Transcriber: Mary Beth Strawn Reviewer: Denise RQ
What if?
What if Bill Gates had started Microsoft in India?
What if Silicon Valley was a region in China?
The standard of living that we all enjoy today,
everyone in this room,
is a direct result of the United States of America
being a global leader in engineering, in science, in technology,
the very fuel of the global economy.
Yet, there is increasing concern
that the U.S. is losing its technical edge.
Clearly, China, India, have a lot more people than us,
they can put out an awful lot more engineers.
And in fact, this article here was about how we need
to reach students more at the critical age,
prepare students for success in careers in science and engineering.
Critically important work for the future of this country,
yet, if we don't start questioning our equation in higher education,
we're going to be sorely disappointed with the results.
Our equation for what it takes to become an engineer
is a year and a half of traditional math and science prerequisites
before students can make any real progress towards our own degrees.
You want to take a class in statics, in dynamics, electric circuits, great!
Go over to the college of science and math
and do well in Calculus I, and then Calculus II,
and then Calculus III, and then differential equations.
Meanwhile,
the traditional calculus sequence is the primary cause of attrition
in engineering programs all over the country.
Success rates in calculus are some 60%.
And that's not even the primary issue;
I mean, what if the success rate was 70%? Boy, that'd be pretty good!
Well, take 0.7 to the 4th power, and see how many people are coming back.
So, the nation's leaders,
the National Academy of Science and Engineering,
the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness
are saying: "Look, we need to have 10,000 more engineers
just for short-term economic viability."
Nationwide, only about 1 out of 3 students that aspires to be an engineer
ever earns a degree.
Students that have already been prepared,
and trained, and recruited, and motivated to come to us,
yet 1 out of 3 actually earns a degree.
We can far exceed 10,000 engineers a year
if we start addressing our own curricular barriers
and graduating more of the students that we already have.
At Wright State University, about a decade ago,
we started to question our equation,
this equation of what it takes to become an engineer.
A year and a half of prerequisite math over here,
see who comes out the other end.
You wonder why our 6 year graduation rates were 30%.
And we said: "Look, we're not going to do this anymore.
Calculus is not going to be a bottleneck,
it's not going to be a litmus test for who can become an engineer."
And so we said, "Well, we still have to teach rigorous engineering,
we need concepts of calculus in circuits class,
in statics and dynamics.
What are we going to do?"
And we said: "Well, what if we taught math in context?
What if we showed students
why all the math actually matters for the degrees that they are seeking?
What if we did that in the first year
as the cornerstone of the entire curriculum?
What if we create EGR 101,
introductory math for engineering applications,
and use that as the bottleneck for who could be an engineer?"
And so, the calculus for us is all still required,
but we've turned it into general education for engineers,
and that's not meant to be a negative connotation.
The same way we want 38 semester hours of arts and humanities,
and music, and the things we need in the engineer of 2020,
we need a whole bunch of math.
We need a bunch of math to develop
analytical thinking, problem solving skills, all the rest of it,
but we don't need to jam it down the throat of our incoming students
and weed out 2/3 of the population before they make progress towards degree.
So we questioned our equation,
we changed our degree programs across the bat,
we put in EGR 101, and here was the result.
What's shown here, red and blue bars,
it's the entire incoming class
in The College of Engineering and The Computer Science
at Wright State from the year 2000 through the year 2006.
We instituted EGR 101 in 2004.
The blue bars are the graduation rates
sorted by incoming ACT Math level
for all the students that did not take EGR 101,
and the red bars are students entering after 2004
that were in majors that required now EGR 101
as the cornerstone of the curriculum.
So what we have, essentially,
is a before and after picture of what's possible.
And so what you see is the national problem, right?
The blue bars showing that ACT,
what higher education believes the measure of your ability to be successful,
the median kid in the country, is an ACT Math of 24;
that's a student two classes behind calculus.
Look at our blue bar, graduation rate,
there's 250 people in that blue bar;
1 out of 5 got a degree.
200 engineers gone
because of the traditional structure of the curriculum.
Flash forward down to EGR 101, take a look at the red bars.
We have completely wiped out the impact of math preparation:
"Where are you? What's your ACT Math score?"
on whether or not you can be an engineer.
We can graduate an ACT 20 student at the same rate as an ACT 28,
yet engineering programs all over the country are effectively,
whether it's their mission or not,
they're effectively only serving the top 10-15% of the population.
The ACT 30 and higher,
these are the kids that it doesn't matter how inaccessible your curriculum is,
they can make it anyway.
But I would argue that the future of U.S. global competitiveness
is the fat part in the middle.
It is an ACT 20 all the way to 30,
that's where the population is,
this is where the future of America's economic leadership lies.
So what's the face of the future of our global competitiveness?
Well, Josh Deaton is one of those faces.
Josh Deaton right now is a PhD candidate in engineering,
and he's a future entrepreneur.
He's got entrepreneurial stuff going on right now
that I'm quite certain his PhD adviser has absolutely no idea he's doing.
(Laughter)
He graduated Summa Cum Laude,
one of the best students in his entire class,
which mind you, was a really strong group of kids,
one of the best ones coming out.
Yet his preparation coming in
wasn't the same of some of these other kids.
He went to a rural school district, not a lot of opportunities;
they didn't even have calculus at his high school,
the poor guy entered engineering
two classes behind Calculus I.
If he had seen the chart I showed you,
he would have realised that his odds in being successful were about 1 in 5.
This is also why he later told me
that he was just about to switch his major when he took EGR 101,
and he's now one of the finest graduate students
in the history of Wright State University.
(Applause)
The face of global competitiveness is Lindsay Parrett.
Lindsay Parrett's an engineer right now at Booz Allen Hamilton.
She's a masters student in Electrical Engineering,
bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering in 2012,
and you say: "Well, yeah, she came from a good school district,
Centerville High School, this is affluent, excellent preparation of students."
Only problem is, Lindsay wasn't a very good student.
Lindsay graduated in the bottom half of her class,
she had mediocre ACT scores,
she showed up at Wright State three math classes behind Calculus I.
Her odds at success in a traditional curriculum
were maybe 1 in 10.
When Lindsay walked into my own first year classroom,
she looked like the picture of American pop culture.
The girl walked in with tie dye shirts,
Vans, tons of makeup on, piercings different places,
and I'm thinking: "This is the future of tomorrow's engineer."
(Laughter)
And I remember - this is one of the best stories ever -
about 2 years later, Lindsay, being successful in our program,
more than anything else she wants to be a rocket scientist.
So she's applying for -
Where do you go and work for an internship
if you want to be a rocket scientist? NASA.
So she says: "Dr. K., I need a reference letter."
I'm looking at her background and all the rest of that, and I'm thinking:
"This is not usually what NASA hires."
So I'm writing the letter, and I said:
"Look..." - literally this is in a letter-
I'm reminded of a line from Risky Business.
You've seen that movie, right?
It's when the recruiters actually come to the house,
and after the gigantic weekend-long party he says to Tom Cruise:
"Look, Princeton really needs a guy like you."
And I said, and I believe with every fiber of my being,
that NASA needs a girl like Lindsay Parrett.
She didn't get the job,
but you can see her success right now,
and I won't be surprised if I hear from Lindsay in a few years
and she is a rocket scientist.
And then, finally,
the face of U.S. global competitiveness is Derrick Watley.
Derrick Watley is currently
a mechanical engineering student at Wright State.
And his background: transferred in from a community college in 2010
after being academically dismissed from the University of Cincinnati in 2007,
born and raised in Cincinnati, disadvantaged neighborhood;
went to Cincinnati public schools.
Now, he graduated from one of the premier Cincinnati public schools.
The place he was at before that, he told me I think 3 days ago,
they would deal drugs and guns in the bathroom.
First person in his family, 9 brothers and sisters,
no one's ever gone to college before, this guy wants to try engineering.
So he shows up at Wright State after this track record that he has had,
a really successive academic failure;
he showed up three math classes behind Calculus.
But the thing about Derrick is Derrick really wants to be an engineer.
So he sits in the front row of my EGR 101 class,
and I can't get through en example problem,
I can't get a schematic on the board without Derrick's hand up
and Derrick saying: "Dr. K., you have to explain to me
what's actually happening inside the resistor."
A couple times I had to say:
"Well, this is an engineering math class, Derrick,"
but yeah, this is why we do math in context.
We can use the physics to help explain the math,
and Derrick didn't want math that didn't have physics to go with it.
So that was it.
He's a dedicated student, never missing a lecture,
but, still can't quite take the inner-city out of the kid,
it's his entire life, it's where he still lives.
So the homework is spotty, it's not always turned in,
the grades are kind of mediocre.
The first midterm exam, he turns in a grade, it's like a 71 or something,
and he comes to my office, and he's like, "Dr. K.,
I'm really sorry about that first exam performance.
Don't worry, I got this. I didn't have my act together.
I'm really going to work, I'm going do good next exam."
I said: "Alright Derrick, go do what you need to do."
So 3-4 weeks later, we have the second midterm;
we do these in block, 8pm to 10pm at night, everybody at once.
I get this late-night email,
it's like 11:30pm,
it's this long, it's like a novel,
and Derrick's explaining to me
how he's been preparing for this exam non-stop for a week,
how he slept in the lab on Sunday night,
so he'd be there for the TA Monday morning.
- Keep in mind, the exam is Wednesday night, OK?
This kind of preparation and dedication...
yet, the email goes on to say:
"And I failed," "I was not successful."
And it was pleading, it was: "Dr. K., can I do extra credit?
Can I come in, do some special project? I must be able to post a good score."
I said: "Derrick, this is not the way the real world works.
You are going to fail, you got to pick yourself up,
get off the ground, and look what's next."
What's next is the final exam.
In my 14 years as an educator,
with students like Josh Deaton, - and we have other students
a guy James Dommen, valedictorian of Fairmont High,
doing a PhD MD at MIT and Harvard -
I have seen achievement that will blow your mind,
but I've never seen an achievement like that achieved by Derrick Watley.
140-some students took my final exam.
There were three perfect scores.
Two scores by university honors students with AP credit for calculus.
A third perfect score, Derrick Watley. (Applause)
And so, naturally, I thought this was a mistake.
So I dug through the pile, - I had the pile of exams -
and I rummaged through the pile,
and I found his exam, and it looked like an exam done by a middle schooler.
It was a mess, eraser marks everywhere, stuff scratched out, but 5 pages
of detailed, hand-written calculations, my own solutions.
Derrick Watley, every single answer,
every box, every graph labeled, units, everything correct.
It would not be possible if we did not question our equation.
And so I ask you:
what's your equation?
Whatever your walk of life,
what are the traditional ways that you do things
that limit not only your achievement, but the achievement of those around you?
Maybe it's time to question it.
Thank you.
(Applause)