RIT hosts public policy lecture, book signing

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Michael Teitelbaum will share his thoughts on the current and future needs of STEM workers in the United States during a talk and book signing at RIT’s Student Innovation Hall on April 29.

When public policy expert Michael Teitelbaum speaks at Rochester Institute of Technology later this month, he will likely reveal surprising information about the U.S. race to educate and employ more scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians.

Teitelbaum, a Wertheim Fellow in the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard University Law School and author of the new book Falling Behind: Boom, Bust and the Global Race for Scientific Talent, is a featured speaker for the College of Liberal Arts’ Public Policy Lecture Series from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. on April 29 in Student Innovation Hall. A book signing immediately follows his talk.

Teitelbaum’s research uncovers other periods that have caused alarm about “falling behind” in STEM education. According to Teitelbaum, mainstream media and political leaders have embraced this message and it has distorted policy debates about education, federal expenditures, tax policies and immigration.

“There is a perceived slip in America’s competitive edge with other countries and a subsequent response by the political system that rapidly expands the supply of scientists and engineers,” explained Teitelbaum in his book. “The problem is that in the years it takes to educate and train these scientists and engineers, the furor over the perceived threat dies down and political interest wanes leaving these new scientists with limited career prospects. Younger colleagues see their predecessors languish professionally and opt to pursue other fields—thereby sowing the fields for the next cycle of alarm, boom and bust.”

Teitelbaum has also written The Global Spread of Fertility Decline, A Question of Numbers, The Fear of Population Decline and The British Fertility Decline. Prior to joining Harvard, he served as vice president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation until 2011.

Teitelbaum’s visit is sponsored by RIT’s Department of Public Policy and the College of Liberal Arts. For more information about the free presentation and book signing, contact Ron Hira, associate professor of public policy at RIT, at 585-475-7052 or rhira@mail.rit.edu. Interpreters are provided upon request and subject to availability.