COSM Awards Speech
Dr. Michele G. Wheatly
September 20, 2007

Welcome to our fourth annual College of Science and Mathematics awards ceremony. We come together to celebrate the many accomplishments of our students, staff and faculty in the college.

This year also marks Wright State University's 40th Anniversary, and we are pausing to reflect on 40 years of "Making a Difference in People's Lives". And, as is customary in mid life, there is a tendency for nostalgic reflection on the way things were as well as forward thinking about the way things should be. In my talk today I will be using the acronym STEMM, you have probably seen it in the popular press; everyone is talking about it. It stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math with "medicine" often thrown in for good measure.

So let's hit the "rewind" button and then "fast forward" on the first 40 years of STEMM at WSU:

When WSU was chartered in 1967, science and engineering were combined in a single college and located together in one building, Fawcett Hall. Nineteen years later that college underwent binary fission, and spawned a College of Science and Mathematics and a separate College of Engineering and Computer Science. So in reality, this year the College of Science and Mathematics is turning 21!! I must admit, I was struggling to write a speech about the joys of turning 40, but WOW, it is so much better to think about turning 21 or for some of us, being 21 again!! Those of us who have passed that milestone will concur that it is a great time in life, just bursting with youthful exuberance, yet characterized by independence, growing knowledge of the world, and escalating interest in the possibility of making a difference in people's lives. In fact, for those of you from my vintage, the Beatles were articulating it for us "you say you want a REVOLUTION?" Basically all 21 year olds need a cause, a raison d'être, a REVOLUTION!

Over the past 40 years the STEMM disciplines at WSU have witnessed unheralded growth in student training, expansion of the programming at the undergraduate and doctoral level and the development of an impressive research portfolio that is acknowledged as third in the state among publically funded institutions. If you look around our campus today you'll see 10 building where STEMM activities are underway, and a community of thinkers and learners that bring $65M to Wright State every year from federal funding agencies. Our STEM community is unrecognizable in 2007 compared to its modest beginnings in 1967.

And so, this begs the question: Why do we need a STEMM Revolution?

This is a good point at which to return to the STEMM acronym. When we hear the word "stem" in everyday speech, we probably think of the main structural part of a plant, or the main upright timber at the bow of a ship, or the grammatical roots of nouns and verbs. However we define this word, it connotes something that is a structural foundation upon which other entities draw strength. And so, in my mind, this is a great metaphor for the role that STEMM needs to play in the economic recovery of our region and of course, the nation.

There has been a growing national and regional awareness that STEMM, long acknowledged for providing post WWII economic prosperity, has become threatened by the STEMM competitiveness of other nations. There is now serious concern about the lack of preparation and lack of interest in students at all levels going into STEMM fields. This has been sensationalized in both the popular press, for example, Thomas Friedman's best seller, "The World is Flat" and the National Academies "Rising Above the Gathering Storm". Technological and social shifts have leveled the economic world, enabling less developed nations to compete with the United States for corporate investment and jobs. For the first time since the Sputnik era, STEMM has become the focus of the national agenda and conversation with The America Competes act authorizing $43 billion dollars over 3 years for a plethora of math and science education, research and development initiatives.

Following suit, the Ohio General Assembly has recently made a historic investment in higher education, appreciating that Ohio's competitiveness in the global economy is directly related to the knowledge skills and creativity of our workforce. It is anticipated that eighty percent of the students in Ohio who pursue higher education will be educated in our public universities. WSU, therefore, is poised to play a major role in growing the knowledge economy in the Dayton region through State initiatives such as Turnaround Ohio, Third Frontier and most recently "House Bill 119", better known as "the Ohio Innovation Partnership". This latter program is a $250 million dollar investment in the next biennium to make an unprecedented commitment to statewide STEMM education spanning from the early childhood classroom to the university research laboratory. These initiatives all point to the impetus to grow research in fields that will lead to economic development, and to graduate more Ohioans with higher education degrees particularly in the STEMM fields. Over the next few months Ohioans will be galvanized by the media attention to these initiatives, and nowhere is this more needed than the greater Dayton region.

Dayton's strong ties to the faltering domestic automotive industry and overreliance on manufacturing sector employment, has left it vulnerable to foreign labor markets and recent job losses have left the region reeling from a negative psychology. Now, regional consortia such as Dayton Development Coalition, The Chamber of Commerce, and EDvention are working across the region to leverage our STEMM investments at the WPAFB (which manages $1.6 billion dollars in research and development activities) and regional institutions of higher education to stake a claim in the knowledge economy and associated high tech industry. One thing we can all agree upon is that Dayton is one of the "most livable regions in America". If we build it, people will come! Of course, the best asset we have is our human capital, STEMM students just like you, who will Choose Ohio First and remain here to be the architects of Ohio's New Economy.

This is the message that I want you to take with you today:

If you are students studying in our college: Hang in there! Your future employability and earned income will be directly proportional to the investment you make now in challenging yourselves with STEMM coursework. In surveys, STEMM careers are rated as the "most rewarding," not just in terms of financial remuneration, but also in terms of the job satisfaction that results from "making a difference in people's lives".

If you are parents: Please encourage your student to persist in the STEMM fields and encourage them to Choose Ohio First.

If you are faculty or staff: We have the power and influence to encourage and mentor the thinkers of tomorrow. We need to excite students in our classes with the same degree of enthusiasm that we share among ourselves as we pursue our research passions. But, as with any revolution, we will need to reconstruct and change the status quo!

The Dayton region prides itself as the birthplace of aviation thanks to the Wright brothers who transformed social and economic order with the invention of powered flight and for whom this institution and the nearby air force base are named. Our region has a long tradition in discovery and innovation. It is the hope of our upper administration that WSU will lead the region at the forefront of a STEMM revolution! COSM will be at the stem of that STEMM revolution. So let me share with you some of the ambitious core strategies that are contained in the new COSM strategic plan titled "Opening Minds to Science".

We hope to enhance our core research capabilities to position COSM as a regional research and educational partner of choice for initiatives supported by Wright Patterson Air Force Base, the Air Force Research Laboratories, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, industry and medicine.

We hope to exercise national leadership in the science of teaching and learning thus responding to society's need for a STEMM-competent workforce.

And we hope to achieve all of this while not losing sight of the thing we have done best for the past 40 years….educating students through individualized attention with a strong emphasis on access to higher education.

Please continue to be engaged with our STEMM REVOLUTION as we lead the region in establishing a new knowledge-based economy that will make a difference in the quality and prosperity of all of our lives for years to come….or to use the closing line of Lennon and McCartney's "Revolution," "Don't you know, it's gonna be alright!"

Thank you