Press Release March 13, 2015

Approximately 50 educators and business people attended the Global STEM Education Roundtable at Regis College on March 13, 2015, entitled Global STEM Education - What does it mean to you?

After welcoming remarks from Malcolm Asadoorian, Provost, there were two panels:

• Making Global STEM Personal for Education, moderated by Isa Kaftal Zimmerman, Chair of Board of the Global STEM Education Center, Inc. with panelists:  Ray McCarthy, Regis College, EdD Program Director; Dona Cady, Middlesex Community College, Dean of Global Education; Daniel J Riley, Marlborough Public Schools, Director of STEM Early College High School and Upasana Kashyap, Regis College, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Mathematics

• Making Global STEM Education Personal for the Business Community, moderated by Larisa Schelkin,CEO, Founder and President of the Global STEM Education Center, Inc. with panelists: Suzanne Groet, MS, Biotechnology Consultant, Regis Life Science Advisory, Formerly V. P. Business Development, GTC Biotherapeutics; Michelle Gauthier, PhD, Raytheon, Integrated Defense Systems, Technical Solutions and Process and John Letcher, PerkinElmer, Inc. SVP Human Resources.

Attendees expressed great interest in following up this conversation on several topics:

• “Politics, policy, advocacy” action, or Education Policy Matters and the job is to educate the policymakers and legislators.  This leads to convening those interested, sharing with them some strategies for interacting with legislators, laying out a plan of action and getting to work, thus creating the first committee to emerge from the Global STEM Education Center
• There is still a divide between higher education and K-12 …especially in STEM and global STEM…where the need is to start in pre-K.  This is challenging task and probably requires support from the Commissioners and the Secretary (who have authority over only the public institutions of higher education in the Commonwealth) and the Deans of the Education Schools in the privates.
• Finally, there is a disconnect between business and education…still and despite many years of attempting to bridge the gap…there are some wonderful programs that have narrowed the divide (LIFT 2, internships) but much more work is still needed

Join Second Annual Global STEM Education Symposium at Harvard University on May 29, 201