The third meeting of the National STEM Forum was held recently in Lima, Peru, supported by Siemens Stiftung and Instituto Apoyo, who also was the organizer and main actor of the initiative. The forum included important speakers which analyzed and presented different scopes of the importance of STEM education for societies, economies and people.
The STEM Forum promotes continuous education within all the educational levels, necessary to promote and integrate STEM not only in schools but in the common life of people and working disciplines. The inauguration of this version of the National STEM Forum, was in charge of Mr. José Pereyra, Academic Vice Chancellor of the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (UPC), where the Forum took place this time. He highlighted the important role of STEM education to build or reach any objective required by any professional career.
Paul Neira, Director of Instituto Apoyo presented the National STEM Forum. He emphasized during his speech that “the key challenge of the Forum is to make STEM education transcend to the Public area, creating awareness on the authorities”.
“The Challenges of Human Capital and ITC in Peru and the measures taken” was the title of the presentation of Angélica Matsuda, CEO of the National Council of Competitivity of Perú. During her presentation, she demonstrated how close is the relation of STEM education and the growth indicators of Perú for the competitivity increase.
The “MINT Forum Experience from Germany Transfer Model” was Barbara Fitzinger´s presentation to the important audience of educators, university members, scientists and professors of the most relevant organizations in Perú. The Head of Working Area Education of Siemens Stiftung, emphasized that in Germany, as in Perú, labor market has too few workers skilled in STEM subjects. There is a shortage of STEM teachers in schools.
“ Our modern world is shaped by science and technology. STEM education is vital to understanding the modern world and solving the challenges mankind is facing”.
Another special visitor in the STEM Forum was Kristina Reiss, Dean of the TUM School of Education in Germany, who was responsible for the closing presentation, consisting in “The Stem learning and analysis of PISA results”. She stated: “STEM aims at basic competences, applicable knowledge and most of all, education for all students. STEM literacy will support students in becoming open-minded and concerned citizen in a highly complex world. PISA test´s main objective is to determine applicable knowledge and, in first place, education for all.”
The STEM Forum is an organization that gets together institutions and associations that promote education in the areas of natural science, technology, engineering and mathematics in the whole education change.
The institutions that participate in the STEM Forum represent the most important educational organizations in the country.
The founding members are: Instituto Apoyo, Siemens Stiftung, TUM School of Education of Germany, Universidad Ruiz de Montoya, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and Universidad Cayetano Heredia.
The forum pretends to close 2015 in Peru with a big integrated seminar that will show what is unique in Latin America at the moment. During this seminar, that is planned to take place in November 2015, all the participants should present their action plan regarding STEM education in each of their organizations and institutions.