Engineers! Calling All Engineers!

According to an article called, "Fostering Tech Talent in Schools" in The New York Times published by Nick Wingfield, Steven Edouard, a teacher, advised his students to take a career path that involves computer science. He is also one of the 110 engineers, who works on a Microsoft program, which focuses to encourage high school students to be involved in the field of computer science; and to eventually make the decision to pursue computer science based fields and careers. During the time when we need the most technologically advanced graduates, there is an unfortunate shortage of them. This is a grave issue for the technology industry, let alone the nation's economy. According to Association for Computing Machinery, through 2020 there will be 150,000 novel job openings pertaining to that field each year. However, with different exciting jobs filled with great opportunities in the technology field, only 14,000 American students graduated as undergrads in computer science in 2011.   Brad Smith, Microsoft general council stated, " People can't get jobs and we have jobs that can't be filled." Consequently, technology companies have actually taken the initiative to lobby for looser immigration rules in order to be allowed to welcome more engineers from other countries. In addition to lobbying, they have organized sponsoring tech competitions, to motivate and inspire students to be involved in the industry. For example, Google is in charge of a summer camp program for upcoming ninth grade high school students. In this camp, high school teachers lecture and demonstrate their skills to the campers, at local universities. Specifically in this case, desperate times truly call for desperate measures. Microsoft has directed their engineers to teach classes in schools for a full year. Keving Wang became the cause of this program. He is a Microsoft engineer who graduated from Harvard. Mr. Wang volunteered as a computer science teacher in 2009 at a public school located in Seattle. Microsoft saw this as an effective technique to encourage students to major in technology based careers. Therefore, Microsoft aided Mr. Wang economically, which bestowed him the opportunity to teach full time. This financial support is recognized as Teal, or Technology Education and Literacy in Schools. Teal has been displayed in twenty-two schools in Seattle, and in schools found in Washington, Utah, North Dakota, and California. Big technology companies are aware of the intimidation this field produces ; and how students are more likely to feel apprehension toward computer science subjects. For that reason, Microsoft uses the method of connecting the field to technologies that teens utilize in their lives.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/01/technology/microsoft-sends-engineers-to-schools-to-encourage-the-next-generation.html?ref=technology