronaut. Today it's not. We can generate the kind of talent pool by giving our young people exciting things to work on.
Thomas Cech, President, Howard Hughes Medical Institute: I'd like to speak as a scientist for just a moment. I grew up in Iowa in the 1950s, and when the Russians launched Sputnik there was a tremendous national emphasis on science education, and this enthusiasm and this support for science education really was a wave that drew me and many of my contemporaries into science. just don't see that happening anymore, at least not in this country. I see it happening in many Asian countries. Now at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, we spend about $100 million a year on innovative science education at all levels. So I come here not as someone asking for money but as someone who gives out money. We do this at levels from K-through-12 through undergraduate education and medical school. From this we've learned that it can be done, you can really energize young people... We're going to continue doing what we can do, but we can't do it alone, we need the federal government to buy into this in a much larger way.
Gary Pan, President and CEO, Panacea Consulting Inc.: One of the things that was discussed here is mandates, but where are the heroes in regards to technology and science? One of the big challenges that recently happened was that the president had the Medal of Freedom and honored a lot of people. Two people that kind of were dwarfed who were in shadows were Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf, the inventors of the Internet. They had a lot of Hollywood people that were recognized. What happens here is that in the public arena, a lot of people are not understanding the importance of this, they don't have the heroes -- people who are going to be able to help attract and inspire other, future innovators and inventors.
Dick Wilkey, President, Fisher-Barton Inc.: We have to begin with the first step. If we want to expand the number of engineers, we have to get first, second, third, middle school, all those people excited about learning. There's something going on in this country where dumbing down seems to be the idea of the day. We somehow have to get back to the very beginning in order to get to the end place. Our company makes stuff; we make a lot of stuff. And we make it with people. And we employ Middle America: the people that buy houses, buy cars, and keep our society running. Now, the way we do that in this period when we are so focused on the end cost, we have to do it through innovation. The innovation that we get is not from graduate engineers necessarily, the most productive person that I have in our company of 550 people has never been in a college classroom -- he's a toolmaker. He's got this brilliant idea, he can visualize machines, put these things together, and get rid of jobs and increase our productivity. Productivity does mean you're going to eliminate some jobs. Hopefully you will get so competitive that you will be able to keep them employed. But the bottom line is, I think we have to focus on the beginning, not so much on the end. I'd like to see the metrics in place. What are the metrics that we have? We have to get the competition, the old capitalistic system, built into our educational system. I live in Wisconsin. I'll tell you, the teachers' union has a lock grip on the education system. They don't like competition. How are we going to change that? That's a serious problem in our part of the world.
Roy Vagelos, ex-Merck CEO: The National Academy of Sciences committee that Norm Augustine referred to earlier that met this summer decided that the most important thing and the top priority was K-12 education in math and science. And they identified a critical factor, and that is many of the teachers who are teaching at those levels have not had major certification or even major courses when they're teaching math or science. The committee has come up with recommendations on how to attract and retain such people as math and science teachers. It starts with a program that has been modeled after the University of Texas, the U Teach program for undergrads, where undergrads in science, technology, engineering and math -- STEM -- are allowed to or incented to take pedagogy at the same time. So when they finish at the end of four years they will be already excited and they will know their subject matter exceedingly well and will also be able to teach. Another program, a master's program, which is very strongly recommended brings teachers who are in math and sciences in the high schools and middle schools, brings them back to a university for a master's program where, again, they spend two years part time concentrating on these subjects of math and science so they really know their subject. At the end of two years they're master teachers, and they will be able to mentor and incent the other teachers when they return.
Mary Vermeer Andringa, President and CEO, Vermeer Manufacturing Co.: I'm from Iowa and our company has 2,000 employees, started by my father. We've always put a lot of emphasis on R&D and actually about 50 percent of our products are products which have been introduced within the last four years on an annual volume basis. One of the things we've tried to do is to help fund workshops for local teachers in the summers, particularly in science and math to give them some extra help with teaching. In the state there's also a very interesting thing called Project SEMI which is a science education mobile instruction unit, it's a trailer, really, with a lab in it, and it's used to teach both the science teachers, many of whom do not have a major in science to enable them to use the lab as it goes through an 11-county area in central Iowa to really encourage students to be able to use state-of-the-art equipment and to get them really enthused about the opportunities in science, math and engineering. I think like every problem it's not simple, and it's going to take multi-pronged, faceted projects which we're going to have to work on. The partnerships between business, the universities, the community colleges in Iowa are a huge opportunity force as well, working together to really help people understand the urgency and to get students involved starting with K-12 and certainly in the local colleges and universities.
Alan Merton, President, George Mason University: We clearly need to break down walls between the K-12 system, higher education and the corporate sector. We in higher education need to get them into our environment. We have a program we've been running for about 18 years. We identify eighth graders and bring them in in the summer and work with them in science and math activities. We've now gotten to the point where we've got people who have got master's degrees out of that program. We need to get in earlier and earlier into the school system in order to incentivize and to encourage students to get into math and science.
Paul Yarossi, President HNTB Companies: We're a major infrastructure company and a major project we have is the use of high-school students during summer work, when construction really builds up. I think all of those high-school students stayed on and went into technical fields. Now, not necessarily our field, but it excited them about what was going on and how you build things. I see the same things in college interns, college coops. I think as business we can create that excitement, we are the ones who need to get out and show people that engineering and science can be exciting, and then we have to provide the opportunities to show them that there is a future when they get out of college in the field. Business needs to play a big role and to play it certainly in the high-school area by hiring people during the summer months.
Lou Anna Simon, President, Michigan State University: We've been working with Dow Chemical and Midland on an entrepreneur camp for middle school and mostly average kids, who have learned what doing and thinking are blended together so they learn their mathematics in a way other than simply a math camp that they're viewing as boot camp. The idea that they can actually use mathematics and science in ways that affect their day-to-day lives has really been transforming for these average students. As we think about our problems in science and math, we need to move the average student in K-12 in a way that really is dramatically more exciting than what they see their K-12 experience right now.
Fred Keller, Chairman, President and CEO, Cascade Engineering: Cascade is about a thousand-employee company in manufacturing and we are passionate about the idea that the new manufacturing, the advanced manufacturing of today is not dirty, dark, dull and dangerous. In fact, it's anything but. Fewer than 45 percent of the folks that we employ are actually in contact with the products, and 100 percent of those folks are in contact with computers and robots. So it's a very different world than we are thinking about in the past. To help with the K-12 situation we have a program we call School-to-Career, and we think it's important to think about school going to a career as opposed to school to a job. We are bringing in folks from all different kinds of careers, having our urban public school students in ninth through twelfth grades understand what those careers are, be able to contact them, bring students into the career environments, and also teaching at the same time some of the top skills like conflict resolution, problem solving, and some of the seven habits work that we've done. We find that the result is that these students are very much more interested in their main line studies as well, as they understand what they can do possibly with their lives and their careers.
Additional Comments From
- Kent Murphy, Chairman and CEO of Luna Innovations Inc.
- Raymond Cline, VP of Innovation Integration, EDS
- George Scalise, President, Semiconductor Industry Association:
- Keith Harrison Global Product Supply Officer, Procter & Gamble Co.
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