FIRST and Obama's Innovation Strategy

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by David Brinza

Will FIRST be part of the program announced by the White House today?

A Strategy for American Innovation

The proposed program invests $100B in Recovery Act funds in the areas of Research and Development, Education (including STEM), and infrastructure. The white paper specifically calls out improvements in STEM education. It's not clear whether Innovation Strategy includes or augments the budget for the Race to the Top Fund.

Imagine how many more students could participate in FIRST if $20M were made available for grants. That's only 0.5% of the $4B proposed budget augmentation for education, the same percentage NASA obtains from the Federal budget.

Is it time to start a letter writing campaign to our representatives?

Race to the Top is mentioned in this document on the Innovation Strategy web page: http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/doc...aper_final.pdf

An interesting read. These are the kind of promises the President made during campaigning that I'm expecting him to fulfill.