Why STEM?

Did you know that 75 per cent of the fastest-growing occupations require STEM skills? Despite this, a report by the Australian Industry Group reveals that young people in schools and universities are not acquiring the STEM skills needed for Australia’s future prosperity.

I’ve always been involved in STEM, getting started as a mechatronic engineer in the defence and mining industries. At university, I worked as a ‘Robotics Peer Mentor’, teaching middle school students electronics, programming and robotics through structured term-long classes. Later, I developed my career as an electrical engineer in the building services industry and went on to complete postgraduate study in design science, with a particular focus on illumination. I was then based overseas, working on UNESCO Heritage projects in Thailand and Ecuador. I’ve also presented at engineering conferences around the world, and in 2012 was featured as an award-winning artist at Sydney’s VIVID Festival of Light, Music and Ideas.

Before joining the University of Wollongong as STEM Outreach Coordinator for the Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences, I worked with a social enterprise, 40K Group. We developed a program to teach rural Indian primary school children through gamified electronic tablets and send Australian university students to India to build social businesses that empower locals.

In my current role, I collaborate with local schools and industry on STEM education programs. We work to encourage future generations of Australians towards combining their passions with STEM skills, so that no matter their particular leaning — as a humanitarian, environmentalist, artist or innovator — they are equipped with the tools and knowledge to create a better world.

But why go to all this effort? You could argue that STEM isn’t for everyone, but I’d clarify that STEM is everywhere. STEM skills allow us to manage our food and water supplies, promote health and wellbeing, and develop global productivity and economic growth. This is why we need to educate students in the four disciplines of STEM, using an interdisciplinary and applied approach.

STEM education is not just about teaching subject matter, or ‘making things’, but about inspiring students to engage with STEM tools to make things happen through themes that tie into social sciences and humanities. I say this because STEM is about people.

A high-order thinking (HOT) approach to STEM addresses the question ‘Why STEM?’ through inquiry-based learning, connecting the dots between personal passions, real-world issues, technical skills, creative thinking and career pathways.

Through cross-curriculum themes related to society and humanity we can team education providers with local industries and organisations to develop genuine, real-world projects for students. This approach to STEM education aims to encourage and inspire teachers and students to engage with STEM tools, allowing them to learn to infer from them, connect them to other facts and concepts, manipulate and reconstruct them, and apply them in creative new ways to seek novel solutions to topical issues and challenges.

In doing so, HOT STEM prepares students for the needs of the ever-evolving workforce, requiring people who can ideate, design, develop and deliver complete solutions involving complex integrated systems. This is needed in order to ensure the next generation of Australians has greater STEM-based skills, which will give them the ability to create the future, solve challenges and shape a better world.

By Destiny Paris

Destiny is a STEM Outreach Coordinator at the University of Wollongong