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Is the United States getting it wrong when it comes to educating tomorrow's innovators in critical fields? It has been known for years that the only way to compete globally in information technology, engineering, nanotechnology, robotics and other fields is to give students the best educational opportunities possible. But do individuals have a successful formula when it comes to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education? In this report, the authors challenge the nation's approach to STEM education and argue that reforms are urgently needed to better match the talents of students, the needs of employers, and its goals. (Contains 19 tables, 42 figures, and 623 endnotes.) [Funding for this paper was provided by the Intel Corporation. For "Refueling the U.S. Innovation Economy: Fresh Approaches to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education. Executive Summary," see ED521736.]

A National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant funded a study to establish an International Humanities Curriculum that would serve as a model of curricular internationalization upon which interested observers might draw for revision of their own curricula. This curriculum revision project introduced the study of texts, ideas, themes, and issues from China and Japan into the literature curriculum of Robert Morris College. China and Japan seemed obvious choices for enhancing the international dimension of the humanities curriculum at that college. China, which is both the oldest and the largest country in the world promises to exert a major economic and cultural influence upon global affairs in the future, and since rebounding from World War II Japan has become a model of industrial efficiency and success. Goals for this business-focused curriculum included (1) enabling students to gain a deeper understanding of the human experience as it has been lived in two major world cultures; and (2) building a valuable foundation of contextual knowledge for making sense of professional practices, strategies, issues, and obstacles that students will face on an international scale as workers and leaders in business and industry. The study and the interdisciplinary collaboration which was essential to its implementation led to the conclusion that curricular internationalization provides valuable common ground between disciplines traditionally indifferent or hostile towards each other. Participants further concluded that forging meaningful interdisciplinary partnerships not only requires rethinking traditional notions of disciplinary borders, but also requires learning to cross those borders. (Four tables are included.) (SAM)