What impact can STEAM have today and in the future?

Hey Folks!

In this blog post, I’ll share some of my thoughts about what STEAM is all about and a concise summary of applications I think are worthwhile to consider. I’m sure you’re aware that STEAM covers a significant amount of career fields and activities. I will focus on more specific approaches that I believe are essential for beginners to understand.

The famous NASA physicist & mathematician Katherine Johnson provided a tremendous summarizing quote of these principles, in my opinion.

We will always have STEM with us. Some things will drop out of the public eye and will go away, but there will always be science, engineering, and technology. And there will always, always be mathematics.

- Katherine Johnson

The S.T.E.A.M.EE principles

This acronym is one I use to help me reinforce the practical skills needed to apply the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math) principles. I constantly reflect on these ideas to see where applications can utilize significant economic empowerment, environmental sustainability, and equity.

How can you and I get STEAMEEE and fired up 🔥🔥🔥?

S (Science) - Science is the knowledge domain that encourages asking and seeking to understand how our world works and what areas spark our interest. Some examples include physical and life sciences, computer science, and interdisciplinary case studies.

T (Technology) - Understanding how technology can be leveraged as a powerful medium to develop and collaborate among the communities to truly build something worthwhile and beneficial to society and our environment. Some of these examples include semiconductor technologies, material science, Cloud Native microservices, Artificial Intelligence, etc.

E (Engineering) - The practical arm to build, test, and experiment with ideas that will eventually become a reality. With so many intuitive designs already in the market, an ecosystem of both physical and digital products can integrate and scale to co-exist seamlessly. New Products and services business models are also starting to leverage this concept for today’s innovators. Learning how to own your inventions and look for their Intellectual Property to patent protected. Additionally, a healthy understanding of users' feedback would constantly fuel engineers to provide better, more meaningful solutions as needs and demand change over time.

A (Arts) - We humans have immense creative potential. We can express ourselves with beautiful artwork through many mediums (paintings, fashion, drawings, creative writing, music, etc.)

M (Mathematics) - The skill we use as a foundation for all the other areas to exist. It can be as straightforward or as complex, depending on the problem at hand. It is a universal language that anyone can understand. It is not about grades you get from school, and it is an essential life skill that will apply to anything we do in our daily lives.

Economic empowerment/Entrepreneurship - Learn how to use all the knowledge accessible to decide where your skills can help your personal goals of wealth. As an innovator, this can help sharpen your mindset towards your financial goals. You can also turn your passions into a business if you choose to.

Investing to actualize financial freedom for generations is a journey. We can apply a “fail fast methodology” that encourages learning from trial and error. This strategy enables you to quickly identify where your particular niche idea fits with the customers you’re seeking to serve. Anticipate building perseverance, patience, and focus throughout this process. As adults, according to Dale Carnegie’s observations (author of How to Win Friends and Influence People) is that we consistently seek out learning how to master these areas, often when it needs critical attention:

• manage finances
• obtain wealth
• health and wellness
• skills with people

It is becoming more imperative that we teach these lessons at earlier ages.

(85% of financial success comes from people skills, 15% technical skills ~ Dale Carnegie)

Equity - The reality of the state of the world is that it is not fair among opportunities and access to common valuable resources. My recommendation is to every action count towards shaping the world to become an appropriate playing field. The role you play at any stage has a tremendous opportunity to bridge that gap.

Closing Thoughts

Who knows where greatness can emerge? We need to be honest about how the past influenced our current state of affairs. In all, I believe we barely touched on what this broad topic can reveal to us. Feel free to share any thoughts or things to consider in future posts.

All the best!

- Chaance