Battelle is proud to lead the recently announced Ohio STEM Learning Network.  The OSLN strives to enhance, accelerate and connect STEM education efforts in Ohio.  Click here to learn more about how you can participate with the OSLN. 

The Ohio STEM Learning Network is supported in part by a significant grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

As the world’s largest independent research and development firm, we oversee more than 20,000 staff members and manage nearly $4 billion annual research and development revenues at Battelle and with our affiliates.  Our technology fingerprints find their ways into hundreds of commercial products and mission critical government systems every year.  Working with thousands of government and private sector clients gives us a firsthand view of the competitive workforce challenges that face our nation with the declining pool of qualified workers in science and technology fields.

The situation is amplified with a large fraction of our current science and technology workforce nearing retirement age.  Choices of young people to pursue a technology-focused education are dropping at an alarming rate, and high school curriculum exacerbates the problem by not uniformly providing a core foundation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields to all students.  When given the choice, data shows that most students move away from STEM fields.  Why shouldn’t they, if these young people have no real-world visualization of what these careers look like, and how to get there?  Unfortunately, careers in STEM fields today are all but invisible to many American families.  

But STEM skills are not just important for people who want to pursue a career in research or technology, or only for those who are “good at” math and science.  STEM skills underpin the intellectual vibrancy of a society.  STEM builds critical thinking & ability to address complex problems, and it cannot be an option for only a select few.

At Battelle, we want to do our part to help change that.  We want to be a catalyst for sustainable positive change in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education at a national scale.  In fact, Battelle’s Board of Directors has established education impact as a high priority, enterprise-wide initiative of equal importance to our science and technology mission.

Welcome to the Battelle Education Signature Initiative

We are collaborating on dozens of programs nationwide through Battelle and our affiliated National Laboratories as a partner for education advancement.  We are also redefining what it means to be an engaged corporation to advance education through our work in support of student achievement, school development, teacher preparation, retention and intervention, policy, and measurement and accountability.  All of our efforts leverage Battelle’s extraordinary technical staff, our access to unique facilities, our systems design capability, and our program management expertise to create innovative alliances with other public and private organizations to connect as many related efforts as possible to bring new scale to the education solutions.