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Asia Pacific Workshop Tackles How to Power a 21st Century Society

By | September 12th, 2018|Broadcom Foundation, Uncategorized|

International Graduate Students Collaborate on the Future of Smart Manufacturing

In the spring of 2018, Broadcom Foundation continued its renowned University Student Research Workshops to delve deep into smart manufacturing in the era of Industry 4.0 or the Fourth Industrial Revolution.  As machines become increasingly automated, energy use is on the rise, requiring critical thinking and collaboration about sustaining the global economy, the environment and quality of life.

The 2018 Asia Pacific Student University Workshop is an international, interdisciplinary convening of graduate students from the University of California, Irvine, CA, the National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, and the University of Hong Kong, China. The Workshop included 22 student participants of diverse academic backgrounds and skills and guest speakers and judges from industry, including NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), Syntiant Corporation and OCTANE.

“Climate Change, Energy Scarcity, Cyber Security and Sustainability all require innovation in Smart Manufacturing through collaborative research and development between industry and academia to inspire the next generation to innovate in new ways in order […]

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Seeing Red for Education – Investing in Education is a National Security Issue

By | June 6th, 2018|Uncategorized|

by: Paula Golden, President of Broadcom Foundation

Arriving in Tucson last month, my car passed a sea of red-shirted teachers protesting in solidarity with over 50,000 educators who marched out of their classrooms to the Phoenix statehouse to demand more funding for public schools. Teachers in Arizona and Colorado joined ranks with colleagues from states like West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky – with more to come. 2018.5.Seeing Red Blog Photo

This phalanx is seeing “Red for Ed’ucation.”  Rightly so; and it is no small irony that the people’s rebellion over education has been erupting in so-called ‘Red States’ whose elected officials have rejected federal and state funding strategies that might have averted such devastating consequences.  According to the Washington Post, “(t)wenty-nine states now spend less per student on K-12 education than a decade ago… and a number of these states have also cut income taxes, including Oklahoma and Arizona.”

To our everlasting national shame, the United States is eating its own seed corn.

Because politicians have failed to fund comprehensive, […]

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Changing the Game by Middle School: Stopping Sexual Harassment Before It Starts

By | January 5th, 2018|Uncategorized|

Tackling sexual harassment in a blog that focuses on inspiring kids to become scientists and engineers might seem incongruous, but as I listen to salacious stories rolling out from the Nation’s Capital and the Big Apple to Hollywood and Silicon Valley, a song from Rogers and Hammerstein’s 1949 Broadway blockbuster South Pacific keeps repeating in my ear:

You’ve got to be taught

From year to year,

It’s got to be drummed

In your dear little ear

You’ve got to be carefully taught.

As a Boomer, I grew up believing that a level playing field was all we needed for women to succeed in their chosen fields. The #MeToo movement has radically changed my thinking, so I am adding my voice to the chorus of millennial women who say there needs to be a fundamental cultural shift in the American Workplace.

This cultural shift must begin before patterns of behavior are locked into the human psyche in the early stages of personal growth and development. In a New York Times Op-Ed just today, […]

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STEM, Scouting and Finding Your Tribe: The Importance of Rites of Passage in Middle School

By | September 5th, 2017|Uncategorized|

I take scouting seriously: my family recited the Boy Scout Law at my father’s funeral as my brother, an Eagle Scout, wept.

Last week, I started a blog about how programs like scouting and the Broadcom MASTERS® create modern-day rites of passage through which young people can find their place in a society that amplifies the positive values and aspirational interests that enables them to become adults in-full and leaders in science, engineering, letters and the arts as well as society at large.

The National Boy Scout Jamboree has been a scouting rite of passage for decades; one that all scouts are encouraged to experience as they go from Tenderfoot to the “apex of leadership and character.” Thus, I was extremely gratified by the Boy Scouts of America CEO’s public disavowal of President Trump’s address at the National Jamboree when, rather than giving guidance and inspiration from a revered elder who tapped into the values embodied in one hundred years of scouting and the United States Constitution, the president gave a […]

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Learn a Superpower – Coding

By | June 15th, 2017|Uncategorized|

Marking the dawn for yet another superhero revival, Wonder Woman, is enjoying a much-anticipated reprise at movie theaters everywhere — the popular comic heroine finally displays her superpower strength on the big screen.

An idol to young women everywhere, Wonder Woman demonstrates power and ability in both body and mind — she is able to solve problems using what we now call ‘21st century skills’ — problem solving, communication, collaboration and creativity.2015.8.GirlscoutsOC_STEM_5KelseyKeuning_settingup

How can your own little (K-12) wonder woman acquire these skills?  By learning to code!  Check out this fun game by Google Play, Made with Code and Warner Bros.  Help Wonder Woman fight the bad guys and learn programming concepts at the same time.

DCB-June-Girls-Pi-300x225

Or buy a $35 Raspberry Pi – the tiny, user-friendly computer that makes coding easy and possibilities endless.  Learn how to make your own photo booth, weather station or e-book library to name a few.  Or how about streaming music, […]

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Huffington Post: STE(A)MING MAD AND MARCHING FOR SCIENCE: The Union of Concerned Scientists are Concerned for the Union

By | April 4th, 2017|Uncategorized|

This spring, my friend sent me a photo of the Jefferson Memorial, which we visited long before the ascension of Donald Trump and his Republican Congress. The image triggered this thought: were he here today, Thomas Jefferson – scientist, engineer, inventor, botanist, author of the Declaration of Independence, third president of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia (the first to open a school of engineering and applied sciences,) would be leading the March for Science on April 22.

2017.4.HuffPo.JeffersonMThrongs of scientists and science-minded citizens like me are marching in resistance to the president’s draconian appointments and policies that disavow established science, quell critical thinking, abrogate fact-based knowledge and threaten to roll back advancements in scientific research and education.

Thomas Jefferson would not be pleased; and his immortal words, engraved on the porticos of his memorial, sum up the reasons why my STEM colleagues, the Union of Concerned Scientists and I will march on Washington DC this spring.

First, we march for science […]

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Pi Day: Celebrating One University’s Quest to Inspire Everyone to Code — Scratching the Surface of What is Possible

By | March 14th, 2017|Uncategorized|

Today – March 14th – marks International Pi Day – Pi (Greek letter “π”) is the symbol used in mathematics to represent a constant — the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — which is approximately 3.14159…. and so on.  Pi has been calculated to over one trillion digits beyond its decimal point!

International Pi Day is a great time celebrate math and celebrate those who strive to introduce computer coding to all.  Not just because we think coding is fun (and it is once you get the hang of it,) but because there are over 2.4 million STEM jobs waiting to be filled by young and old alike.

“If more stUCI ASPIRE PHOTO GIRLSudents and workers aren’t inspired to stick with STEM and coding, we will not have the millions of new workers needed [to make] our connected world a reality,” according to Time Magazine’s Tim Bajarin in his article How STEM Skills Are the Next Great Equalizer.

One university is leading the quest to inspire […]

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Huffington Post: Time for a New ISEF Sponsor to take a Shot! Science Fairs Are an Important Arrow in the STEM Education Quiver

By | March 3rd, 2017|Uncategorized|

by: Paula Golden, as seen in the Huffington Post

Opportunity is knocking for the next champion of the world’s longest-running, largest, most prestigious and most inclusive high school STEM competition to step forward: the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) is up for grabs.

Deftly guided by the Society for Science and the Public for seventy years, science fair systems sponsored respectively by industry giants of their era – Westinghouse (from 1942 to 1997) and Intel (from 1998- the present) – are at the epicenter of virtually every state, national and international STEM education movement. Their renowned competitions, Science Talent Search, International Science and Engineering Fair and Broadcom MASTERS help drive our urgent imperative to educate disciplined, audacious STEM-literate adults at all levels of society who will fill millions upon millions of 21st century jobs that require flexible competencies in math, science and engineering.

Finalists from the Broadcom MASTERS middle school science and engineering competition have the opportunity to meet finalists from ISEF. Finalists from the Broadcom MASTERS […]

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Broadcom MASTERS Champion Honored with Asteroid Naming

By | January 25th, 2017|Uncategorized|

The “132005 Scottmcgregor” is not a large asteroid (it clocks in at about 2 to5 km in diameter), but it is big enough to cause similar damage as the one that is theorized to have killed off the dinosaurs about 65.5 million years ago.

Discovered by MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Near-Earth Asteroid Research program (LINEAR), former Broadcom Chief Executive Officer and President, Scott McGregor, landed naming rights to the 132005 asteroid, a rocky space body that orbits the sun.

McGregor was honored with a celestial namesake by the Broadcom Foundation, Society for Science and the Public (SSP) and the CERES Connection to recognize his role in creating the Broadcom MASTERS science and engineering competition for middle school students, a program that marked its sixth anniversary last October.

The auspicious number of the asteroid assigned to McGregor coincides with the day he became President and CEO of Broadcom –132005 – January 3, 2005.

The official asteroid nomenclature states:

“Scott A. McGregor (b.1956), Broadcom CEO and Founding Chair of the Broadcom Foundation, championed the Broadcom MASTERS, […]

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Huffington Post: Lost In The Fifties, Middle America Needs STEM Education & Infrastructure

By | January 27th, 2017|Uncategorized|

By: Paula Golden, President of Broadcom Foundation

At a post-mortem forum on the 2016 U.S. election, Mexico’s former president Vicente Fox had choice words for those who elected Donald Trump. Yearning for the manufacturing glory days of yesteryear, American workers were seduced by a sloganeer who promised to “Make America Great Again.” But, said Fox, the world has moved on, and their jobs with it. Instead of attending community colleges to pick up critical skills and proficiencies that would have enabled them to transition into jobs of the future, American workers “went home to down a few beers.”
A sardonic critique from a politician on the other side of Trump’s ‘great wall’ designed to keep jobs in and émigrés out?  Not so.

Donald Trump perpetuated the destructive myth about our nation’s infallibility held by many in Middle America, especially workers in Coal Country and the Rust Belt whose family fortunes rose in the 1950’s when the United States dominated manufacturing and production while other nations crawled out from under the rubble of World War II. Trump made them believe that the jobs in the factories and […]

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