STEM Education Act of 2015

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to begin by thanking my friend, Chairman Smith, for his leadership on the Science Committee, particularly on STEM education.

For the second Congress in a row, we are considering the STEM Education Act on the House floor. I am grateful that we are advancing these important efforts in a bipartisan fashion, thanks in large part to the chairman's willingness to work across the aisle.

I would also like to thank and recognize the work of Representative Lipinski for his diligent work on this and many other bills and my good friend Eddie Bernice Johnson for her thoughtful leadership on STEM education and on all issues facing the Science Committee.

The STEM Education Act of 2015 supports teachers who are preparing students to be the engineers, manufacturers, and scientists of tomorrow. We all know that students, particularly elementary school students, learn best when they are engaged and interested.

However, any parent knows that it can be difficult to spark a student's passion for STEM subjects without innovative and creative learning environments. With more and more jobs of the 21st century requiring STEM skills, we need to better prepare our children for these good-paying jobs.

As a mother of three, I remember when my children had incredible teachers who made science and math accessible and fun. We should do all we can to support innovative, passionate teachers for every child in every school.

This bill today includes sections of my STEM Jobs Act, a bill expanding the Robert Noyce Master Teaching Fellowship program at the National Science Foundation. Currently, Master Teaching fellowships provide mentoring, training, and financial support to STEM professionals who want to enter the teaching profession.

In Connecticut, we have two Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship programs. UConn's Teachers for Tomorrow program prepares teachers throughout the State to teach math, biology, physics, and chemistry to students of all ages. At the University of Bridgeport, the Master Teacher Fellowship program places master physics teachers in high-need high schools in southwestern Connecticut.

Our bill today expands the Master Teaching Fellowship so that those who are working towards a master's degree, not just those who already have a master's degree, are also eligible to apply--supporting more passionate teachers and, in doing so, allowing more students to benefit from excellent STEM instructors.

Our bill also promotes learning outside of the classroom. In Connecticut, we have the wonderful Connecticut Science Center, with incredibly creative exhibits like one called ``Grossology,'' where children can explore how to keep their bodies healthy by crawling through an enormous digestive system and experiencing a ``larger than life sneeze,'' perfect for inspiring our Nation's future doctors and biomedical researchers.

In addition to educating and inspiring our children, science centers, planetariums, and aquariums across the country also provide invaluable teacher training. Last year alone, the Connecticut Science Center trained nearly 1,200 teachers who then went on to teach and inspire tens of thousands of their students.

The bill today directs the National Science Foundation to continue to award competitive grants for out-of-school STEM learning experiences for both students and teachers.

Finally, our bill takes the important step of expanding the definition of STEM for Federal programs and grants to include computer science.

As a member of the Science Committee and Representative Lipinski's STEM Education Caucus, I have been a strong advocate for increasing literacy in computer science. This winter, I joined students from across the State and more than 100 million worldwide to participate in an hour of code. We learned basic computer programming skills and discovered it is a lot of fun.

I also helped create the Congressional App Challenge and hosted this competition in my district where students created and built apps for their smartphones. The entries submitted by these high school students were incredibly innovative and useful, technologically advanced, as well as terrific examples of the problem solving we need all of our students to learn.

The winning apps included an app to keep teachers informed during a school emergency, a program to help students know if they are going to be able to catch their bus on time, an app I know that my children would have benefited from greatly on those cold Connecticut winter mornings--like this morning--and an app to help high school freshmen learn their way around a big new school.

The STEM app competition helps students experience for themselves how important and fun computer science can be; but, for example, in Connecticut, where only 65 schools across the State have dedicated computer science programs, it is critical that we continue to expand access to computer science education for all students.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud that we are rising above partisan politics to advance the bipartisan STEM Education Act of 2015. This bill demonstrates that we can come together to help our children, to help them thrive, and to help ensure that they will be competitive in the 21st century global economy.

I want, again, to thank Chairman Smith and Representative Lipinski for their leadership and the committee staff for their hard work on the STEM Education Act.

I would also like to thank my friend, Ranking Member Johnson, a dedicated STEM champion, who is leading all of us on the Science Committee to truly recognize the importance of a robust and multidisciplinary STEM education and inspire us to do more across the board to support STEM.

I look forward to working with Ranking Member Johnson and the rest of the committee to further advance our priorities in Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield as much time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson), my friend, the ranking member of the Science Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1020) to define STEM education to include computer science, and to support existing STEM education programs at the National Science Foundation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, the STEM Education Act of 2015 is bipartisan legislation that includes computer science in the definition of STEM education for programs and activities at our Federal science agencies. The bill also supports and strengthens ongoing STEM education efforts at the National Science Foundation. Similar legislation passed the House last year by voice vote.

I thank Representative Elizabeth Esty for cosponsoring the bill again this year. I also thank our new Research and Technology Subcommittee Chairwoman Barbara Comstock, Subcommittee Ranking Member Dan Lipinski, Subcommittee Vice Chair John Moolenaar, and Representatives Randy Hultgren, Larry Bucshon, Chris Collins, David McKinley, and Jaime Herrera Beutler for their support.

Last Congress the Science, Space, and Technology Committee held several hearings on STEM education. Each hearing highlighted the importance of STEM education to keep America on the cutting edge of new products and ideas. Our hearings discussed the merits of ensuring computer science is included as a component of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics that make up STEM education. Today a variety of jobs in industries from banking to engineering to medicine require familiarity with computer science.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, computing and mathematics will be one of the top 10 fastest growing major occupational groups from 2010 to 2020, with a growth rate of 4 percent annually compared to 1 percent for all other industries.

Unfortunately, America lags behind many other nations when it comes to STEM education. American students rank 21st in science and 26th in math. That must change for the better.

We need to ensure that our Nation's youth have the scientific and mathematical skills to strive and thrive in a technology-based economy, but we have to capture and hold the desire of young adults to study STEM subjects so they will want to pursue these careers.

H.R. 1020 includes language suggested by Mr. Lipinski to support informal STEM education programs and activities at the National Science Foundation. These activities reach students outside of the classroom and strengthen a student's engagement in STEM subject areas.

The STEM Education Act also ensures that teachers working towards a master's degree program in STEM subjects can participate in the Robert Noyce Master Teacher Fellowship program. I thank Ms. Esty for this good addition to the bill.

This program provides opportunities for teachers who want to bolster their teaching skills. Through the Master Teaching fellowships, individuals receive training in order to become highly effective mathematics and science teachers. With this bill, the program now will encourage more teachers to pursue advanced degrees.

A healthy and viable STEM workforce literate in all STEM subjects, including computer science, is critical to American industries. A well- educated and trained STEM workforce ensures our future economic prosperity. More graduates with STEM degrees means more advanced technologies and a more robust economy.

Support for this bill from organizations like the STEM Education Coalition, STEM4US!, and Code.org illustrate the importance of aligning our

Federal STEM programs with workforce needs. We must work to ensure that students continue to go into these fields so that their innovative ideas can lead to a more innovative and prosperous America.

I encourage my colleagues to support this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

Is it too late for me to yield time to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Moolenaar), who I had mentioned a while ago was on the way to the House floor to speak on this particular bill?

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to reclaim my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Moolenaar), who is a member of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and is also vice chair of the Subcommittee on Research and Technology.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1020--although, reluctantly, I must qualify my support. I will begin with the parts of the bill that I strongly support.

I want to thank Ms. Esty for her language to amend NSF's Noyce Master Teacher Fellowship program. This is an important update to the program to ensure that we are tapping into our entire pool of talented math and science teachers who might serve as master teachers in their schools and districts.

I also want to thank Mr. Lipinski for his language to authorize the National Science Foundation's informal STEM education portfolio. While we know that informal STEM education learning holds great promise to increase engagement in STEM by diverse populations and to enhance learning of STEM content, there is still more R&D to be done to make sure we are developing and implementing the most effective programs.

My support for those sections of this bill is unqualified. However, I must express my concern about the definition for STEM included in this legislation which differs in a significant way from the definition of STEM that Chairman Smith proposed in last year's version of this same bill.

Specifically, the current version would define STEM as ``science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, including computer science.'' Last year's version, developed in collaboration with the STEM Education Coalition, read as ``science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, including other academic subjects that build on these disciplines such as computer science.''

This second definition, the one this entire House agreed to last year, was agreed to because it left the door open

for other critical fields such as statistics and geology that don't cleanly fit into S, T, E, or M of STEM in K-12 teacher certifications and curricula.

I think we can all agree to the importance of computer science education. The current disconnect between the high demand for information technology jobs and limited opportunities for students to be exposed to computer science at the K-12 level puts American students and American companies at a significant disadvantage.

However, it baffles me as to why we would implicitly devalue such fields as statistics and geology in order to highlight computer science.

Statistics is an essential tool across all fields of science. Without good statistics, the biomedical research results that we count on to develop new diagnostics and therapeutics for diseases would be meaningless.

Without geology, oil and gas companies would not be able to locate and drill for new sources of energy. Without geology, we will never achieve early warning for earthquakes to save lives. Whether we are from Texas or California, we ought to place high value on geology.

I am also baffled why this bill is so urgent that we had to skip regular order to bring it to the floor. I requested that the committee hold a hearing or a markup on this legislation so that we might settle the definition dispute in committee after an open and public debate, but my request was denied.

Mr. Speaker, I will support this bill today, but I hope that the Senate will be wiser than we are being today in defining STEM. This is not simply semantics. How and what science is taught in our Nation's classrooms is essential to our future economic competitiveness, national security, and overall well-being.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding.

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education is necessary to prepare today's students for future job opportunities. H.R. 1020 will add computer science under the definition of STEM programs while providing STEM grants for the research of new, informal, out-of-school methods for teaching STEM subjects.

Whether it is a hands-on museum, a science competition, or an internship as a lab assistant, finding the best ways to teach these critical subjects outside of the classroom will help students who might not learn these subjects in a traditional setting.

As our Nation's employers look to fill good-paying jobs, STEM education has applications across the board, including skilled trades in construction, manufacturing, and welding. Every student who learns these skills will have the solid academic background to secure employment in a career field.

This important legislation will benefit bright young minds outside of the classroom and help our country remain the world leader in research and innovation.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes.''