Chris Roe, CEO of the California STEM Learning Network, about the California STEM Summit and how CSLNet is working to jumpstart STEM education in California so that all students have access to high quality STEM education.
Christopher Roe is the chief executive office of the California STEM Learning Network (CSLNet), a nonprofit organization working to ensure that California is a national leader in preparing STEM-capable students.
Roe is in charge of overseeing the creation of strategic relationships and collaborating with regional, state and national partners to rapidly scale innovative STEM teaching and learning across K-14 education in order that all students have access to high-quality learning opportunities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), the critical fields that fuel California’s dynamic economy. In addition, Roe been appointed by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson to serve on the newly-created STEM Task Force that will examine how to improve the way California educates its students in these subjects and engage more students in scientific and technical fields, which are integral to the state’s economic future.
Prior to joining CSLNet, Roe served as the Deputy Director for the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF), a membership organization comprised of corporate CEOs and senior executives, college and university presidents, and foundation leaders working together to advance innovative solutions to the nation’s most significant education challenges. In this role, Roe worked closely with BHEF’s members, policymakers, and educators to develop and advance innovative policy and programmatic solutions to our nation’s most pressing education challenges. While at BHEF Roe provided leadership for its STEM initiative, which has as its goal doubling the number of STEM graduates nationally.
Roe previously was also managing director of the Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research and the National Center for Postsecondary Improvement, based at Stanford University. Roe is also co-founder of Pacific Educational Group, based in San Francisco, CA, and the Foundation for a College Education (FCE) located in East Palo Alto, CA, an award-winning non-profit organization that assists students of color and their families in attaining a college education.
Roe has authored or contributed to a number of reports on issues of state and federal higher education policy, including “An American Imperative: Transforming the Recruitment, Retention, and Renewal of Our Nation’s Mathematics and Science Teaching Workforce” by the Business-Higher Education Forum and “New Models of Leadership and Collaboration to Improve Science Education: The Role of Business” in Science Education Leadership by NSTA Press.
Roe received his master’s in public policy from the University of California-Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy, and his bachelor’s of science degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
