“Clearly, the life sciences are this region’s best chance of providing opportunities for high-skill and high wage jobs to all citizens.”
– William Jews, Chainnan of GBC Life Science Strategy Team
“The National Science Foundation, in a controversial report, has predicted that within two decades the U.S. will be suffering a shortage of more than 600,000 scientists.”
– Susan L. J. Dickinson writing in ”The Scientist,” May 11, 1992
A consensus of Maryland’s leadership is currently making the case that the state’s economy is tied to the future of science oriented industries. It follows that if science-oriented industries are to flourish in the state, the state needs all the scientists and engineers it can get; from a national perspective, America also needs more of its students to become scientists and engineers. Given the state’s ambitions for and investment in this effort, it is timely for this same leadership to revisit the issue, explored some four years ago, of whether the state should create a math-science residential high school. The questions to consider: would the presence of such a school persuade and enable more young Marylanders to become better scientists; and if it did, would those scientists stay and work in Maryland and so contribute to the state’s vision of its future?