A former CEO of Lockheed Martin will be speaking at Purdue about the future of science and engineering. Norm Augustine has served as a U.S. Department of Defense official and as an advisor on such things as human space flight and research in Antarctica.
He says everything from producing clean energy to ensuring national security comes down to science and engineering. By his assessment, the country is headed down the wrong path when it comes to preparing for future challenges.
“We’re going to need more and more scientists and engineers of the very highest quality,” Augustine says. “However, America is underinvesting in science and engineering, in the sense of financially underinvesting in research, in the sense of not producing enough scientists and engineers through our education system.”
He says K-12 education needs to be strengthened, because U.S. students are falling behind their international peers, and higher education in the United States is threatened by research funding cuts. Augustine says private foundations and corporations cannot match the research dollars the federal government can offer.
“The government becomes, by default, the only reasonable provider of funds for research. It’s that research that results in products that create jobs for many, many people,” he says. “For example, work that was done many years ago in solid state physics made it possible to build iPods and iPads and iPhones.”
Purdue’s Global Policy Research Institute is hosting Augustine. The event is cosponsored by Purdue’s Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS). It begins at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday in Stewart Center’s Fowler Hall. More information is available HERE.