Lori Rosario, a mechanical engineering technology major at RIT, fits the profile of the kind of student needed to fill a growing demand. It's a problem that could be a boon to this area with its abundance of colleges.

SHAWN DOWD staff photographer

(Rochester, NY) — Uncle Sam wants you, Lori Rosario.

So do George Pataki, the Business Council of New York State and an army of business and educational interests nationwide, all calling for more people like the 20-year-old Rochester Institute of Technology student, who is getting her mitts dirty this quarter with classes in pneumatics and hydraulics and surface mount technology.

"I've always been really hands-on," said Rosario, who's majoring in mechanical engineering technology.

An increasing number of voices around New York state and the nation are calling for colleges to turn out more scientists, engineers and mathematicians — and more primary and secondary schoolteachers specializing in those fields.

Both President Bush and Gov. Pataki are proposing that public dollars be spent to attract math and science teachers. This week, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Rep. Jim Saxton, R-N.J., introduced the Mathematics and Science Teaching Corps Act of 2006, which would provide financial incentives to recruit and retain such teachers.

On Wednesday, a group of 140 educational, business and political leaders, including the heads of Harvard, Yale, IBM and Microsoft, took out ads in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, urging increased national spending on math and science education and research.

The same alarms rang 49 years ago, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, grabbing the early lead in the space race. By 1970, the number of science and engineering doctorates earned in the United States had tripled, accounting for more than half the world's total, pushed by federal legislation and by the increasing numbers of Americans going to college.

Today, however, science and engineering degrees earned at European and Asian universities, particularly in China, are growing while U.S. production has stagnated, according to Harvard University economist Richard B. Freeman. This is especially true for doctoral degrees, the level at which most advanced research goes on.

Uphill climb

Turning out more techies may not come easily. In testimony before a state Senate committee last month, the Business Council bemoaned that too few people are graduating from New York colleges with degrees in science and engineering.

"In fact, New York annually graduates about twice as many psychology majors as engineers," the council said.

The State University College at Brockport handed out more bachelor's degrees in psychology last year (163) than math, biology, chemistry and computer science degrees combined (152).

Meanwhile, the number of people graduating from the University of Rochester last year with bachelor's degrees in economics (146) exceeded the graduates of its School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (126).

"It's discipline," said RIT computer science major Juan J. Rodriguez, 21, of Long Island. "People aren't taught discipline early on. Culturally there's a stigma against smart kids. I was picked on. A lot of kids dumb themselves down deliberately."

Much of the problem stems from shortcomings in the nation's elementary schools and high schools, SUNY Chancellor John R. Ryan said Wednesday.

"You get excited about things when you have a teacher who makes it fun. We're not exciting the kids at a young age."

Karen Proctor, chairwoman of the packaging science program at RIT, voiced a related concern about pre-college preparation: "Do our students feel like they can continue from what they've received in high school? Are students prepared enough?"

In Pataki's proposed 2006-07 budget, he calls for 500 new scholarships a year for college students who make a five-year commitment to teach math or science at a state public school. He also proposes grants for pre-engineering programs in middle and high schools, for summer math/science institutes at colleges, and for doubling the budget of state programs aimed at boosting the number of underrepresented students studying math and science.

Bush, in his American Competitiveness Initiative unveiled last week, proposes doubling federal spending on math, science and engineering research over the next decade and spending $380 million for training 70,000 high school teachers in math and science, as well as incentives to lure scientists and mathematicians into teaching.

Fewer applicants

Openings for math and science teachers at Rochester-area schools usually generate fewer applicants than do other openings, said Jody Siegle, executive director of the Monroe County School Boards Association.

"It's not uncommon to have two to a handful of qualified applicants," she said, adding that math, science and engineering majors often have their choices of numerous job opportunities outside of teaching.

To be sure, area colleges have an abundance of efforts going on to attract people to various technological disciplines: Genesee Community College has National Science Foundation funding to provide scholarships for students interested in math, engineering and science; the State University College at Geneseo's new science building opens this fall; many RIT freshmen are clustered into "learning communities" where, for example, civil engineering technology or computer science majors will take many of the same classes together; and the list goes on.

The push for more techies could be a boon to the Rochester area, said Nazareth College President Daan Braveman.

With so many colleges — there are eight four-year schools in the region — Rochester could be "a national center in the areas of math and science," Braveman said.

"We already have most of the pieces here. The idea would be to figure out how (area colleges) can bring those pieces together," he said, adding:

"You have the president of the United States talking about it, you have Pataki talking about it, you have business people talking about it — I think this is an opportunity for people in this community."