Media Advisory

NC State’s Friday Institute to Host National STEM Education Workshop

Media Contacts:
Lee Kennedy, 919/513-0920
Lauren Gregg, News Services, 919/515-3470

July 30, 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

On Wednesday, Aug. 1 and Thursday, Aug. 2, North Carolina State University’s Friday Institute for Educational Innovation will host the National Workshop on Stimulating and Sustaining Excitement and Discovery in K-12 STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Education. Media coverage of the workshop is invited.

The workshop sessions will focus on how to help America bolster its global competitiveness by annually recruiting 10,000 science and mathematics teachers; strengthening the skills of 250,000 teachers through training and education programs; and widening the pipeline of students who are prepared to enter college and graduate with degrees in science, engineering or mathematics.

On Wednesday from 9 to 10 a.m., Dr. Alan Kay, a pioneer of object-oriented programming, personal computing and graphical user interfaces, will give the keynote address. Kay is currently an adjunct professor of computer science at UCLA and has received numerous awards, including the Charles Stark Draper Prize from the National Academy of Engineering, the Alan M. Turing Award, and the Kyoto Prize. He is also involved in the “One Laptop Per Child” initiative that works to equip children in developing countries with specially designed, low-cost notebook computers.

The National Security Agency, the National Science Foundation, IBM, MCNC and SAS are sponsoring the workshop. For more information and a complete schedule, visit: www.wolftech.ncsu.edu/conference/index.php?cf=1