Abstract:

The Academy for Future Leaders in Science and Technology was established by the Center for Strategic Competitiveness at the Stuart School of Business. The Academy's Mission is to grow and diversify tomorrow's science and technology workforce. The Mission is implemented in partnership with the Stuart School of Business, selected high schools in the City of Chicago and the local business and not-for-profit community.

The Academy presents a nine week curriculum that is hands on focused on environmental management/science. The curriculum is delivered through experiential pedagogy designed to be scientifically sound but focused on real problems and real solutions. The Academy provides each participate with an eight week paid internship with area businesses or not-for-profits. The Internships are designed to provide mentoring support to the Interns while introducing them to professional work opportunities with which many are unfamiliar.

United States Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) Cooperative Institutional Research Program's (CIRP) annual survey of college freshmen finds a high interest in environmental issues among US college bound students. Environmental Science is not a major thrust of US high school curricula, thus high school students have little understanding of how they might address an issue that CIRP studies find is of significant concern to them. The Academy connects science solutions to their environmental concerns and grows the workforce in two ways. By including troubled urban high schools in Chicago with poor high school graduation records and worse records for sending graduates to post secondary education, we expect to change motivations leading to a high graduation rate as well as a high matriculation rate in post secondary education following graduation and therefore grow the size of the workforce. Additionally, some partner high school have better records for high school graduation rates as well as sending graduates to post secondary education; to the extent that the Academy experience causes college bound students to change their majors to science/engineering, the technically trained workforce is grown. The Academy diversifies the workforce by accepting only minority students into its program.

The inaugural Academy was launched in Summer 2009 with a class of 23 high school students. While Academy data supporting its ability to successfully meet the Mission Goals will need to be collected over the coming years, the initial evidence is positive. All 23 students starting the Academy have completed it and their attitudes toward science and engineering are favorable and they are open to careers in these areas. We expect the Academy to mirror the results of a program launched in Detroit Michigan in 2001 that continues to the present with more than 98% of the students starting the program completing it; 100% of the program completers have graduated from high school and more than 98% of the program's high school graduates have enrolled in post secondary education programs.

Summer-long Programs for high school students such as the Academy are rare in US Business Schools (Camp B-School, BizEd, 2003). The lack of attention to this critical issue by Business Schools is disappointing and the Academy represents an innovative solution to this pressing problem that is replicable in nearly any major city in the world if there is a commitment by a Business School to these issues of inclusion and growth.