STEM vs. STEAM

[GKrotkov]

I wasn't watching the recently released trailer until this morning, because I was going to a Columbia admissions event. It's interesting to note that the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Sciences requires all Freshman Engineering students to take a class called "The Art of Engineering".

I suppose that that could be taken in two ways, either, "Engineering is already incorporating art, leave the acronym alone" or, "Art is essential to engineering but still distinct and thus should be included in the acronym"

Has anyone on this forum taken the class and could you comment?

[Steven Smith]

I'm not close enough to the source to understand exactly what is taught, so perhaps I could use some education from folks that have gone from STEM to STEAM in the classroom.

Part of my spiel to students, most of whom come from poor backgrounds has always been "STEM careers are in strong need. If you want to have a solid job that pays well enough for you to not have to worry about rent, having a car, middle class basics, most any job in engineering will get you there." Including Art (STEM>STEAM) might include it as a "valid career choice", which waters down that message at first glance. The only thing worse in my mind would be to add an extra S for sports and tell students we need more professional athletes in the world, and it is perfectly OK to plan on not needing school because you will get a $1M+ contract playing sports.

That being said, there are a lot of lesser paying jobs within STEM, though arguably still better than the average pure artistic career. I'm also careful to always note... at the end of the day, once you make enough money to pay for the absolute basics, it is more important to be happy with what you do than be wealthy.

All that being said, should we as STEM students and professionals value art and the importance of aesthetics? Absolutely. I think within 30 minutes of the FRC game release, our team had 10 ideas floating around on SteamPunk related art projects we wanted to do. The same way STEM professionals need to know management, economics, history, geography, and all the other basics, we need to have an appreciation for art. I don't know if it warrants extra emphasis over the other humanities, nor is it important to include as STEAM instead of STEM. If the powers that be think that by overemphasizing STEM we lost the creativity that comes with art, sure?

[mathking]

As a teacher, the appeal to me of STEAM over STEM is twofold. The first is purely pragmatic. Aesthetics matters when you design and build things you want to sell. Teaching students that it is a completely separate issue from the engineering is putting them at a disadvantage. Just look at the markets for phones, computers and cars and tell me the Art part of design doesn't matter. A friend who is an engineer for a car company told me recently they ask a question of new hires designed to elicit their views on the importance of aesthetics, and they have decided against candidates who were dismissive of aesthetics as unimportant or not part of their job as an engineer.

The second big part of the appeal is that including Art makes developing creativity easier. In the last few years I have been an avid reader of the research available about teaching students to be more creative. The general consensus seems to be that students will become more creative if they are given more opportunities to be creative. Having open ended projects, or open ended parts of projects, is very important in providing these opportunities. I did some research myself about two and a half decades ago about visual perception. I found that some of the techniques used in art classes to teach students about perspective and shading enhanced students' visual perception skills. As an example, students who had taken drawing classes were able to more quickly and reliably figure if a particular set of shapes could fit together and how they would fit together.

[Barry Bonzack]

The original question worded "do you like A or B" and I am choosing C.

If I had to choose between the three, I prefer BEST the most. Business, Engineering, Science, and Technology.

[maddog175]

It's good to have these dialogs.

In FIRST, aren't we applying science, technology, art, and math to engineering projects? Isn't engineering a combination of all of the others - or the application of them all? It is to me, anyway.

Math is a science. Applied math and art ( one can argue ) can result in more science, other sciences. Applied math, art, and science produce technology. And somewhere technology and engineering feed each other, along with math, art, and science.

[Hgree56]

I am personally in the opinion that adding "Arts" to STEM makes it seem more like a "Let's include everyone ever" instead of a "Focus on these four, broad topics" that it has been. At our school, the Science, Math, and Tech departments are all near each other, but the Art department is on the whole other side of the school. Our school has murals made by the Art students on one side of the main hallway and on the other is posters for Science Olympiad and Robotics. The Art kids and the Tech kids do NOT cross paths. We are two totally seperate groups in our school.

Just my personal opinion, but it should be STEM, not STEAM.

[Jon Stratis]

I think everyone has, so far, focused on what's contained in STEM and STEAM. But to me, I want to know what the purpose of the acronyms are.

Why are we concerned with STEM? The general argument I've always heard is that we need more scientists and engineers. That the world is moving forward with technology and we need to adjust our education system to create students well suited to take advantage of that path. In other words, STEM is important because we want to bring those fields to the forefront of our educational system and make sure they don't get ignored.

What about Arts? What could we gain by including them in this push? Well, for one many Arts pursuits are grounded in Math and science. Think of music, how you can create harmonics and dissonance, beats and patterns defined and made beautiful through the math and physics involved. Think of art, how some wavelengths of light are complementary on a pallet while others aren't, how certain ratios are found pleasing to the eye and the difficulty of achieving the balance needed to draw a beautiful human face.

But that's a lot of what others have said - what's contained within the Arts category. If we look at the purpose of including Arts, it's to give students creative and artistic outlets in class. Unfortunately, art programs are some of the first ones to be cut in our schools when they face budget cuts. Millions of students are going through their k-12 programs without having the option to join choir or band, or to pursue painting or theater.

We all have our passions, and many of those who frequent CD are passionate about STEM, not the Arts. But when I look at teams and students across FIRST, some of the best one's I've seen achieve a balance. Yes, they love the robot, but they also participate in sports, engage in artistic pursuits, and do stuff outside of FIRST to grow other parts of their mind and personalities. Being well rounded, in my opinion, is much more important for personal health than being solely focused and dedicated to one pursuit. And that's why adding a focus on Arts in our schools can be an important part of our society.

[Ginger Power]

Is there a difference between the creativity that goes into the form and function of the Tesla Model S, and the creativity used to form the Mona Lisa? Does the beauty of the Tesla Model S come from something in the arts? Or would we call it good engineering? Many people are saying that arts should be included in STEM because form matters in engineering. I would argue that form is included in engineering already.

To borrow an example used earlier, when I look at 118's robot I see an engineering masterpiece. The tradeoffs they make, and the way they fit so much into such a clean package is beautiful.

Great engineering is often viewed as a work of art. The difference, to me, between an engineering masterpiece and a work of art is the science and math that determines the form of the engineering.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Ginger Power

There are also very creative/artistic elements already built into Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. Design Engineering is basically using physical principles and creativity to build products to serve a need. The creativity needed to be a design engineer is much like the creativity needed to be an artist. The difference is the application of physics, and math. With that said, where does art fit into STEM?

You actually just answered your own question right here. The creativity, vision, skill, and execution that goes into the arts are skill sets that overlap with the necessary skill sets to do well in engineering. And often, the physics and math skills needed to be a good engineer come into the arts as well. The most obvious example I'm most familiar with would be audio, which has a significant amount of both art and engineering by any definition. But really, in all forms of art there are elements that overlap with STEM.

The implicit assumption in posts like yours is that the arts do not involve science, or math, or technology, to be produced, and this couldn't be further from the truth. All art is created with technology. Technology enables the creation of more art. Application of math and science principles enables proficiency in art and achievement that isn't always possible. The two are linked in more ways than you can imagine.

I think it's a natural fit, that gives the arts the value and attention it deserves in our society, and that STEM majors will have better, more well-rounded education if they respect the arts the same way they respect STEM.

[logank013]

Don't we already have Art in FIRST? Look around at a competition. People are always taking pictures (photography is technically an art). Fliers are everywhere. Sure, posters are made on a computer but it takes some sort of art skills to make them look good. I also heard of a chairman's team last year sculpting a tower in a chairman's presentation. Sculpting is an art. All I'm saying is there is already art in FRC.

Also, think about this a little more. My twin sister joined the robotics team last year. She is on our school's speech team. Last year, she actually wrote a speech about STEM vs. STEAM last year. I thought she was crazy at first when she wrote it. Then I heard all her explanations and Art actually fits in well into the Engineering and Technology aspects.

[gerthworm]

To me, it's a question of how the label is used.

There are certain skills (math/science related) which are useful for understanding the world around us. Since understanding things is generally good, these skills are considered valuable. There are many ways to acquire and express these skills. To simplify referring to these skills as a whole, the "STEM" category name could be used.

Many people have found useful ways to combine artistic expressions of themselves and their world with technology, which requires science and math principles. Awesome! Now we have some skills which could be categorized under "STEAM".

All of these individual things are good because they have some underlying beneficial quality, not because they fall into some category (STEAM/STEM/etc).

Unfortunately, some folks use the category name as a fancy buzzword to get attention (and funding). This can become confusing and frustrating because the category is not sufficient to understand the underlying intentions.

Does FRC teach and inspire STEAM-related skills? Arguably yes.
Is FRC a STEM or STEAM organization? Depends who you ask.
Does FRC use technology, arts, and science to inspire innovation and teach skills which are applicable to all careers? For sure! And this is the reason why it's a worthwhile endeavor, not because it could be labeled as "STEAM".

[gblake]

The past is prologue: A previous STEM/STEAM discussion

Asking the right questions is important:
In the context of student-robotics programs, for me, the central STEM/STEAM question is whether I wish our culture would tilt a bit more toward producing more "Artists" than it does now, or toward producing more "STEM" folks than it does now.

Nothing draconian, just which way would I want that needle to move.

Currently, moving the needle a bit more toward more STEM graduates, without losing sight of the bigger picture, seems to be a good idea.

Blake

[Siri]

Originally Posted by Ginger Power

There are also very creative/artistic elements already built into Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. Design Engineering is basically using physical principles and creativity to build products to serve a need. The creativity needed to be a design engineer is much like the creativity needed to be an artist. The difference is the application of physics, and math. With that said, where does art fit into STEM?

I get where the dissonance of the question comes from. My first reaction when people change from STEM to STEAM on me is that they're saying "Don't forget about the art!" As if engineering doesn't already use art in everything we do. And frankly, often when someone pitches "STEAM" at me, that is what they individually are trying to say: "Hey, pencil pusher, be creative!" Or "Actually this field is fine, look at all the artists." Or "Hey, why isn't art getting that STEM money?" (The last is a reasonable debate, if engaged as anything more than a complaint.)

It's very annoying.

However, I don't argue that that's at all the real intention behind the acronym expansion. After all, no one would dispute that we use science and math in engineering, math in science, technology in math, and on and on. Rather than saying, "Hey, be artistic / add art!" it's saying, "Hey, we are artistic. And mathematical, and scientific, and technological. Yes, that's that thing. Come on over!" So to answer your question - yes, there are creative/artistic elements built into STEM, just like there's math built into SET and science built into engineering. And that's exactly where they all fit.

The more practical discussion though, is that an acronym alone does not champion one implementation or another. We and HQ both need to engage STEAM as a cohesive whole, rather than as, "our art is over here in animation and our science is in the R&D..." as is sometimes done. Remember that the reason the NSF created SMET* at all wasn't to say "these are all really important." It was to say "this should be a cohesively handled framework." Because I'm convinced that artistic-style creativity is as integral to engineering as math is, etcetera, I agree with that statement.

*Yes, that's the original acronym. Glad it didn't catch on.

[efoote868]

I was always under the impression that the goal of promoting STEM is to encourage young people to go into STEM fields, i.e. society wants to graduate more Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics majors.

STEAM includes Art, but I doubt that society wants to graduate more Art majors. Rather, STEAM could be the description of what well rounded STEM majors need to learn, particularly the Engineering part of STEM.

[Oblarg]

Adding "art" to "STEM" has always struck me as a sort of silly attempt at saying "me, too!"

Look: Sure, art is important. That doesn't mean we need to talk about art whenever we talk about STEM. "STEAM" is a term that, to me, seems so broad as to be nearly useless (and, not-unrelatedly, suffers from a serious case of "one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-others") - STEM and art don't actually have very much in common and the issues surrounding STEM education and art education are fundamentally different and need to be addressed separately.