The Expanding Innovations Project, launched last month, assembles small groups of school districts and local partners to work on a project of their choosing, with funding support.

The question is: Does the A provide something on its own that may get diluted when it is wedged between S T E and M? The value of making is well documented, but are there also benefits to imagination and open-ended exploration without an emphasis on producing something tangible?

Kids’ imaginations make them natural inventors. Students at Avonworth Middle School will be tapping into that innate inclination through a new partnership with engineers and product developers from Inventionland, an idea incubator in Pittsburgh. With help from these mentors students will hone in on a problem, design an idea to solve it, prototype a solution, and “pitch” the idea to Inventionland executives. The project is made possible by a STEAM grant from the Benedum Foundation, the Grable Foundation, and the Chevron Corporation. Avonworth’s project is one of 28 grants to southwestern Pennsylvania school districts totaling $530,000. Since 2009, more than $2.3 million in STEAM grants have been awarded to schools, all distributed through the Allegheny Intermediate Unit’s Center for Creativity.

Even in educational utopia, leaders know the system needs to adapt to meet modern demands. Finland has announced that, beginning in August 2016, the country will abandon some of its subject-based schooling in favor of an interdisciplinary “phenomenon”-based approach.

The signal that “arts matter,” in STEM or any other discipline, is not one that every education institution has received. Changing this line of thinking, at universities and in K–12 schools, is at the core of the national push for stronger STEAM education—or STEM with the inclusion of arts and all the skills they nurture.

As the school year gets underway, there is growing attention on the importance of STEM learning for our students and our economy. Here are (at least) seven readings to get you up to speed.

Arts leaders gather in Pittsburgh for the Arts Education Partnership National Forum.

Jobs are returning but not everyone will be ready to take them unless we do more to prepare our students for a high-skilled workforce. In that respect, Pittsburgh is ahead of the curve.

In Pittsburgh, a building boom of new 21st century digital learning spaces for students of all ages.

In Pittsburgh, educators say preparing our next generation of innovators to lead the 21st-century economy means teaching art and design in addition to science, technology, engineering, and math.