But the statistics from ISU still show a disturbing dark side. Of 5,086 undergraduates, only 755 are female (15%). I can tell you from my experience as a male engineering student, it would be much easier to get excited about going to thermodynamics class if more than only 1 out of 5 in the class were female…

With 5,086 undergraduates majoring in engineering this fall, the Iowa State University College of Engineering has achieved a 25-year high in enrollment. The increase is 410 more students than last fall.

The college, which is routinely among the top 10 in the nation for undergraduate enrollment, has averaged more than 4,600 students per year since 1998. Enrollment has exceeded 5,000 students just three other years—1982–1984.

The biggest increases for 2009 are for resident freshmen (45) and resident transfers (39) followed by foreign transfers (36) and nonresident freshmen (29). The enrollment figures also show positive trends in gender and ethnic diversity. The number of females is 755, up from 681 in 2008. The number of underrepresented students is up 79 from last year and represents 8.6% of the engineering student body.

via ISU College of Engineering News – Engineering enrollment exceeds 5,000.

CNN is firing science correspondent Miles O'Brien

But seriously, the root of the problem is that science news does not sell like kidnapped babies news, celebrity news, or holy-crap-the-economy-is-melting news. Journalism is a for-profit business, not a for-the-good-of-the-people business.

I wonder if there is any (scientific) link between a country’s interest in science news and its performance in science and math education?

We often hear how poorly the US performs in science and math education. Is this soft education for youngsters responsible for producing science-illiterate adults? Or is the general distribution of news coverage quite similar across the world, regardless of the prowess of a country’s science education?

I would love to hear more on this, so comment if you have any ideas.

As the New York Times addresses in the recent article “Rivals’ Visions Differ on Unleashing Innovation”, the financial crisis is diverting attention in the upcoming election from the candidates’ science and innovation policies to their approaches for fixing the economy today. Since the media suffers from attention deficit disorder and can only devote coverage to one issue at a time, I’ll use my blog to reach the masses (mini-masses?) and share the importance of innovation to the US’s future.

First, I’ll simplify the process of national innovation to the highest degree possible. Check out this 1st-grade-math graphic I created:

Innovation Math

Let’s break this equation down.

For the US to remain an innovation leader, the country needs money to be spent on research and development combined with talented people to do the work and discover breakthroughs.

Show me the money

Where’s the money come from? It is a combination of government and corporate research investment. If you’d like to compare the Presidential candidates on their technology investment policies, read here. Both candidates support making the federal R&D tax credits permanent, which is important for encouraging corporate investment. But Obama supports significantly more government investment than McCain, and I think Obama has it right. One example: Obama supports the investment of $150 billion over 10 years in developing clean technology.

Many groundbreaking technological advances were achieved on the back of government investment in space, defense, and university basic research — fields like computing and the Internet, medicine and nanotechnology, and transportation technology like RADAR. (Note to avoid angry emails: I didn’t say the government invented the computer, just that its investment advanced the progress.) When there is no clear connection between the basic scientific research and a commercialization opportunity with positive R&D ROI, the government is needed to provide the initial investment. The government then receives its ROI when companies later commercialize the progress in research, create jobs, and pay taxes.

The argument for just how the government should manage this investment in innovation is complicated, so I won’t attempt to solve that problem in this post. However, you can hear some interesting perspectives in this podcast from the journal Nature regarding the upcoming election and national innovation policy. Here are couple takeaways to pique your interest:

• Idea to create a new National Innovation Foundation to holistically manage innovation strategy for the US
• Countries like Taiwan, Japan, China, UK, Germany, and Singapore have national innovation strategies, but the US does not
• Over the past 8 years, the number of computer science graduates in the US has declined by 50%

It’s the people, stupid

Now, let’s move on to the people side of the equation. This is why I really wanted to write this post.

All that money won’t do any good if it isn’t paying and funding the research of talented, educated workers. Undoubtedly, you’ve heard by now horrific statistics, like “China is producing 10 times more engineers than the USA.” While numbers like this might be a stretch — read this article from BusinessWeek about the apples and oranges comparison — there is no doubt that global competitiveness is higher than ever before.

We need to get serious about changing the status quo and take real action to influence youth culture and increase the attractiveness of careers in science and technology. If we want to strengthen national innovation, why don’t we first get innovative with science advocacy? According to the above podcast, there are hundreds of programs across K-12 education advocating science, but let’s face it:

Children and teens are not the most receptive to ideas of what is cool and important coming from the classroom.

Children and teens learn what is popular and desirable from their social relationships with their peers.

These programs aren’t effective enough yet because the marketing is wrong. Let’s look at this problem as a business case study and see if we can find some insight that educators are missing.

(I wrote previously about the importance of science education and strategies for making science interesting in this post. Here, I’ll take a different approach to a similar problem.)

You’re the CEO of a company — let’s call it SciTechSchool Co. — and your business model is this: for every student you encourage to be passionate about science and technology and graduate with a related degree, your company makes $100,000. Woah! What a business opportunity!

(I don’t know what the government’s marginal benefit is for each additional scientist or engineer, but it’s reasonable, if not conservative, to think these people might pay an additional $100k in taxes over their lifetimes.)

Hm… How do you show kids that science is interesting? Do you offer after-school programs to teach them more about science after they’ve had a full day at school already? No, that obviously won’t work.

Maybe, instead of trying to push science at school, you look for ways to slip science into kids’ everyday lives? How do you make science a part of youth social fabric? You make small alterations to what kids are already doing, and without them even recognizing it, they’ll be using science regularly.

Let’s use video games as an example, because we know they garner a lot of youth attention. Say Halo is the game of choice. Want to encourage electrical engineering? Players must fix the virtual wiring in their weapons and suit after being hit before they will work again. Chemical engineering? Players collect chemical components throughout the game and then mix them in precise amounts for regenerative medicine. Mechanical engineering? Players must design their own protective gear and truck armor, balancing strength and weight for the best performance. Computer engineering? Players must program booby traps to capture the enemy, like a knockout gas that is discharged when a sensor detects an intruder.

Video games often involve problem solving by design, all your company needs to do is alter these problems a bit towards science. And this is just one example, the same principle could be applied to other youth pastimes, as well. How about a simple programming language on a mobile phone or a bicycle built for modifications and upgrades?

Let’s change the way we think about science education. If business won’t provide the toys, gear, games, and websites kids need to be science-minded naturally, then let’s create an agency to evaluate and designate “SciTech” products. Then, companies can advertise the benefit to parents, and we let them claim additional tax credits for the development of these products.

It’s due time we get innovative about keeping this country innovative.