Michigan’s Future Engineers Are Still in Middle School

When Michigan leaders talk about our state’s need for engineers, scientists and technically skilled workers, the conversation usually begins with colleges, employers and the talent pipeline, which makes sense if we are thinking about the people we need to hire next year. But if we are thinking about the Michigan economy 10 or 20 years from now, I believe we need to begin much earlier, with young people who are still discovering what interests them and have not yet decided which subjects, careers or futures to pursue.

I’m studying mechanical engineering at the University of Detroit Mercy, and one of the things engineering teaches me is that you cannot simply look at the outcome you want and expect it to appear. You must understand all the conditions that make that outcome possible.

If Michigan wants more engineers, scientists, programmers, technicians and problem-solvers, then we should be paying attention to what happens years before a young person fills out a college application, particularly during the period when children are beginning to form surprisingly durable ideas about what they are good at and what kinds of people they think they can become.

That is one reason I believe so strongly in STEM opportunities outside of the school day, during afterschool and summer programming.

Across Michigan, these out-of-school time (OST) programs give young people the chance to build robots, experiment with code, investigate the natural world, take things apart, design solutions and meet adults who have turned those same interests into careers. To the adults funding or running these programs, we may call this STEM education or even workforce development, but I doubt that is how an 11-year-old experiences it. To them, it is the afternoon they finally got the robot to move, the summer they learned why a bridge holds weight, or the first time somebody handed them a tool and trusted them to figure out what to do with it.

Those experiences matter because there is a significant difference between doing well in science class and beginning to think of yourself as a person who belongs in science, simply because an adult told them, “You know, you’re really good at this.”

For Michigan, there is an economic argument here as well. We are a state whose history and identity have been shaped by people who design, invent, manufacture and build, and although the technologies in front of us are changing rapidly, that basic need has not disappeared. Advanced manufacturing, mobility, energy, health care, artificial intelligence and technologies we have not yet imagined will all depend on people who know how to solve complicated problems.

We should also be candid about the fact that access to the experiences that help create those people is uneven. Some Michigan youth grow up with robotics teams, science camps, museums, mentors and enrichment opportunities readily available to them, while others encounter far fewer of those experiences because of geography, family income, transportation or simply what happens to exist in their community.

That is not a difference in talent. It is a difference in opportunity, and it should concern us whenever we talk about Michigan’s future workforce.

As Miss Michigan, I have the privilege of meeting young people across our state, and those encounters have made me much less worried about whether Michigan has enough talented children to become our next generation of engineers, scientists and innovators. We do.

The more important question is whether enough of them will have the experiences that allow them to discover that talent while they are still young enough to imagine almost anything for themselves.

Michigan’s future engineers are already here. Some of them are just in middle school, staying after school to finish a project they cannot quite get to work yet.

We should make sure they have the time, the tools and someone willing to tell them to keep trying.