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Bioscience Frontiers

Exciting career opportunities await Wisconsin's emerging workforce.

New Agriculture

Breakthroughs in our new agricultural economy promise innovations and jobs.

Healthcare

Advances in technology are opening up new careers in many healthcare fields.

Energy

Future energy independence requires a tech-savvy workforce.

Nanotechnology

Informatics

RESOURCES

Students, parents and educators speak up about science education. (0.72 MB)

NanoVenture: The Nanotechnology Board Game

The Science Literacy Project: Strengthening Communities

Communities become stronger when the people in them understand the trends of the marketplace. This knowledge base can help to support the ongoing education of our children so they can prepare for emerging career fields. In the coming years, math and science-based careers are going to expand significantly.

Yet, the current level of scientific literacy in Wisconsin and nationwide is alarmingly low. One key reason is that teachers often do not have the necessary tools to integrate cutting-edge science topics into their curricula. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment in math and science jobs in the US will increase from approximately 6.77 million jobs in 2006 to 7.98 million jobs in 2016. This is an increase of 17.8% in approximately 790 different job titles.

Our mission is to bridge the gap between the exponential growth of science discovery and science education by providing teachers with the tools to incorporate emerging science fields into their curriculum. SciFusion seeks to transform the way students view and do science, and prepare them to enter the workforce pipeline feeding today's knowledge-based economy.

The Goals of the Science Literacy Project
The primary goal of the Science Literacy Project is to prepare students for the workplace by introducing them to the fundamental concepts of bioscience, new agriculture, health care, engineering, energy and other important new scientific disciplines. The students and teachers will learn about potential careers as technicians, scientists, and engineers, as well as the importance of science to our society. It is critical to have a scientifically literate population. One reason is so we have an informed electorate that is able to assess science policy from an educated perspective. It is also important for workforce development and economic growth.

What can be done?
The Science Literacy Project addresses five key areas related to science literacy in Wisconsin:

• Helping teachers integrate cutting-edge science topics into their science curricula.
• Ensuring that students are aware of the multitude of career opportunities in science fields.
• Helping meet the challenge of using technology innovations to improve teacher and student resources.
• Providing no or low-cost resources for science professional development.
• Improving citizen and community awareness of emerging science fields and their relationship to our economy.

The Science Literacy Project is Velocity Learning System's ambitious and innovative project to improve scientific literacy in Wisconsin and nationally. Scientific research is generating new breakthroughs with incredible speed. These scientific findings translate into new scientific disciplines and education and career options for our young people.

The Science Literacy Project focuses on the emerging jobs in bioscience, agriculture, health care, and energy. With only 5-10% of science teachers at the 6-12th grade levels actively teaching topics related to the fastest emerging sciences, most students in those grades are not being exposed to these rapidly expanding scientific areas.

We are currently developing a cutting-edge web portal called SciFusion. SciFusion.org brings together—or fuses—basic research, public education and the jobs of the future into a valuable community resource.

SciFusion.org is an on-line learning community and resource center that initially will contain multimedia eLearning web modules that introduce teachers to the fundamental concepts of biotechnology, health care, advanced manufacturing, energy and agriculture. This will enable teachers to incorporate these concepts into their classroom instruction. In addition to providing basic information on emerging sciences, SciFusion will focus on the importance of these disciplines to the future competitiveness of Wisconsin in the global economy. All SciFusion content will be aligned with the National Science Content Standards and the Wisconsin Academic Standards in Science.

How You Can Help
We hope you share our enthusiasm for the role of science literacy in creating a strong future workforce, strong communities and a strong Wisconsin economy. The jobs of the future will continue to require an increased level of scientific understanding and the WSLP will offer the resources to meet those needs.

The Science Literacy Project seeks partners to help us reach our goals. Specific needs include financial support, in-kind goods and services, volunteers and expertise. We are actively pursuing federal, state and private funding to support SciFusion. A collective effort between the public and private sectors will ensure a more science-literate populace that will support a strong technology-based Wisconsin economy.

You-the parents and involved citizens that make up our communities-can make a difference by participating in The Science Literacy Project. Please join us with your energy, experience and resources.

SciFusion.org is a work in progress. We welcome your ideas and suggestions. Please take a look around the site and let us know what you like, don't like and what you would like to see to help you better understand the emerging and rapidly expanding career fields discussed on SciFusion.org.

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