{"id":1323,"date":"2019-07-01T07:53:56","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T07:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.borbolycsaba.ro\/en\/?p=1323"},"modified":"2019-07-01T08:02:05","modified_gmt":"2019-07-01T08:02:05","slug":"stem-in-harghita-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.borbolycsaba.ro\/en\/stem-in-harghita-county\/","title":{"rendered":"STEM in Harghita county"},"content":{"rendered":"

Firstly, in a nutshell, let me tell you some basic information on the county I came from.<\/span><\/p>\n

The region is in Romania, up in the Carpathians, full with beautiful landscape and with traditional lifestyle and cultural wealth.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The people here make a living mostly from agriculture and forestry, and in the small towns there is some industry, built on the ruins of the socialist large-scale industrial past.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Farmers have small scale businesses, very few have larger plots than 10 ha. SMEs are mostly in the micro range, with some medium sized companies.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

So you can ask why am I interested in STEM and Industry 4.0?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

That is a good question, seriously, I ask myself several times too.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Because our everyday reality in the region is far away from that, in the schools, int he workplace and also in the business sector.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Actually, during the last two decades we caught up to some extent.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We have paved roads in all the villages, we renovated our schools, we introduced electricity grid even to peripheral settlements.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

With our partners we made serious efforts to make the best out of what we have, so we have clusters, food quality schemes, local farmers` markets, the tourism is flourishing now.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

So economically speaking the region made the best we can, building partnerships, using our best traditions, safeguarding our values, welcoming people from all around the word.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We have done it using the structural funds and our own initiatives, while we had very level of support from the state.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Our success is based on what we put into it, we have no dependency from the state, and we are proud being Europeans and making the best out of the support we got from the Funds.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We arrived at a status where Ireland used to be in the time they joined the EU. I think this is why we can see the opportunity in STEM and Industry 4.0, because we can do what our Irish fellows did.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Making a well off region out of a lagging behind area.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

They were just as rural as we are, and now they have high activity in IT, engineering, technology and they are clearly key players at European level in STEM and Industry 4.0.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We need to focus on what makes a region successful now and in the near future, not on what was a good idea decades ago.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

So in the county I am proud to represent we are focusing on our future, trying to give to the young generation the opportunities we never had and we could only dream of.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The state has no clear plans how to support regions like ours, so we need to come up with plans, build our partnership at European and local level.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I do hope we can reach our goals together with our friends from all around the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Believe me, the people from Hargita can tell something about networks and webs: the most eminent academic in the field of network research, professor at MIT, professor Barabasi graduated in the same high school like me.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But we have partners in the US too.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It was a great opportunity to be part of the organizing team of this year`s STEM conference led by T3 and held at the CoR as a hosted event initiated by me.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We are talking with Texas Instruments on identifying pilot projects in the region so we can have a better insight how STEM should be taught in this part of Europe.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I also had the opportunity of being the CoR rapporteur on STEM in Europe, and I can tell you I could meet brilliant teachers and bright people from different stakeholder groups. Thanks for all of them for helping me in formulating the CoR opinion on STEM.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, STEM is for all, and we need to spread STEM to places and groups where it was not trendy or fashionable until now.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We need STEM for women, so we can have better ideas and offer better wages for girls.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We need STEM for lagging behind and rural regions, so those people can have equal acces to better jobs.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We need STEM not just for the majority, but for all types of minorities, safeguarding the access of ethnic and linguistic minorities to STEM in their native language.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

And we need real STEM, which supposes teacher training, because we have no such thing in Europe as STEM teacher \u2013 we have distinct diplomas for chemistry, physics, maths, IT, but we need STEM teachers in order to have STEM and not some less boring classes of traditional discipline based teaching.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But who is going to lead that revolutionary process?\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Member states?\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Well, I very much doubt that.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

They had time for that and most of them only had success in reporting STEM education data to EUROSTAT. Yes, unfortunately that was one of my findings. That member states are not ready for making the changes at system level.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In the US they have introduced STEM in primary schools, and they have PhD schools for researchers and master classes for trainers of STEM teachers, so the approach can be present at every level of education.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We in Europe are just at the beginning of that process, and I am afraid big politics and states are not flexible enough to realise what we need \u2026 and what we miss if lack the efforts we need now.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This is why we should talk about the regional and local dimensions of STEM take up, and help local and regional authorities understand it and act for local and regional STEM initiatives, in partnership with teachers, professional oragnisations and also with the labour market.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Let`s help the youth designing STEM carrier plans, and so local businesses can invest in Industry 4.0 \u2013 that is how we beat the catch-22 situation.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

STEM jobs are better paid.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

STEM graduates have their first jobs sooner than others.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The economy needs STEM graduates.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

So we need STEM at all levels of education, in the short term, so a region can get a grip on economic growth opportunities. STEM education is the necessary precondition of Industry 4.0 jobs in any region \u2013 but rural and less well of regions need it the most.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Firstly, in a nutshell, let me tell you some basic information on the county I came from. The region is in Romania, up in the Carpathians, full with beautiful landscape and with traditional lifestyle and cultural wealth. The people here make a living mostly from agriculture and forestry, and in the small towns there is some industry, built on the ruins of the socialist large-scale industrial past.\u00a0 Farmers have small scale businesses, very few have larger plots than 10 ha. SMEs are mostly in the micro range, with some medium sized companies. So you can ask why am I interested in STEM and Industry 4.0? That is a good question, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1324,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6,7],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borbolycsaba.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borbolycsaba.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borbolycsaba.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borbolycsaba.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borbolycsaba.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1323"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.borbolycsaba.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1328,"href":"https:\/\/www.borbolycsaba.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323\/revisions\/1328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borbolycsaba.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borbolycsaba.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borbolycsaba.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borbolycsaba.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}