In a White House press event this afternoon, President Obama announced an expansion to the Educate to Innovate program. The new initiative is called “Change the Equation” and will bring together 100 CEOs of major companies to help build better science, engineering, technology and math programs in the highest need communities. The initiative will encourage private partnerships with public school programs.

Introductory remarks were given by Ursula Burns, the CEO of Xerox and one of the leaders of the initiative. The President pointed out that companies participating in Change the Equation will not only be able to give back to their nation, but will also benefit in the long-term from improvement in science education, which aims to produce more engineers, scientists, and innovators. To illustrate the kind of programs Change the Equation envisions, he discussed a group of high school students who worked together to build a fuel-efficient car.

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Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox, addressed the question of education reform in a speech at the Detroit Economic Club this week. She said that schools need to focus on effectively teaching math and science, in order to make the US economy competitive on a global scale. She pointed out that 150,000 engineering jobs with salaries over $60,000 went unfilled two years ago, due to the lack of qualified applicants.

She decried the amount of money that is donated to educational institutes every year, yet results are still poor. “If you ran a business that invested a billion dollars with so little progress, you’d shut it down,” Burns said. She also said that young people need better mentors, who would be able to direct students towards careers that are not only interesting, but also needed and lucrative.

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Science and math are two academic fields where the U.S.  faces tough challenges from other countries. Now, President Barack Obama, as part of his efforts to improve education in America, is striving to make these fields more appealing to students.

A new campaign called Educate to Innovate was announced in late November to promote science, technology, math, and engineering. The campaign will ask companies and nonprofit groups to donate time and money to encourage students to study in these fields.

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