Two aliens crash land on Earth and use problem-solving skills to make it back home. That’s the idea behind “Designing Dandelions,” a children’s book co-written by a West Texas A&M University professor who hopes to get kids excited about STEM — science, technology, engineering and math.
WT associate professor of mechanical engineering Emily Hunt and co-author Michelle Pantoya, a mechanical engineering professor at Texas Tech University, have published other children’s books, such as “Engineering Elephants,” but they saw a need to inform children about what a STEM career really means.
“We did a survey and found kids don’t know what engineering is,” Hunt said. “Their most common responses were that engineers drive a train or they didn’t know.”
The pair’s previous books were aimed at 4- through 8-year-olds, but this time, they focused on an older audience by incorporating fourth- through sixth-grade learning objectives for science.
“What we really wanted to do is teach the engineering design process — planning, creating and always improving,” Pantoya said, adding that they also incorporated life sciences curriculum.
The number of STEM career options is on the rise, and by 2011, one in five jobs in the United States required STEM-field knowledge, according to a study from the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization.
Savannah Gates, a Girl Scouts volunteer and mechanical engineer at Pantex, said technology is evolving well beyond what has been anticipated.
“That progress is almost absolutely dependent on STEM building blocks, transforming the inspiration of today’s children into a vital investment,” she said. “STEM careers also open broader doors of opportunity in their versatility and sound educational foundations that are easily developed further.”
Exposure to STEM professions at a young age can influence how kids begin to think of their “professional selves,” Pantoya said.
“If can’t impress on them what a fun career engineering is at a young age, we might be losing the large potential of a generation who could change the future,” she said.
“Early on, we at least need to teach kids what engineering is, so they have more information to work with,” Hunt said. “I think a lot of time, they don’t choose engineering, because they think they would be doing things that are not necessarily appealing to young kids, especially females. We wanted to find a way to show them the fun, exciting things engineers can do.”