STEM Education Programs

The United States is facing an unprecedented crisis in our education system, beyond the broken public educational system that gets the focus of the media and politicians. Over the past 15 years, the number of students entering and completing undergraduate and graduate degrees leading to careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines is falling off a cliff. In terms of just our national security, this is significantly limiting the available pool of citizens that can maintain our defense and national security force readiness, as over 50% of the current employees in defense related careers are already qualified for retirement, with no replacements in the pipeline. In fact the pipeline is drying up, as students starting in middle school, see now reason or desire to pursue STEM education and careers.

Our global and economic competitiveness is also at risk, which is the bedrock of our economy and quality of life that we have become so accustom to expecting over teh past 25 years. The future high paying jobs and industrial growth will be based upon our leadership in science and technology, only we are no longer leading it. Recent World Economic Forum studies show the US continuing our slide downward over the past 15 years. The Percentage of college graduate with science and engineering degrees now places us 27th out of the top 50 members of the OECD leading countries of the world. In terms of the quality of our K-12 primary and secondary science and engineering education we are 48 out of the top 50, narrowly beating out only Mexico and Chile. Meanwhile China is racing away, graduating more engineers out of their universities every year, than we have total engineers practicing professionally nation wide.

While federal and state education institutions focus on fixing primary education and stimulating university research to maintain our competitiveness, opportunities for students to apply STEM hands on at the middle school and high schools levels in engaging ways are badly needed. Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation is addressing this need by developing space based education programs that enable students to design and develop simple space craft and the opportunity for students to apply their STEM education to demonstrate their mastery by operating them in real space flight missions as a team at their schools. In addition, educational materials and curriculum for the classroom and professional development programs and being developed as part of our STEM education programs development efforts, and aligned with mentors in the communities around the programs to provide support of the educators.

The STEM education programs listed below need your support and sponsorship if we are going to preserve our quality of life and national security.

Research Programs

While Mavericks Civilian Space Foundations STEM Education programs address the need for STEM education opportunities in secondary education, undergraduate and graduate education has an equal need for application of STEM education through researching key technologies necessary to support our secondary education programs and civilian space exploration in general.

Research through STEM education at the undergraduate and graduate education levels provide the opportunities to develop reference designs that are made available for other students to implement and innovate upon.

Current STEM education research programs are listed below that you can explore and support.

Sub-orbital Missions

Research

Clotho Project

$0

0%

$0

Pledged of $50,000 Goal

0

Pledgers

0

Days left

Crowdfunding ends on

 

Learn More