Business Leaders Seek Overhaul in Science Teaching : Education: They seek to integrate the discipline into all grades, from kindergarten through the 12th grade.

At the university level, the nation’s science and mathematics programs are widely regarded as second to none. But science and math at kindergarten through high school?

“It’s bizarre. We are absolutely the world leaders in technology, but there is a very big gap between the quality of programs taught at universities and the ones at elementary and high schools,” said Henry Samueli, chief technical officer and co-chairman of Broadcom Corp.

Samueli is one of about 20 business leaders from throughout Orange County involved with Project Tomorrow--a community partnership dedicated to improving science education in schools--who met Wednesday to strategize.

What is needed, they said, is an overhaul of the way science is taught here:

* It has to begin in kindergarten.

* It needs to be integrated into other academic subjects.

* Most of all, lessons must be communicated in a way that captivates students, sending them on a lifelong journey of discovery.

Executives at the meeting were addressed in a language they understand: Make a capital investment in public education, and the return will be boundless.

The executives, from some of the county’s top high-tech businesses, say the quality of their future work force and their companies’ ability to keep pace with global markets will depend on whether children today develop a passion for science.

“I’m not sure educators fully understand and appreciate how important it is for companies’ futures,” Samueli said. “At a company like Broadcom, our success is dependent upon a having a technology-literate work force.”

Project Tomorrow--under the leadership of Joel Slutzky, chief executive officer of Odetics Inc.--has been one of the most successful educational collaborations undertaken in the county, said Bill Habermehl, associate superintendent for instruction at the Orange County Board of Education. Habermehl also is a Project Tomorrow board member.

The Anaheim-based program, with its roster of high-powered board members--including John Tu, president of Kingston Technology, and H. K. Desai, chief executive and president of Qlogic--is a successful link between business and education, Habermehl said.

“As a result, thousands of students and hundreds of teachers will benefit for years to come because of the projects and programs they support,” he said.

Many other business-technology areas--Boston and Silicon Valley, for instance--have similar partnerships. Project Tomorrow is modeled in part on Challenge 2000 in Silicon Valley, the high-tech area south of San Francisco.

In the last three years, Project Tomorrow has created a variety of pilot programs, including a summer institute for elementary school teachers, a student “docent” program, in which high school students teach elementary children, and family science nights.

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At Trabuco Hills High School in Mission Viejo, physics teacher and Project Tomorrow coordinator Katie Fliegler trains 20 juniors and seniors on how to teach the fundamentals of science, then sends them out to elementary schools in the Saddleback Valley Unified School District.

Lessons are hands-on and filled with colorful and creative experiments.

For example, this year Fliegler’s students are teaching first-graders about the properties of solids and liquids using baking soda and vinegar. Gasses will be explained by combining the two substances and allowing the children to see how the chemical reaction creating carbon dioxide fills up a balloon.

Both the high school and elementary students learn from the experiments, she said.

Her high school students, who are graded according to their performance both by Fliegler and the elementary teachers whose classes they assist, delve more thoroughly into science topics when faced with teaching them, rather than just preparing for a test.

In turn, the younger students see the science experiments as an activity cool enough for teenagers.

“When they see the high school kids doing science, it says that it’s fun and it’s neat. It’s giving them the message that science is cool,” she said.

County schools are brimming with innovative teaching and creative math and science programs, Habermehl said. The challenge is to bring mastery of the subjects out from behind classroom doors so it can be emulated by other educators.

To that end, the county Department of Education, working with Project Tomorrow, will videotape excellent teaching and display it on the Internet.

“We’re going to go out and capture these magical teaching moments,” Habermehl said.