Posted by Dale Fleury, Regional Director

Those who focus on STEM fields have a higher rate of completing a bachelor's degree program, 35 percent, compared to the overall student population, at 29 percent, according to a new report released by the National Center for Education Statistics.

Math majors don't always get much respect on college campuses, but fat post-grad wallets should be enough to give them a boost.

We are excited to share some good news with you! In President Obama's remarks at the U.S. Department of Education today, he challenged everyone to play a role in preparing math and science teachers. He also called on non-profits and universities to support programs such as the UTeach Program.  The President's remarks are pasted below with a link to the transcript on White House website.

Post by Tom Luce, CEO of National Math and Science Initiative, published in the Huffington Post

The recent wave of cyber-attacks on American and South Korean websites raises a new kind of security issue: Do we have enough brainpower in the pipeline to counter such sabotage in the future?

Posted by: Rena Pederson, NMSI Communications Director

Tom Scarritt, editor of the Birmingham Alabama News, has written a thoughtful overview of the new Pew poll on attitudes toward science.

Posted by BJ Goergen, NMSI Chief of Staff:

Pattie Sellers, Editor at Large a FORTUNE magazine, got the NMSI Young Leaders' conference for female college students majoring in math and science off to an exciting start Monday with a roundtable breakfast at the offices of Time Inc. in New York City. Here is the report she immediately posted on her blog "Postcards:"

Here's a great example of the terrific rapport that the AP teachers in programs supported by NMSI grants have with their students:

Jun 17, 2009
By John Winn

The recent article, "Is AP for everybody?" (Telegram & Gazette, June 4) raises a valuable question, but would have benefited from more views explaining that expanding AP is not the problem - it is the solution if the program is expanded appropriately.

Posted by Lin McMullin, NMSI Director of Math Programs

CNN recently did an interesting segment on a robotics competition that boosts minority interest in engineering. Here is the link --

Competing with robots*

 Posted by Rena Pederson, NMSI Communications Director