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07/06/2012 05:00 AM

State of Education: Preparing students for their future careers

Once again, we are focusing on the four familiar subjects: Science, technology, engineering, and math, also known as STEM. And while this is as important as ever in today's classroom, many educators are facing demands when it comes to preparing students for the future work environment. Vince Gallagher reports.

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Dan Liebert is the principal of Tech Valley High School in East Greenbush. He's also a major STEM advocate, and just returned from a conference, where the idea was to connect participating states.

"So Arizona, Ohio, New York, Texas have all developed statewide network of STEM resources," said Liebert.

There were a few main reasons why it's important to study STEM. One is unfilled jobs, with a recent study showing over 140,000 openings with Fortune 500 companies. Second is how STEM can affect the world.

"So I think that STEM education needs to show the application of science, technology, engineering, and math to young people, to really inspire them to study those subjects in order to fix the world and address those problems that are so prominent in our economy and society," said Liebert.

Speaking of the young people, do students see the importance of STEM for their future?

"Absolutely. I mean there's always time to learn later, but if I'm learning now, it's even better if I get a normal education and a STEM education,” said one student, Joel Olzak.

STEM has also become a national issue. In fact, President Obama talked about how the United States needs to be a STEM leader to the rest of the world.

"When you look at China for example, if they can build bullet trains, why can't we figure out how to create a transportation system that's efficient?” asked Liebert.

And with an educational approach to teaching involving critical thinking and collaboration, there's more to it than making the grade.

"We need to start looking at education as a means of solving the problems we have rather than simply being a means of achieving higher test scores," said Liebert.

To graduate from the classroom to the community.