Hutchison Participates in Global Town Hall

Students at Hutchison elementary watched the screen intently as Al Gore began to address them on the importance of science, technology, engineering and math education on Wednesday. 

Gore said the difference in becoming "The Situation" from Jersey Shore or Apple's Steve Jobs is a good foundation of math and science.

The event was part of a Time Warner initiative called Connect a Million Minds. The program is designed to inspire students to go into careers in math, science and technology. Hutchison was able to participate in the event due to a new partnership with Time Warner that began in October.

The program was through an online forum where students from across the globe could log on, watch the program, submit questions to experts in the fields of math and science and talk with each other through a live chat.

Participating countries included the United States, England, Scotland, Germany, Scandinavia, Australia, Japan China and the Czech Republic, among others.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan took part in the program. He said the U.S. hasn't given its students enough opportunities to pursue their passions in science and technology.

One California student who submitted a video question to the program touched on that fact. El Rab said at her high school there were fewer requirements for math and science, and when it came time to take electives there were few that related to math and science.

Melissa Chen, a California student who had lived in China, said children there took their education very seriously. She said when she transferred to a school in Irvine she noticed that students in the U.S. are more relaxed about their education.

Kudo Tsunoda, a creative director with Microsoft's Xbox Kinect, said when he was young he didn't understand that video games are driven by math. He said he enjoys working with high school students because he gets to show them the behind-the-scenes part of video game development and how math can be fun.

Dean Kamen, the founder of FIRST Robotics, said the problem is that the country focuses on being the top in sports and glorifying those who are good at sports, rather than being first in science or technology.

After the interactive, global discussion the students were able to talk to employees of Time Warner who work the science and technology fields and ask them questions about their work and why they chose it.

Mike Mabunay, vice president of service operations, said though he was a bad student, eventually his interests led him into a career involving math and science.

Raj Junnarkar, senior manager of mobile service devices, said he wished he had asked more questions about how things work when he was a child.

Gabriela Vasquez, a translations engineer at Time Warner, said math was never a favorite subject of hers, but every career involves math at some point.

Mabunay said getting far in a career is mostly about the journey to get there, not about the destination. He said he originally studied to be a dentist but realized he wouldn't get into school for it.

Instead Mabunay studied environmental science, but it wasn't a field he wanted to work in, so he joined the Coast Guard. After his time with the Coast Guard he went back to school for information science and found a job with telecommunications company MCI.

Vasquez said the key to any career is enjoying what you do. She said when her son saw how much she likes working in an engineering field he decided he wanted to pursue it as well and is now going to college to study math and science.