In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama emphasized that strong and sustained investment in STEM education is critical for America’s future competitiveness and that excellent STEM teachers are critical to that effort. To that end, he announced the creation of the 100Kin10 Initiative: a national goal to prepare 100,000 excellent STEM teachers over a decade. Since then, more than 200 organizations – the LMU SOE among them – have stepped up to support the initiative in various ways. In addition, the U.S. Department of Education has invested more than $175 million in STEM-specific teacher training grants tied to the 100,000 STEM teachers goal.
The summit, which was hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, served as both a celebration of the initiative’s current progress as well as a discussion of additional steps the Administration and the broader community can take to create and support more excellent STEM teachers. The SOE joined senior White House officials, leaders from other universities and other supporters of the initiative to explore further steps the nation can take to reach its 100,000 STEM teachers goal by 2021.
