A STE(A)M Education: Exploring the value of the arts in a science, technology, engineering and math curriculum.

with speaker Ian Finley

Hear what an entertaining & talented local arts educator believes about how arts experience provides a crucible that imparts a variety of technical skills. He argues that arts education also introduces alternative measures for what constitutes success—i.e., not just a career but a purposeful life.

The Information Age is hardly a thing of the past, but ways of preparing students to perform in that world are taking a new shape. Technical skills are simply not enough to equip graduates for the reality that they must also demonstrate the time-honored arts of interpersonal communication and personal reflection. One of the most effective means of introducing such innovation into education is the infusion of a significant arts component into today’s typical curriculum.

Arts courses and hands-on experience, valuable in themselves, also provide an experimental crucible for acquiring a wide spectrum of technological abilities.  And perhaps even more powerfully persuasive to educational reformers and students alike, the arts provide not just the skills for success, but an alternative measure of success–a path not only to a career but to a purposeful life.

IAN FINLEY holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU, where he was awarded the Harry Kondoleon prize for playwriting.  Currently, Ian serves as the Chair of Fine Arts at Research Triangle High School.