Digging the Roots of STEM
Remember SMET? More than the sound was at stake.
By Henry Petroski
The rubric STEM has become a familiar part of the vocabulary of teachers of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. But these fields were not always grouped under that evocative term. Two decades ago they were referred to collectively by the less mellifluous acronym SMET.
SMET was the way the National Science Foundation then referred to science, mathematics, engineering, and technology collectively. By extension, SMETE stood for SMET Education. The order of the subjects incidentally reinforced the superiority that so many scientists and mathematicians felt over engineers and technologists. To those who thought about it, however, the order just seemed arbitrary. And the pseudo word SMET did not have positive connotations. Indeed, even its pronunciation, being close to “smut,” sounded unpleasant.
Among those who did think about SMET as a word and its implications was Judith Ramaley, professor of biology and erstwhile president of the University of Vermont. In the fall of 2001, as a new assistant director of the NSF’s Education and Human Resources Directorate, she attended a principal investigators’ conference, where the frequent repetition of SMET offended her sensibility.
To Ramaley, it was desirable to rearrange the letters of the faux acronym so that technology and engineering were between the subjects they so often applied, and she proposed that SMET be changed to STEM. Such changes do not come easily to a large bureaucracy like NSF, of course, and it took more than one spring before the upstart STEM pushed aside the old dirt of SMET.
STEM is now a mature and fully established acronym, but people continue to think about it and its implications. Some engineers feel that the E in STEM is silent, which is their way of saying that theirs is the subject that receives less attention than the others. This may be because the other STEM subjects are much more established than engineering in the K-12 grades, but that appears to be changing.
Increasingly, engineering is being introduced into the precollege curriculum. The state of Virginia has been a pioneer in introducing concepts of engineering design in even the earliest grades. In my hometown, Riverside High School has a robust program in engineering and technology to which students flock from across the county. It is a participant in Project Lead the Way — abbreviated to the unpronounceable PLTW—“the nation’s leading provider of STEM programs.”
But to some educators who believe above all in interdisciplinary interaction as the route to innovation, STEM is just a collection of individual letters, signifying no integrative principle. STEM efforts, according to these educators, go mainly toward supporting the individual fields, which may be futile for increasing economic growth and national competitiveness. But that argument has not stopped proposed additions.
The medical profession has already added another M to STEM to make STEMM. Those in the arts and design communities would also like to share in the benefits of being part of STEM education, and so they have proposed squeezing an A for art (and design) into the acronym and expanding it into STEAM. The argument appears to be that integrating art into the STEM subjects will teach students how to use both sides of their brain and thereby be more creative and inventive.
Even should STEAM displace STEM as the acronym of choice, it is not likely to mark the end of the scrabble. Any alteration or arrangement of letters will always be subject to the charge of not being all inclusive. One alternative may be to anagram STEAM into TEAMS, thereby producing a truly apposite anagram that actually spells out exactly what it is all about: interdisciplinary teams working toward a common end.
Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University. His most recently published books are An Engineer’s Alphabet: Gleanings from the Softer Side of a Profession, To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure, and The House with Sixteen Handmade Doors: A Tale of Architectural Choice and Craftsmanship.
Photo by Catherine Petroski