The collaboration of STEM professionals and K-college education must be one of the brightest prospects for St. Louis, as Dr. Corey Bradford and Vice Admiral Robert Sharp predicted in their column on Wednesday (Post-Dispatch, November 19).  It promises jobs and community redevelopment through the National Geospatial Agency in a neighborhood that desperately needs both.

Education is not only about qualifying for jobs; it is about literacy and citizenship.  Reducing STEM education to meeting the demand for jobs does not bode well for either science or education.

Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics (STEM) professionals have been recently frustrated by contempt for their expertise and by a market-driven culture.  Science is in desperate need of wise and articulate advocates like Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Dr. Fauci has shown us that we need more than scientific expertise to advocate for science and a healthy society. What he brings to public discourse is what science educators, grant coordinators, legislators and parents need to make a successful collaboration like NGA and Harris-Stowe State University.  Dr. Fauci understands

• the relationship between science and other disciplines (e.g. the economy)
• the importance of making science relevant to lay people
• the language that helps lay people understand the science
• that compromises are necessary to meet common goals

None of this is taught in a pure STEM program, so a communication gap between scientists and laypeople is inevitable. Politicians like President Donald Trump and Rep. Rand Paul can take science hostage, undermine its credibility and force it to do their bidding.  The United States may not be entirely successful fighting the pandemic, but where would we be today without an Anthony Fauci to make the stakes clear and speak truth to power? Don’t we need more scientists like him?

STEM programs should include more than technical skills, they should be for communication and advocacy. STEM graduates need these skills to be responsible parents, let alone engineers or a science teachers.  They need these skills to write grants and speak at the Board of Education for a STEM curriculum. They need these skills to improve public relations of NGA in the neighborhood and to campaign for a tax-increment for computers. They need these skills to counter an anti-science diatribe on Facebook.

Dr. Fauci is a precious and endangered resource: his ability to speak and write for all stakeholders is a rare outcome for STEM education. We have plenty of experts in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but few can speak to lay people with clarity and conviction. We have an army of scientists in the Food and Drug Administration, but few can negotiate with the demands of politicians and the marketplace.  Dr. Fauci represents the best of what our education programs should develop: an articulate and patient understanding of science and society.

We should promote, not just STEM, but a Living STEM program that cultivates literacy, ethics, and collaboration:

Literacy

• critical reading of political and education documents and media
• rhetoric and communication

Ethics

• critical reading of biography and fiction
• discussion of case studies about science and society

Collaboration

• writing and speaking on project teams
• teaming with lay citizens

Naturally not everybody can become Dr. Fauci.  But STEM students can aspire to achieve his skills as a leader and advocate.  If we remember that experts and lay people share community goals and public resources we understand the need for a Living STEM, with roots, branches, and channels to connect them.