STEAM vs. STEM

Science Technology Engineering and Math, and then someone thought to shove in Art to make STEAM.

Everyone has heard of STEM, if you’ve even glanced at any institution within the last 10 or 15 years, you’d be lucky to go a minute without seeing it. It’s one of the biggest movements in the world, and yet for some reason, there is a large amount of people who want to add Art into the mix. Art isn’t technical. Art isn’t scientific. When do Engineers and Scientists utilize Art?

You aren’t going to have Engineers grab a canvas and paint a picture and get paid 6 figures to do it, nor will you have a scientist play music all day and be paid for that. While this is true, I think this is a misunderstanding of why someone might want to include art inside all these hard sciences; the word Art is less about art and more about creativity and artistic expression. After all, an engineer might not paint a picture, but they may very well architect a schematic for something like the Hoover Dam.

Let us not forget, that the Engineers of the past didn’t just make practical things either; we have an entire subset of Engineering that also counts as a study of history: Architectural Engineering. The different styles of architecture are representative of the culture and technology available to civilizations at that time. When we have people building the world around us, don’t we want them to make the world beautiful?

And sure, maybe a Nuclear engineer might not be putting much artistic expression into their Nuclear reactor, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the creativity and critical thinking skills to solve these problems. There is a practical reason to include Artistic classes inside a STEM program as they can often open people's eyes to alternative perspectives and ideas. As an engineer or scientist, it is extremely important to be able to understand different perspectives and take them into account while working.

Artistic courses and requirements also encourage out-of-the-box thinking or as some more technical people call it: Critical thinking. And while engineering courses do this fairly well on their own, why not also include courses that contain situations an Engineer or Scientist might have never even thought of?

I was in an interview the other day for a Cybersecurity Apprenticeship, and one of the questions that they asked me was, “Do you think there are more legs or eyes in the world?” Feel free to stop reading and comment on what you think is the correct answer (hint: There is a correct answer).

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This question sat with me, not because it was a truly out-of-the-blue interview question, but because I had been thinking about the STEAM vs. STEM debate for a while. Why in the world would someone ask me such an absurd, subjective, and irrelevant question when interviewing me for an Apprenticeship in Cybersecurity? This is a hard science! A field where I am supposed to learn how to protect people's data, privacy, and livelihoods. Not some silly question about eyes and legs. But, I got hired, so it must have had some importance, some practicality to it. And, it did.

It was asked to gauge how I acted when confronted with alternative perspectives.

I have always been a fairly art-focused person, even if I enjoy the hard sciences. So when asked this question, I didn’t actually think “Why would you ask this ridiculous question,” I instead started thinking about all the possible things that could have legs and eyes, and discussed it with my interviewer.

I probably would not have really engaged with this question as much, if I had only focused my whole academic and financial career on just the hard sciences. That is why we need to truthfully, and honestly consider STEAM. Maybe not the full branding, and maybe not to the scale some people might like, but certainly implementing a few courses to help expand the artistic horizons of these future engineers would be extremely beneficial in the long run. Whether they are building the Hoover Dam, or maintaining and designing Nuclear Reactors, Engineers and Scientists should have that ability to understand and appreciate art in a way that can better their designs, and better themselves.

Thank you so much for reading this post, and if you are wondering, the correct answer is eyes. Why? Simple: Fish. If you enjoyed this post, and would like to read more like it in the future, please consider subscribing to my Substack.

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